SHANKAR/ESHAN/LOY
MY NAME IS KHAN Soundtrack (SIN UK)

Shahrukh Khan fell off the radar last year. He didn't even make the top five film idols in India where he has been number one for a decade. He was in the SF Bay Area making a film and with the typical desperation you see in fading stars he appeared on TV advertising a "meet-&-greet" at a hotel in San Jose where, for $150, you could have your photo taken with him or get an autograph. 2009 was a really bad year for Bollywood, not just in the abysmal quality of the films released, but there was a lengthy strike as producers and distributors came to an impasse over what percentage each should get. Bollywood also continues to ape Hollywood so "Benjamin Button" was remade with Amitabh playing a dwarf child-man. And Shahrukh made this film where he plays a man with Aspergers Syndrome who finds himself in a pickle after 9/11. The attack on the World Trade Center was not the first. A decade earlier angry Muslims had blown up a truck of explosives in the basement parking garage, starting a fire. I watched in horror on TV because only a week earlier I had been stuck in that hotel for a snowy weekend & I imagined the panic of the people trying to get out of the smoky hotel down staircases. After the Twin Towers collapsed Dubya called together his cabinet and said, Let's get Saddam! I suspect his mother had said something like, Are you gonna let that sunonabeach diss your father and get away with it? No one, it seems, asked Why would someone do this to us? Osama in his tapes has repeatedly said, We will attack the US until Palestine is safe and free. Now is that such an unreasonable demand? Bushco however are Bible literalists. And there is some rubbish in the Bible about the Jews, Israel & the End Time that they actually believe in. Rumsfeld even put Bible quotations on his interoffice memos. These guys are loonies, but the problem is they have allowed the Israeli lobby to dictate American foreign policy. Ultimately Israel will lose. It's just a matter of time... A Pakistani with a smart bomb in a suitcase in Tel Aviv, or a lumbering scud ridden by Akmad Dinnerjazz. But the US is not helping matters by propping up the failed state of Israel. Let's start by cutting off military aid to them & if that doesn't bring them to their senses, let's give the military aid to Palestine instead. Level the playing field as it were. So given the ongoing state of the Middle East, Osama seems to be exercising the only option he has. There's no question that the USA needs better understanding of the Muslim world. We needs to reach out to Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia in a meaningful way. And before I get off my rant I would like to point out that the Irish Republican Army was reborn in the 1960s during an economic slump in Northern Ireland to murder Brits. As soon as factories were built and employment numbers rose, a truce was signed. Unless America bankrupts itself buying off the Taliban, we will have to put 30 million Yemenis on the welfare rolls too.

This film is about a man named Khan who feels the anti-Muslim backlash after 9/11 and sets off to Washington to have a word with the President. Because he has Aspergers, Shahrukh can play him like an Idiot/Savant (à la Tom Hanks), and there are guaranteed to be wet hankies throughout. If there was an Oscar for Best Male Weeper, Shah Rukh would win hands down. The soundtrack is out now & it is orchestral and lush; the writers have also gone to the Muslim faith and turned out some tunes that would credit Nusrat himself. Well, that may be overstating it, they use the traditional instruments, harmonium and tabla, & the vocalist manages a few warbling scales that certainly evoke Sufi praise singing ("Allah ki Raham"). Shankar/Eshan/Loy have reused a couple of their old hits to pad it out: there's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai from Shah Rukh's 1998 hit film of that name, and "Suraj Hua Madham" from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, not to mention Kal Ho Naa Ho from the enjoyable film of that name. No doubt in the movie these are references to scenes in the older films in which Shah Rukh also starred -- in one case with the same leading lady. This is a clever ploy because it turns into a "Greatest Hits" sampler and ends upbeat. After bombing out on Kambakh Ishq, I am not rushing out to see this, but instead waiting for the next big historical costume drama from India. However, the soundtrack is very enjoyable. Call it "Bollywood Easy Listening" if you must, but it beats what passes for popular music in the US right now.