my big fat bollywood wedding

Two of the biggest stars in Bollywood right now were wed two weekends ago. Abhishek Bachchan, son on film ultra-megastar Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, the former 1994 Miss World finally tied the knot after being engaged since January. The festivities lasted three days and were celebrated with much fanfare in India. Below is my letter to Mr. Yash Chopra, one of the most highly acclaimed directors/producers in Bollywood, sharing an idea for his next potential blockbuster.

Dear Mr. Yash Chopra,

I am a big fan of your movies, I especially liked your direction in Waqt and production work for Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Mohabbatein. Dhoom 2, however, was absolutely terrible. You should have had nothing to do with that movie. But Im sure you’ve been getting praise and criticisms for your work your entire life, so I’m not going to bore you with that. I wanted to actually share with you an idea I had for a movie. I thought of it in light of the big wedding between Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. You were probably there. Im pretty sure my invitation got lost in the mail, otherwise I would have seen you there. I heard it was fun!

We should make a movie that highlights some major social issues of South-Asian culture/society. I mean, why leave it to Mira Nair to hog all the credit for making socially conscious films? As a basic premise, we could make a pseudo-biography loosely based on Abhishek Bachchan’s life. It would be about him growing up in the shadow of his father, Amitabh who is probably one of the most recognized movie stars in the world. We could spin it so that he was pressured to follow in the footsteps of his father rather than pursue his true passions in business. As a South-Asian parent, I’m sure you know all about parental pressure influence. Both of your sons are in the movie industry, the younger one, well, lets just say I don’t really understand how he got there. But thats just between you and me and 2 billion other people who share my opinion.

Anyways, we cut to his wedding with Aishwarya Rai. This will take up about 3.5 out of the 4 hours. Most of the movie will revolve around that because there is a lot to work with here. As you know, Abhishek’s and Aishwarya’s astrological signs did not match up. She is a manglik, so in order to ward of the evil spirits that could potentially swamp their marriage, she had to marry a tree. Two things can be addressed here. One, women are still being forced to marry who they don’t want. It is degrading for her to even ceremonially marry a tree. Two, the tree feels used. What if the tree falls in love with her? If I was a tree, I would. So lets make it that the tree DOES fall in love with her. But this could be a metaphor for man’s total disregard for nature. Nature does so much for us, but we just use and abuse her for what we need, and then toss it and totally show no respect for it.

To appease Bollywood fans everywhere we must stick to the formula: we now have a love triangle between Abhishek, Aishwarya, and the tree. We could technically have a love square, with the girl who tried to commit suicide outside of the marriage procession. And to make it even more appealing to Bollywood fans, we will need a fight scene. DISHOOM! in which case we will employ Mike Tyson. You’ve heard he’s entering Bollywood right? It might be cool for us to work with him, don’t believe the bad press. This brings me to the last bit of this letter: casting.

MY BIG FAT BOLLYWOOD WEDDING
starring:

Amitabh Bachchan played by himself
Jaya Bachchan played by herself
Aishwarya Rai played by herself
Abhishek Bachchan played by Naveed Ahmad (thats me)
Tree played by Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
and
Mike Tyson played by himself

(Please find attached my acting resume along with my headshot photograph. You will be quite impressed to see that I was amazing as a star-belly sneetch in our second grade elementary school adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ classic: The Sneetches. I also performed a larger-than-life interpretation of a dead teenager in a skit for a youth conference when I was in college.)

I have a lot more ideas; I just wanted to give you a sample of what is possible. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and just send me a letter when you get a chance and we can talk more about crafting a plot and choreographing some dance sequences to A.R. Rahman’s music.

Sincerely,

Naveed Ahmad