By Malay Desai
By: Soho Square
A festive film by the Indian Super League, a new club-based football competition, features top international footballers from its franchises doing football drills with fireworks. Shot at a palatial venue at night, it ends with one of the footballers saying ‘Yeh Diwali football wali’ before the sponsor logos show.
Do we know?
Much like a certain Mr Khan, I have slipped into the norm of presenting cheerful work every Diwali and as my job is many times easier, here’s ahappy columnfor the festive season I doled out at 1/250th the cost of the film Happy New Year.
If for the past two times we saw ads that put up India’s diverse, colourful spirit (Idea’s ‘Muslims celebrating Diwali’ in 2012 and Gauri Shinde’s terrific film for Tanishq in 2013) with desi faces, now’s the time to celebrate our pride in having made top gorasdance to our tunes.
The Indian Super League, an indigenous competition by Reliance-IMG, has city-based franchises on the IPL model and has seen the ‘buying’ of many top names of world football. While the first film went down the clichéd territory of showing Indians across the country (monks, children, officers.. *yawn) playing the sport, the second oneredeemed the campaign by putting up all the celeb owners of teams in a fun, masala way. Now’s the turn of the league’s biggest heroes by game standards –del Piero, Luis Garcia, Pires, Ljungberg, Silvestre, Trezeguet, Capdevila and David James.
It’s a daring move to mix the game with fire-crackers, especially at a production level. But the film company has done exceptionally well with the use of light (and special effects) to bring out the grandeur of the venue – a Rajasthani-ishpalace)and the personalities. The stars’ drills around burning patakhasare exciting, pacy and set the celebratory tone for further films in the campaign. Most of all, they make these international stars blend in among us, especially by making one of them mouth the tagline in his accent. Weird as we as a people are, a foreigner talking in Hindi gives us the kicks. And on the whole, the film ends up giving the sports fan the warmth one gets when Times Square billboards wish everyone for the season.
India has decades to go before it arrives on the international football scene but this league and its communications such as these are good baby steps. One question for the ISL guys though – why does your theme song sound eerily similar to ‘Tai Tai Phish’ from the film Chillar Party?
Happy Diwali, India waale!
(To watch this film,feed this link in your browser - goo.gl/NcWDEU
