My fav cliches

I had done my last post on the biggest Hindi movie cliche of them all, the Hindi film heroine, the prettiest prop of them all!.





Here are some of my other fave cliches from both old and new movies ( I had posted some of them on Poonam Saxena's HT blog earlier but they are entirely my own!)





My favourite romantic/family cliches:


- Rich kid NEVER falls in love with fellow rich kid. They always find some ayah/ driver/mechanic's kid to fall in love with. Some socialists these guys!

- Heroines washed their hair everyday! No one was worried about hair fall or anything. That too first thing in the morning. Guess all of our heroines are very early risers and neat freaks

- Heroes are never the guy next door. They were always scholarship winners/awesome sportsmen/really popular guy for no apparent reason.

- Heroines, though the very model of moral values, always managed to get pregnant before marriage. They apparently had not heard of contraception.

- Heroines/ heroes always had a very snoopy and very bitchy aunt who would keep finding faults in them &/or tormenting them.

- Whenever heroine/hero was feeling sad or looking back at the mess they have made of their lives, they wear glasses, notwithstanding the fact that they can see perfectly clearly for miles in other parts of the film.

- Hero/ heroine had to lose one (or both) parents before 25. Usually before adulthood.

- I was cribbing about the career choices for women. Come to think of it, the men did not have much of an option too. They were either engineers/ doctors/ Policemen (favourite)/ mafia/ small time crooks/ physical labor. Does not seem like much of a selection to choose from.

- The hero n heroine just have to meet in a park in a slope where they can roll down like Jack n Jill at any time.

- The park was also good for PDA - in the guise of flowers of course!

- Gal had to have a negative IQ to be thought innocent and lovable. Any figment of ambition was highly discouraged. Even if the heroine was thoroughly brilliant, she was bound to the home by some stupid (often unnecessary) quirk of fate.

- Guy had to an equally low IQ to match. He was never able to figure out that he was being used by the villain in some way.

- And of course, the wonderful monsoon. Always reliable, it always showed up in time for hero-heroine to get wet together/ heroine to get wet n hero to stare followed by more botanical love scenes.

- Older men were never faithful to their wives. The father was always gone away to town to work/ play the fool/ hide after some crime he committed or dead. It was always up to the mother to raise the kids. What's more, the father often vanished without any money. So the mother (mostly uneducated) had to take up a job as a labourer/ kaamwali bai/ cleaner with her boss staring at her with all the wrong intentions.

Some courtroom cliches:

- How can anyone forget the Insaaf ki devi complete with her blindfold and scales?And more or less everyone, n I mean everyone had a law degree( inclusive of the blind maji) and have a license to argue in the court?

- Bad guy shooting the honest gavah/ hero’s dad/ honest masterji and running scot free. Finally in the climax getting shot by hero in the same court with same judge, same police wallah etc etc.

- Anyone can saunter in through the doors of the court and scream, “Thehro!!!”

- Hero sitting in the Judge sahib ki kursi in the climax, ‘Ab faisla main khud karunga’

- Hero ki maa running straight to judge’s desk and saying, 'mere bache par rehem khayiye, judge sahib, main aapke haath jodti hoon’

- Judge going, ‘Kya aap apni safai mein kuchh kehna chahte hain?’ (nothing to do with any cleanliness!)

- Lawyers saying, ‘mere fazil dostyeh bhool rahe hain ki…..”

- Hero gets to give one last kiss/ hug to herione before being wisked away to bees saal ki sazah.

- Lawyers were also masters of both Hindi and Urdu and loved to pepper their defence copiously with idioms, sayings etc but never quoted the Indian Constitution.

- Somehow, the only penal codes were 302 (murder) and 420 (trickery). The rest of the Constitution was just there to fill in pages.

- Hero/ heroine never takes help of a lawyer. They are more knowledgable about precedents, the Constitution of India, circumstantial evidence, forensics themselves than any black coated crow.

Some Doctor cliches:

- Doctor could run an instant pregnancy test by simply checking the heroine’s pulse.

- Heroine realises she’s pregnant only after she vomits in the teesra mahina.

-Humne bache ko to bacha liya par ma ko nahin bacha sake or vice versa after some deadly tragedy hits the pregnant woman.

- Doctor’s advice is perfectly orchestrated to backgorund music, moanful or happy as the case may be.

-They never seem to know of any blood banks, the dutiful parivaar ke log had to donate precious blood to the ailing fellow.

- T.B/ cancer were detected only in the terminal stage and the doctor would shake his head and say, “yeh chand dino ke mehman hain.”

- Cancer or T.B. spread faster than common cold in the movies.

- The only method of detection of aforementioned ailment was khoon in the khansi that too spat out on a white handkerchief.

- The patient always managed to spit out blood no matter what type of cancer they had. Well, I would give the benefit of doubt here. They never mentioned the type of cancer in any movie except Anand. Peculiarly, the most common type of cancer is Blood Cancer (again type not mentioned!)

- The nurse kept to take care of the aforementioned patient was always sleeping/ knitting/ yakking with nauker and forgot all about the dose timings. It always fell on the dear heroine to wake up in the middle of the night and say, “aapki dawah ka samay ho gaya”

- Blood was always donated Live. Both donor and receipient lying in adjoining cots in the same room.

- Monitors continuously beep if a patient is critical.

- Anyone can saunter into a ICU room wearing a white lab coat and poison the patient/ turn off the oxygen/ some critical machine.

Long list! Watch out, will get longer with time as i watch more and more movies!

Welcome to add stuff to the list