conjectures, claims and subtexts

{Jaani Dushman: volume II}

Despite being a badly made commercial mainstream Bollywood film sagging under the weight of clichés incorporated without a whiff of postmodernism, Jaani Dushman promises several interesting aspects worthy of study, which, sadly, merit little to no attention:

* The transcendental polysexuality manifested by the doomed lead pair of Kapil and Vasundhara/Divya, who can invade/occupy or morph into any known material form (e.g. fellow human beings; parrots; dude on a motorcycle; hawk) while their preferred physical forms are snakes

* The struggle for acceptance and domination by Kapil, the most inept ichhadhaari naag ever seen in the history of serpentine shapeshifters

* The fickle and vacillating aspects of friendship, camaraderie, love, betrayal and bad college education

* The ambiguity of identity and the multiplicity of human roles: For example, the unnamed father figure [he actually dresses up like a priest complete with cassock, goatee and cross and surrounds himself with pictures of different religious figures] who is seen as an authoritative entity, a professor of parapsychology, a medium, a wrestling bout judge, a master of the occult who has trouble making good decisions about when to put his abilities to appropriate use