A Hamisha Daryani Ahuja Film/Forever Entertainment present Ini Dima Okoji (Didi), Ruslan Mumtaz (Raj), Richard Mofi Damijo (Ernest), Joke Silva (Shola), Osas Ighodara (Preemo), Anee Icha (Angie), Sujata Sehgal (Meera), Hamisha Daryani (Lela) Koye Kekere (Emma), Imoh Eboh (Jane), Screenplay Hamisha Daryani Ahuja/Temetope Bolade; Director, Hamisha Daryani; Producer, Hamisha Daryani; Director, Sunil Tiware; Executive Producers, Executive Producers, Sailesh Ahuja/ Hamisha Daryani Ahuja © 2020
Nollywood meets Bollywood right here in Namaste Wahala. The leading characters struggle to outperform each other. The wahala is about the cultural clashes between Indian and Nigerian families. The entire movie is splattered almost everywhere with the confrontations of the two cultures. For instance, this is the only romance flick we never catch the lovers kissing until only a slap on her lips during the engagement. She even hurries and wipes the lipstick on his lips before it dries off as if she was stealing. Unspeakable wahala! Ruslan has a wife who may watch this movie. Not good.
Thirty years ago, a film called Mississippi Masala (1991) featured Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, an Indian and an African American love story. Mina is an Indian daughter of a local motel owner. A film directed by Mira Nair. Her family was driven out from Uganda by Idi Amin, and they relocated to Mississippi. She falls for African American carpet-cleaner Demetrius. Protestations of both Asians and African Americans’ racial differences almost ruined the lovers’ lives; eventually, they eloped. Mira Nair, a female Indian, directed that movie. Namaste Wahala is another Indian female director, Hamisha Darryani’s project.
Raj (Ruslan Mumtaz) runs on Victoria Beach to take off some stress, working the whole day as an Investment Banker. He runs smack into a young Nigerian Lawyer, Didi (Ini Dima Okoji), once herself an investment banker in real life. They both don’t know what this means, rather than love at first sight. Raj and Didi know this is love at first sight. Raj goes home, and he’s all worked up about this African woman on the beach. He doesn’t have any idea where she lives.
Didi, too, has the same feeling as Raj. Her chest bumps at the thought of hitting Raj. She feels love. And when they meet again at Lela’s (Hamish Daryani) NGO party, it’s all good for the two of them. “You’re the guy from the beach,” Didi to Raj. “Yes, I am the guy from the beach. It’s nice seeing you again. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.” “Sorry?” Didi asks, puzzled by Raj’s statement. “Oh nothing, something I told my friend this morning. When I told him I’m gonna marry you.”
Didi invites Raj to meet her parents without proper arrangements, traditionally you could say. He should have presented kola-nuts, and palm wine, and a goat, dressed in African costume, so he can blend in. Raj blows it up and not being accepted by both the mother and the father of Didi. He goes home dejected. Didi couldn’t take this, so she goes over to Raj; it is a sleep-over at Raj’s apartment.
Raj gets a call from his mother and informs him she was at the airport in Lagos. Meera (Sujatha Sehgal), Raj’s mother, is the type of mother we locally call ‘Mamie pepper.’ Upon her arrival, the first thing she complained of is Raj’s thinness. “You have become so thin your bones are sticking out. Now you should get married.” You’ll notice Raj is mama’s boy, the way she hugs him and feeds him. When she arrives at her son’s apartment, Didi is there. Didi bowled over, paying respect to Raj’s mother.
It is comical the way Didi greets Raj’s mother. She was awe-struck. Didi funnily falls over Raj’s mother, the same confused way Raj welcomes Didi’s parents. “Who is she?” she asks. “She’s the girl I want to marry.” “Are you serious? She can’t look after you the way I will.” Meera is in total shock. Didi is vindicated because her parents did the same thing to Raj, but she has to haul her sleep-over luggage from his house.
The two parents of Didi and Raj are in shock at the choice of their children. Didi’s father, Ernest, wants Didi to marry Somto, a worker in his law firm that could help his daughter carry on his legacy. She doesn’t want that. Meera (Sujata Sehgal) doesn’t want her only son marrying outside the Indian community. “What kind of food will she feed my son?” she puzzles. Meera is Asiatic. She’s knee-deep in exotic Hindu culture; they burn their dead bodies, you know. The Igbo wants theirs in the ground, next to their ancestors, four generations removed. Now you tell me there’s no wahala in this relationship.
I’m not surprised at Richard Mofi Damijo’s stance in this story. I have seen him in the Bridge. He conspired to bury alive a Yoruba Prince, who, he thinks, his parents murdered his Igbo medical doctor, daughter in the Yoruba forest. He could be stringently traditional in matters of marriage. For an Indian to ask her daughter’s hand in marriage is nothing heard of. “Is this the best you can do, Chidinma? Many good men are Nigerians in this country. He’s the one I am gonna hand over my legacy to, for goodness’ sake!” Raj walks out before Didi could say, “I am sorry.”
