Salaam Namaste (2005) is one of those rare Bollywood
movies in which no one really has a family. Nick (Saif Ali Khan)
studied architecture in Melbourne in order to please his(presumably)
strict off-screen father, but after graduation decided to stay in
Melbourne and become a chef. Ambar (Preity Zinta), after seeing her
sister’s married life, refuses to get married herself and instead moves
to Melbourne to become a medical student, supporting herself by working
as the host of Salaam Namaste, Melbourne’s most popular Hindi language
radio program. For all intents and purposes, the pair are orphans, able
to live their own lives without worrying about what their meddling
aunties will think, and deeply suspicious of creating new permanent
bonds.
Ambar’s radio program is doing a series of interviews with successful Indians living in the city. Nick likes to sleep in, so he does not manage to make it to the studio in time for his interview. Ambar is annoyed, and retaliates by bad-mouthing Nick and his restaurant on the air. Business suffers, and his boss insists that he do another interview and apologize, but he doesn’t wanna, so he and Ambar spend a few days conducting a lively feud by phone.
Ambar is the bridesmaid at a wedding which happens to be catered by Nick’s restaurant. The pair meet without realizing that they’ve been arguing over the phone for the past couple of days, and while Nick the chef and Ambar the radio host clashed, Nick the architect and Amby the medical student get along very well indeed. Meanwhile, Nick’s best friend, the hapless Ron (Arshad Warsi), instantly falls for another bridesmaid, Cathy (Tania Zaetta).
The wedding turns into a bikini slumber party. (No, really. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but that is exactly what happens.) Nick and Ambar sing a song about how great it is to be young and good looking and living for yourself. In the morning, Ron and Cathy marry, while Nick and Ambar each realize who the other is, and decide that they like one another anyway. They make nice on the radio, Nick suddenly tells Ambar that he loves her (on the air, mind you), and she tells him he’s insane.
After the show, Ambar carefully explains that the relationship would not work; given their very different schedules, they wouldn’t be able to spend enough time together to get to know one another. Nick has a solution - they can move in together! (With separate bedrooms, he quickly points out.) As plans go, moving in with a person you’ve known for five days isn’t quite as bad as hiring a prostitute to live with you and your wife in Switzerland for a year so she can give you a son with which to mollify Amrish Puri, but it’s still pretty bad. Ambar agrees, however, so we have some light domestic comedy as the pair adjusts to life as a couple, with Ron and Cathy as the obligatory married couple to provide contrast.
The “separate bedrooms” plan is abandoned within the month, as Nick and Ambar discover that they like each other very much indeed. The good times can’t last forever, though, and it all starts to go horribly wrong when Ambar discovers that she’s pregnant. Nick insists that she have an abortion, and chivalrously waits in the car while she goes in to have the procedure. She can’t go through with it, and on the drive home they have a talk about the direction of the relationship; Ambar has radically reconsidered her position on marriage and family, while Nick . . . has not. In the end, Ambar declares that Nick has no responsibility toward her or the baby. “You want to be free? You’re free.”
They’ve both put a great deal of money into renting the house, however, since the landlord insisted upon a full year’s rent in advance. Neither one is willing to move out, so they retreat to their separate rooms and proceed to make one another miserable. And this is where I lost all sympathy for Nick; while Ambar can be a bit shrill, she is working and going to college and having a baby, and she’s doing it with no support from the child’s father, or her family. No support from anyone, in fact, apart from Jignesh (Jugal Hansraj), the requisite friend from college with an unrequited crush on her, and Nick, who is making her life miserable simply because he’s too damned immature to take responsibility, has the gall to stand around and glare jealously whenever he spots Jignesh in the area.
Of course the viewer knows that Nick is going to learn a valuable lesson and finally grow up. He just takes a long, long time to learn it. During a scene at a bookstore where he spots a cute baby and turns to the health section in order to read up on pregnancy, I hoped he would find a book on pulling his own head out, but it was not to be. Instead, he waits until the very last moment to come around, and by that point I was comparing him unfavorably to Saif Ali’s character in Being Cyrus.
Despite the weighty subject matter, there’s a lot of comic relief in Salaam Namaste. Javed Jaffery plays Jaggu, the couple’s landlord and a Crocodile Dundee impersonator with a blonde girlfriend and an impenetrable accent. The film exploits all of the predictable pregnancy gags, from mysterious cravings to vomiting to screaming in the delivery room, and Abhishek Bachchan as the doctor pulls the delivery scene completely into slapstick territory. All of the leads are, of course, gifted comic actors in their own right, and at times Nick and Ron seem like two sidekicks in search of a straight man.
