Drona: A stoner film with plenty of substance

Far, far away in a European town near Saawariya-pur where even firang folk speak Hindi, a little boy often ridiculed by his step mom and Yo-bro, begins to find solace in the blue stuff that grew around the area.

One day, the kind foster Dad realising that the kid was going bonkers, gives him a towel to keep the blue stuff by telling him: You are not like us. You are special.

Little does the poor lil boy know that ‘special’ was the politically correct usage for being mentally ill. So he continues to find more of the blue stuff every time he’s depressed and soon, the effects began to show.
At first, the hallucinations are small and ordinary… It just makes him feel tickled by a petal. But then as he grows up, things begin to get a little crazy gradually. He can feel the petal talk to him. The petal also plays hide and seek with him and even wipes his ass eyes every time shit happens.

It makes him sweep the pavement (after goons break the display panes of his brother’s store) and soon, he hallucinates that the blue stuff gifts him a heavy-duty gold bracelet. He gets visions of a Gothic-styled Kay Kay Menon talking Urdu-laced Hindi to a gooey clone as the two face off for a facial contortion competition along with a few visual effects he had seen on DVD in recent fantasy films… and the hallucinations soon get a little more wilder when he begins to fantasise about Priyanka Chopra in a turban, driving a yellow Alfa Romeo and kicking ass flaunting cleavage.

After the kind father kicks the bucket, ironically, it’s just the mother who really understands him for who he is. “Druggie kahin ka,” she refers to him affectionately for the benefit of the front-benchers. This is one of the rare few times that director Goldie Behl spells out what’s actually going on.

Otherwise, Drona is like Anurag Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ on hash… Or possibly acid, since they seem to call it the ‘Amrit’.

Whatever it is, it’s the good stuff that’s responsible for the screenplay (the same stuff that should rightfully get writing credits for Baba, specifically that thrilling kite-sequence) and substance has led to a lesser known genre going mainstream. It would’ve been unimaginable a few years ago that a mainstream star like Abhishek Bachchan would be sport enough to do a full blown stoner film.

Drona looks like something only David Lynch would’ve got away doing in recent times – nothing is what it seems like at the surface.

Abhishek seems like he’s serious but he’s not.

Kay Kay Menon at the surface may seem like a great actor but then his facial muscles go berserk all through.
Priyanka too has no direct lines of her own in the movie and hence uses the indirect way of expression, starting every sentence with “Babuji kehtey the…”

There are plenty of signifiers and unless you have passed the basic test and successfully deconstructed No Smoking, it is unlikely that you will realise that Priyanka’s attribution is all about the subconscious reminding you of your upbringing and values with which you were brought up with.

Even when you do drugs, the subconscious likes to remind you like a guardian angel manifesting itself through things you have ordinarily liked – curves and cars. But the more addicted you get, the more rebellious you become and start craving to face your fears… Like the young Bruce Wayne from Batman Begins.

Some may even begin to explore alternative sexuality and wear kohl around the eyes and want to spend your birthdays with Riz Raizada (an adequately effeminate Kay Kay Menon), clearly seduced by the charm of evil only to realise that pure evil will stop at nothing to get the pill away from you. Goldie does this with a beautiful scene around interval when Kay Kay Menon makes Abhishek give him the pill – this is also a literal scene where Goldie spells it out visually. And you thought only the Wachowski Brothers would have thought of something like that.

But if you want your freedom, you have to protect the stuff… the Amrit that everybody wants. Crazy wizards to Seven-footer-WWF champions in prosthetics to albino monks from Opus Dei… everybody wants it.

Drona is about protecting your stuff. Marijuana is a legacy left behind by our forefathers and there’s always a Chosen One who has to fight evil forces that want to confiscate it for their own consumption.

I haven’t seen Pineapple Express, but I’m pretty sure it can’t be half as funny or profound as Drona.

Go for Drona adequately stoned. There’s not a chance in hell your stupid brain would understand any of it otherwise. And if you are a No Smoking fan, be warned. You may die of overdose.