I Hope I'm Old Before I'm Born


The Who sings, "I hope I die before I get old". Robbie Williams sings: "I hope I'm old before I die". Now, there's a Timepass page with the above title, and you are wondering, what the fuck does that have to do with anything?

What does this page have to do with supposed Mahabharat author, Krishna Dwaipayana, a.k.a. Ved Vyas? If you're still confused, obviously you don't remember the story of his birth.
[This is a digression, but the last time I checked, these are called Timepass pages, and that's what will happen. Time will pass.]

Ved Vyas is born, and he immediately grows into a middle-aged dude.

The people we will be talking about on this page went one step further: they were BORN old. One example from each sex will be considered below:

Universal Mother: Who else! A bong girl who was cruelly named Nirupa by her parents, was born middle-aged, and quickly proceeded to grow into a sixty-year old widow. Nirupa Roy's bungalow in real life probably had a whole room devoted to all the white sarees she has worn in Hindi movies playing a widowed mother! She has played mother to people almost her own age! (Sort of like Ashok Kumar playing Manoj Kumar's dad in Clerk) But she LOOKS the role. What 80s blockbuster or multi-starrer would be complete without Nirupa Roy's muffled crying into her saree as she scrubs utensils at random people's houses so Master Alankar can grow up to be Amitabh Bachchan?

One of my favourite scenes from Hindi cinema is from the movie Mard. Remember the line, "Mard ko dard nahin hota?" There was this Bong guy in my high school who was very inspired by this movie and kept saying that one line, we would keep punching him and he would act as if it didn't hurt, and repeat that line. To his credit, he kept it up for a long while. Anyway, the movie begins with old fogeys Dara Singh and Nirupa Roy as a young married Royal Couple whose only child is being sent away for safekeeping. Before it is sent away, Dara Singh pulls out his trustworthy dagger and carves the word "Mard" (male) onto its chest. This was obviously to dispel any contrary ideas people might have about the child's gender. The kid, of course, is all smiles throughout the carving process (of course he is, he grows up to be Amitabh fucking Bachchan!), but the priceless overacting comes not from Dara Singh or the kid, it comes from Nirupa Roy. She bites her lip, shuts her eyelids closed real tight, turns away and mumbles, "Nahi, main yeh nahin dekh sakti". I think I burst out laughing right then.

One extra-rainy night, we were sitting in Partho's lab in IISc watching Jeetendra's Mawaali. A huge group of people, including Subroto. The movie is a classic, the songs are awesome, they are Bhappi creations, of course. But Hindi movies are like the Bong "sweet" sandesh. They have a tasty raisin that you can get to only if you tolerate the shitty multani mitti surrounding the raisin. So there were huge gaps in the movie that we were forced to suffer through in silence. During one such huge gap of unfunny business, the "good" Jeetendra says he will take Jaya Prada to a safe place. Jeetu brings JP to some random house, and knocks on the door. At this point, we were almost bored with the movie, but as soon as the door opened, we burst out laughing once again! Why? Because they waited until the last 45 minutes of the movie to unleash Nirupa Roy on us! Hahahaha, I wish that Hindi movies NEVER come up with the stupid idea of EDITING so that movies start making sense. I mean, she was almost like a deux ex machina! Came out of nowhere! We didn't get to see her do the dishes, be insulted when the kids were young, or die of tuberculosis, or all of the above.

I heard that Nirupa Roy's husband wouldn't have sex with her because, he claimed, she reminded him of his mother.

Ahmaaaad! Ahmaaad!: There's this looooong painful scene in Sholay when Sachin dies. I think his body comes back on a donkey or a horse or something, and his blind dad discovers that his only reason to live, his only MEANS to live, is dead. Good thing for us, Sachin's blind dad was A. K. HANGAL. His histrionics during that scene are unforgettable. His cries of Ahmaaaad!!! Ahmaaaad!!! go unanswered because his dumbass son is dead.

The day A. K. Hangal was born, his hair was white and he had a bald spot and a small combover that he lost in the first few weeks. He lost control of his motor functions within the first year, and his body started shaking like an 80 year-old's body should. His first words, spoken in a shaking, quavering voice, were recorded to be: "Dekho beta...", and when he cried, his cries sounded suspiciously like "Ahmaaaaaddddd.... Ahmaaaaadddddd..."

There is only one movie I have ever seen that had A. K. Hangal as a villain. He was wearing a checked safari suit in that one, and had a moustache. Even there, he failed to look middle-aged no matter how hard he tried to convince us.


How hard is it for you, I wonder, when your FIRST famous movie is the one in which you play an old father whose son just died in the States? Anupam Kher was thrown into the mix with Saraansh, and ever since that first movie, I have trouble thinking of him as someone who is not over sixty-five. Alok Nath's appearance on Buniyaad did the same for him, although his hilarious scene from Mafia Raaj is the one that we should ALL remember him by. So much so that I don't buy Alok Nath's character if he's not wearing a shawl and doesn't have a walking stick. People like him should be begging God in their mumbly voices for their son to be returned from the dead, and should NEVER be participating in a friendly game of Antakshari with their in-laws to be (on second thoughts, scratch that. THERE WAS NO SUCH MOVIE, EVER. Repeat with me! THERE WAS NO SUCH MOVIE, EVER.).

While we were growing up, there was another similar character who used to piss me off whenever he inflamed his nostrils - Nasir Hussain. My brothers used to call him my "friend", because I would start cussing as soon as he showed up playing the heroine's dad with the shawl and walking stick and thick moustache. A typical Nasir Hussain role consists of three scenes, and his health worsens drastically from one to another, DESPITE the shawl he's wearing:
Scene 1: Reading newspaper with shawl, walking stick and thick moustache when a happy daughter runs into the room and informs him that she has passed her final exam with flying colours. A bout of very healthy inflamed-nostrils laughter ensues.

Scene 2: At the daughter's wedding, he's unable to come up with her dowry, and ends up falling at the groom's feet with his pagdi ready to be placed at said feet.

Scene 3: He dies of a violent heart attack or a violent stroke (cue to jarring music and high frequency shrieking by wife and/or daughter), either because of the dowry thing, or when he finds out that his daughter's pregnant out of wedlock.

Remember the TV show, Khandaan? Shriram Lagoo was the head of the khandaan, wasn't he? There's another dude who was born old with a quavering voice, like A. K. Hangal. A slightly less effeminate quavering voice. His shawls and walking sticks are never seen without his glasses with thick, black rims. He's the working class hero's dad, as opposed to Nasir Hussain, who is the rich heroine's dad. Shriram Lagoo is MOST famous, of course, for an advertisement he was in, during his Khandaan days: Dabur Chyawanprash. Who here doesn't remember the phrase, "Dadaji, Badminton!?"..... "Mmm-hmm, pehle Dabur Chyawanprash!" comes the reply.

Whenever I'm feeling sad because some bitch three years younger, or some guy I don't know who is a year junior, calls me UNCLE, I think of the people mentioned on this page, and I don't feel so bad. At least I was young for a couple of years before I became UNCLE. Plus, I didn't turn into KING UNCLE or RAJU CHACHA. If you have seen these two movies, you know those are the worst things anyone can call you.

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