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The Whole Oye
Oye Thing
Alright, this might be a stupid question, but remember the movie Tridev? It was
1989:
Paap se dharti fati....fati...fati....
Adharm se aasmaan...maan...maan...
Atyachaar se kaanpi
insaaniyat...saaniyat,
Raaj kar rahe haivaan...vaan...vaan
Jinki hogi taaqat apoorv
Jinka hoga nishaana abhed...bhed...
Jo karenge inka sarvanaash...vanaash,
Woh kehlaayenge...
Tridev! Tridev! Tridev!
Hahaha, notice "taaqat apoorv"
and "nishaana abhed" - oh, how
desperate dialogue writers get, they have to mix Urdu and shudh Hindi
to come up with lines! Yes, friends and neighbours, apparently that's
the kind of language they speak on the streets of Bombay. Apparently
Amir Khusro, Mirza Ghalib, Sant Tulsidaas and Mahakavi Kalidaas all
spake a mixture of bolchaal
Hindi and Bambhaiya and Allahabadi and Hyderabadi. Incidentally, the
music during this Godly echoing monologue was ripped off from Pet Shop
Boys' One More
Chance.
Some clever 13-year-old in Bombay came up with this variation (as this
was almost the same time as Uttar Ramaayan):
Paap se dharti fati....fati...fati....
Seeta andar chali gayee...gayee...gayee...
Luv aur Kush roye...
Raam bola OYE OYE!
...which brings us to the whole Oye
Oye thing. Little did Gloria Estefan and The Miami Sound Machine
know that their song Rhythm Is Gonna
Get Ya would become so popular in India when it was ripped off
for Tridev.
Wow! They couldn't get enough of this song, so they had to make as many
versions of it as possible for the same movie - luckily for them, the
film was stretched into a 3 hour extravaganza, so they had enough
space to shove in three different versions - Tirchi Topiwali, Tirchi Topiwali (Sad Version) and Gajar Ne Kiya Hai Ishaara (which of
course is the most famous version). Tirchi...
featured the tribal refrain from Rhythm...and
the signature drumbeat (Dhub dhub, drrrr...ubdhubdhub!) while the
actual Oye Oye was reserved
for Gajar...
There are two kinds of ripoff songs: the ones that shouldn't have been
ripped off (e.g., What Is Love
from Gentleman copied from Haddaway's What
Is Love?) and the ones that kick ass (e.g., Koi Yahaan Nache Nache, the Bhappi
Lahiri version of Video Killed The
Radio Star made for Disco Dancer )
The Oye Oye trilogy kicks ass.
Tridev had
a kickass soundtrack. It wasn't just the three versions of Rhythm..., there was Gali Gali Mein Phirta Hai, which
learnt a lot from the Pet Shop Boys theme they had going on throughout
the movie and there was Main Teri
Mohabbat Mein... one of my favourite love songs from the time.
Of course it was, it features Madhuri! But the soundtrack wasn't all -
they had something for everyone! A supervillain (Amrish Puri's Mogamboesque Bhujang), THREE
superheroes (in case you didn't figure that out from the movie title!)
- Naseeruddin Shah (Jaisingh, the country bumpkin), Sunny Deol (Karan
Saxena) and Jackie Shroff (Ravi Mathur), THREE damsels in distress
(which means none of the heroes have to die to solve any complicated
love triangles) - Madhuri Dixit (playing Divya Mathur, Ravi's sister),
Sangeeta Bijlani (Natasha) and Sonam. The pairing up: Shah+Sonam,
Sunny+Maddy and Jackie+Sangeeta. The usual
middle-and-end-of-the-eighties cast fillers include Anupam Kher
(Commissioner Mathur, the mandatory honest cop), Raza Muraad, Tej
Sapru, Dalip Tahil, Shekhar Suman, Rajesh Vivek, Sharad Saxena,
Vijayendra Ghatge, Anjana Mumtaz and Ram Mohan. They have their typical
cliched roles in the film. For example, Raza Murad is the corrupt
minister (Mantriji), Sharat Saxena is inspector Suraj Singh, Anjana
Mumtaz is the cabaret dancer (in your dreams! of course she was Ravi
and Divya's mom!)
Cool characters in the film: Amrish Puri of course, even though this is
his standard late 80s supervillain role, he was probably phoning it in
all the time, still a really cool role, especially when he starts to
sing Oye Oye with the chicks
at the end of the film. Rajesh Vivek - he played Jogi Thakur, the bad
dacoit guy in
Joshilaay, and he acts dumb in Tridev - no,
literally. He was cool, almost had dreadlocks, looked like.
The story: Oh well, let's not get lost in (lack of) details. The three
heroes hate Bhujang for different reasons, therefore each reason
warrants a flashback. In fact maybe Sangeeta Bijlani had a flashback
too, she was dancing at the bad guys' place because she was a cop or
some kind of an informer.
Anyway, the reason I was writing this all down... coming back to the
whole Oye Oye thing. The
minute the soundtrack was released, that song was on top of the charts.
I was living in Bombay at the time, and everywhere in my neighbourhood
there was only one song being played on everyone's orchestra
loudspeakers. Well, TWO versions of the same song, but every kid I knew
was yelling Oye Oye anytime
they could. That's when this strange thing happened.
For some reason, there was a ban on Oye
Oye?! The cops forbid anyone from playing that song - I don't
know how long this went on, because I do remember it came back
eventually. I remember hearing stories about kids yelling out Oye Oye and then getting into
trouble with the cops... WHAT? Seriously? Maybe they were just rumours.
Then there was the Chandraas Incident. Just before the bell for recess,
Chandraas came into class, then as the bell for the first period after
recess rang, he yelled out happily, "Oye
Oye!" The next thing you know, our head mistress was in our
class, asking real quietly, "Who was it who was singing... that song...
A-O A-O just now?" And Chandraas stood up sheepishly, and she asked him
to leave the classroom. A-O A-O??? Seriously? Was it that uncool for
you teachers to even say the name of the song out loud?! THAT was how
it was for a while. This song and the movie had the neighbourhood, the
city and maybe even the country (alright, maybe only North India) by
the balls, and everyone LIKED it. Well, everyone young liked it, that
is.
Tridev
kicks ass. If I had the patience and the DVD, I would watch it again!
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