If Humshakals's brand of humour is acceptable to the defenders of Hindu culture and desi pride, then they have absolutely no grounds to attack any of the books against which complaints have been filed

It's the Monday after a big release, which, if you're a film critic, is also known as Go Drown Yourself Day. Here's why.

Chances are the critics saw the big release a few days before its release and then proceeded to savage the film in their review. This review was read, applauded, criticised by the reading public. At this point, the inexperienced film critic will feel like their reviews are doing the nation some service. You have warned the unsuspecting public of the dangers that lie in the multiplex and if the clicks are any indication, the public has heeded you. The whole situation feels a little like 300 — the blockbuster is the Persian army, made up of the weird and the ridiculous; the film reviewers are the Spartans, frothing at the mouth and with little to their name beyond a few scraps of cloth.

Of course, there is a lot wrong with this picture. For one, I've been attending press screenings for a year and I'm yet to see those abs on any of my tribe.

More critically, as triumphant as the 300-odd film reviewers may feel on Fridays, by Monday, the blockbuster Persian army has myuhahahaha-ed its way through the weekend.

On most Monday mornings, when the weekend box office numbers come in, it usually turns out that the films the critics loved have barely earned their production budget in ticket sales while the blockbusters that got the worst reviews have made obnoxious amounts of money. And so, the film reviewer hits the bottle while the film director pops a few bottles of champagne.

Take Humshakals for example. Sajid Khan's return to comedy was reviled by practically every film reviewer last Friday. Over Saturday and Sunday, the film has made in the range of Rs 36 crore. Those are excellent numbers for an opening weekend and very good reason for any serious cinephile to whimper. If people continue watching Humshakals at this rate, the film will enter that haloed Rs 100-crore club in no time. When that happens, two more film reviewers will be one step closer to alcoholism.

For once, however, I'm not unhappy that Humshakals is doing well. This is not because I've changed my mind about Sajid Khan's new film. It is still the worst film I've seen in a long time, but if Humshakals can run in theatres and make money, it means there is nothing that offends India, Bharat and whatever else country is wedged between those two.

Beginning with canine intelligence and ending with the British parliament, Humshakals offends everything and everyone. Yet there are no stay orders, no complaints and no howling war cries from RSS-inspired defenders of Indian culture. No one has said Humshakals is destroying the fabric of our culture even though that is exactly what the film is doing.

It's difficult to pick out examples of potentially offensive material in Humshakals because the film is all offense against which there is no defense (your brain will inevitably melt while watching it). How about the warden who has a wall of worship with photos of Hitler, Mugabe, Gaddafi and other dictators on it? Or that queer men are caricaturised as sex-starved, limp-wristed idiots? Even dogs aren't spared. In their doggy avatars, Saif Ali Khan and Riteish Deshmukh hold their hands up to their face (because all dogs hold their paws up to their mouths, obviously), snarl, twitch and leap upon tables of food. Has no one in the Humshakals crew ever had a pet dog?

Now if all this isn't offensive, which it clearly isn't since the film has made as much money as it has from audiences who haven't filed complaints against Humshakals, then Dina Nath Batra and his supporters have no business protesting against books that can't hold a candle to Humshakals in terms of being rude, ill-informed and a misrepresentation of Indian culture.

If Humshakals's brand of humour is acceptable to the defenders of Hindu culture and desi pride, then they have absolutely no grounds to attack any of the books against which complaints have been filed. Arguably, there are more people exposed to the offensive ideas in Humshakals because the film has a far wider reach than any of the books that Shiksha Bachao Andolan has complained about.

What's the big deal about a book that looks at sex among Hindu gods when the blockbuster relies upon cleavages and bare legs for its appeal? Surely being turned into a sex object as the heroines are in Humshakals is more objectionable than the 'unclean' elements that Batra and other right-wingers find objectionable in books like The Hindus: An Alternative History and Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India? But the imbecilic Humshakals is running without any interruptions or protests while the works of respected writers face opposition.

It appears the new culture that we're developing privileges rigorous stupidity over everything else.