There’s an interesting subplot to this drama: Didi is working in her father’s law firm but runs a regular legal gig for Lela’s NGO. A woman gets abused by a political big wheel’s son, whose lawyer is Ernest, Didi’s father. There’s a conflict of interest here, but Didi won’t yield to her father’s request for her to lose and withdraw the case. When her father finally accepted her client’s demand and awarded so many million Nairas, he respected Didi’s independence of mind in decision-making. Ernest was bought over to take her daughter’s choice in marriage to an Indian.
Emma is an excellent sidekick in the drama: He cracks everybody up with his wide open-teeth—a kinda happy-go-lucky guy. He, in fact, gives body to the characters. In the scene, Didi and Raj are trying to make up, and Emma keeps barging into the room, and both of them, out of frustration, yell out at him, “Get Out!” Hilarious! Meera could be funny as well. Meera couldn’t let Raj and Didi sleep together, and she shares a bed with Didi. At night, in her sleep, Didi can’t sleep as she keeps kicking and farting, annoying Didi. In the morning, both Meera and Didi are fighting over serving breakfast to Raj.
When Shola comes to Raj’s house to get her daughter, Didi, she clashes with Meera, Raj’s mother. Shola answers her daughter’s question: “Angie gives me this address. The question is not what I’m doing here. But what are you doing here? You left your home to come and stay here with him?” There are hot exchanges between Meera and Shola. Each trying to look down on each other culturally. Meera, “I come from a respectable family in India.” “And I come from a very respectable family here in Nigeria.” The fight goes on between the two mothers. Don’t just take my word for it. You ought to watch this movie and this scene. I laughed out loud. Serious!
Didi goes into the room to pack up her things, and Raj meets her there: it is not easy. Lovers quarrel. Each blaming the other for some stupid something that went wrong. It is not their fault at all. They are in love; that’s all they know and care. The parents can go to hell. At one point, Didi’s friend in passing talked about them eloping, like in Mississippi Masala, when Denzel eloped with that cute Indian girl, Sarita. Not here, though. She and her mother leave, but Didi leaves her heart and Raj behind.
There’s a stalemate between the lovers. The one walks on the beach like seeing and talking to ghosts. And the other wetting her pillow with tears of love. Bollywood makes films so real. Didi’s bedroom scene and Raj’s beach scene are complete trademarks of Bollywood. At least in the actions. Didi pointedly confronts her mother: “You’re a Yoruba woman that married to Igbo man.” “Chidinma, I am trying to protect you. The fights I had with my parents? (Beat) And he’s Indian.”
Lela uses her NGO talent to bring Meera to understand her son’s relationship and the Nigerian woman. Meera’s relationship with her only son, and like all women, is difficult to accept. But she tells of the oneness of all human beings on this earth; and that Didi is a professional as her son, and they can raise the right family. “Hum sabek hai,” says Lela in the end. Meaning, “we’re all one.” After which, Raj and his mother, Meera, each carry a bouquet of flowers to Didi’s parents’ home. And they all have a grand ol’ dinner together: Didi, her father Ernest, and mother, Shola, then Raj and his mother, Meera. “I am very sorry for what I said the other day. Being mothers.” “I’m sorry, too,” returns Shola. And then there’s an engagement party for Didi and Raj. The two cultures meet: Indian and African. No, not a cultural clash, but a lovely engagement party.
The aura of this movie is Bollywood proper. The music and song at the engagement are not the sound of the usual African drum-beat. Why not? Though Ernest and Shola, and even Didi dance to the Indian music, she couldn’t gyrate her hips like the average Indian does. Or yet Meera and Lela. Didi shows stiffness dancing to the choreographed Indian dance steps: Kathak and Odissi? Everybody got a gut full with Jollof Biryani, Nigerian Kachumber Salad, Gbegiri Dal Makhni, and Loo Puff-Puff. All was plenty. The film yet ends on a discordant note:
Meera, “Now that we’re done with the engagement, let’s talk about our dhahej.”
Ernest, “Our dha-huh? What?”
“Well, it’s a …It’s a price you pay to us for having our son.”
“Are you kidding me? I have to pay you for your son marrying my daughter? I was just about to ask you when you guys are going to pay us our bride price?”
Meera, in shock, “What?”
“Yes. That’s what you have to pay us for your son taking our daughter.”
Watch the consternation on Meera’s face.
This Namaste Wahala na War-o!
This is a Nollywood movie shot with Asian regalia and the flare and in the image of Bollywood. Excellent evening entertainment, this Wahala.