Ian Fleming's muse: Bollywood flick overpowers James Bond
19 Jul, 2008, 0609 hrs IST, ET Bureau

Some might consider humility a virtue, but I think I have a right to be possessive about Bond, James Bond, given that I created him. I turned in my grave when Cubby Broccoli cast Timothy Dalton but when I happened to see the first few scenes of Agent Vinod, a 1977 Bollywood flick, I truly wished that 007 had never been created.

While I don’t much understand Hindi, it’s not hard to follow a movie which you wrote but got no credit for. Agent Vinod has been called in to investigate the whereabouts of a dreaded gang that has kidnapped India’s renowned nuclear scientist, Dr Ajay Saxena, in an attempt to lay their hands on a device designed by him.

The device it seems is ‘more potent than an atom and hydrogen bomb’. (Robert Oppenheimer must have never dreamt that the Mumbai Project would leave behind his Manhattan Project.) Two and a half hours later, the gang is nabbed, its chief sent to meet his maker.

But as the movie unveiled, I couldn’t help, but marvel the flights of fancy which Bollywood can make Bond soar to. Mahendra Sandhu, played the role of the secret agent with gay abandon untroubled by his flared pants, protruding paunch and bad hairdo, to perfection. And Bond girls, Ursula Andress and Halle Berry move over.

Babes in Agent Vinod are intrepid, sacrificing, romantic, seductive, transitioning effortlessly from one state to another within a matter of minutes.

Like the voluptuous Zarina, a secret agent, who clambers down pipes with ease, fights villains across powerful jets of water (you get the picture) but unfortunately gets wiped out by the arch villain. Corny was and probably will never be as sublime as the poignant moment, when Agent Vinod kisses Zarina goodbye and swears to “wash her coffin with blood of the same killer who played Holi with her blood.” (Ah gems those get lost in translation.)

But for every Zarina with a heart of gold, there were several other luscious women out to ensnare our Agent. Besides their skimpy clothes, they come with a tiny scorpion tattoo on their thumbs - a means to indicate their fealty to the Scorpion gang.

But the piece-de-resistance was provided by a chap called Jagdeep, who played the part of tramp called Chandu. When chased by the goons, he jumps out of the high-rise window, and before Newtonian forces can get to him, he manages to grab on to a string of balloons. Buoyed by the balloons he flies high over the city skyscrapers (this goes on for at a quarter of an hour) and drops into a village.

As if it were not enough for the maker to provide him with a fortuitous escape, Chandu manages to even find true love in the village. Cubby, I say to hell with Bond can we have some more of these funny sidekicks?

Q, too would have been proud of the gadgetry that Agent V uses — a pistol that shoots backwards and a car that can jump over hills. It was then that struck me that there is no way that we Occidentals could ever compete with the sheer ingenuity of the Oriental.

So by the time the end credits of Agent Vinod rolled by, Yours Truly who was initially planning to sue the film’s Indian producers, was all in its awe. In fact, I am going to tell those Hollywood guys, make an Indian the next Bond.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Who wrote that article? It certainly can't be Ian Fleming himself.

I was also wondering the same thing. But it is very much clear that some foreigner had written this article. May be some director of a Bond flick.