The subject matter of Salaam Namaste is certainly not typical of Bollywood, but at heart it’s still a movie about family ties. The difference is that unlike most Bollywood it deals solely with the family you choose to create, rather than the family you are born with.
Ambar’s radio program is doing a series of interviews with successful Indians living in the city. Nick likes to sleep in, so he does not manage to make it to the studio in time for his interview. Ambar is annoyed, and retaliates by bad-mouthing Nick and his restaurant on the air. Business suffers, and his boss insists that he do another interview and apologize, but he doesn’t wanna, so he and Ambar spend a few days conducting a lively feud by phone.
Ambar is the bridesmaid at a wedding which happens to be catered by Nick’s restaurant. The pair meet without realizing that they’ve been arguing over the phone for the past couple of days, and while Nick the chef and Ambar the radio host clashed, Nick the architect and Amby the medical student get along very well indeed. Meanwhile, Nick’s best friend, the hapless Ron (Arshad Warsi), instantly falls for another bridesmaid, Cathy (Tania Zaetta).
The wedding turns into a bikini slumber party. (No, really. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but that is exactly what happens.) Nick and Ambar sing a song about how great it is to be young and good looking and living for yourself. In the morning, Ron and Cathy marry, while Nick and Ambar each realize who the other is, and decide that they like one another anyway. They make nice on the radio, Nick suddenly tells Ambar that he loves her (on the air, mind you), and she tells him he’s insane.
After the show, Ambar carefully explains that the relationship would not work; given their very different schedules, they wouldn’t be able to spend enough time together to get to know one another. Nick has a solution - they can move in together! (With separate bedrooms, he quickly points out.) As plans go, moving in with a person you’ve known for five days isn’t quite as bad as hiring a prostitute to live with you and your wife in Switzerland for a year so she can give you a son with which to mollify Amrish Puri, but it’s still pretty bad. Ambar agrees, however, so we have some light domestic comedy as the pair adjusts to life as a couple, with Ron and Cathy as the obligatory married couple to provide contrast.
The “separate bedrooms” plan is abandoned within the month, as Nick and Ambar discover that they like each other very much indeed. The good times can’t last forever, though, and it all starts to go horribly wrong when Ambar discovers that she’s pregnant. Nick insists that she have an abortion, and chivalrously waits in the car while she goes in to have the procedure. She can’t go through with it, and on the drive home they have a talk about the direction of the relationship; Ambar has radically reconsidered her position on marriage and family, while Nick . . . has not. In the end, Ambar declares that Nick has no responsibility toward her or the baby. “You want to be free? You’re free.”
They’ve both put a great deal of money into renting the house, however, since the landlord insisted upon a full year’s rent in advance. Neither one is willing to move out, so they retreat to their separate rooms and proceed to make one another miserable. And this is where I lost all sympathy for Nick; while Ambar can be a bit shrill, she is working and going to college and having a baby, and she’s doing it with no support from the child’s father, or her family. No support from anyone, in fact, apart from Jignesh (Jugal Hansraj), the requisite friend from college with an unrequited crush on her, and Nick, who is making her life miserable simply because he’s too damned immature to take responsibility, has the gall to stand around and glare jealously whenever he spots Jignesh in the area.
Of course the viewer knows that Nick is going to learn a valuable lesson and finally grow up. He just takes a long, long time to learn it. During a scene at a bookstore where he spots a cute baby and turns to the health section in order to read up on pregnancy, I hoped he would find a book on pulling his own head out, but it was not to be. Instead, he waits until the very last moment to come around, and by that point I was comparing him unfavorably to Saif Ali’s character in Being Cyrus.
Despite the weighty subject matter, there’s a lot of comic relief in Salaam Namaste. Javed Jaffery plays Jaggu, the couple’s landlord and a Crocodile Dundee impersonator with a blonde girlfriend and an impenetrable accent. The film exploits all of the predictable pregnancy gags, from mysterious cravings to vomiting to screaming in the delivery room, and Abhishek Bachchan as the doctor pulls the delivery scene completely into slapstick territory. All of the leads are, of course, gifted comic actors in their own right, and at times Nick and Ron seem like two sidekicks in search of a straight man.
The subject matter of Salaam Namaste is certainly not typical of Bollywood, but at heart it’s still a movie about family ties. The difference is that unlike most Bollywood it deals solely with the family you choose to create, rather than the family you are born with.
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