Thumka Thursday: Stealing Fire From Your Neighbor

Welcome to Thumka Thursdays, a new weekly feature on Pop Kulcha that will, you guessed it, be all about sexy item numbers. We’ll dissect the talent, music, choreo, fashion and everything that makes the song fabulous or abhorrent.

Here we go. For week one we’ve chosen a song that elicits a hip swing from even the most cantankerous straight unclejis.”Beedi” from Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara is a serious storm of a song. A dance floor fills with people like the oncoming of high tide at the first inkling of that drunken gargling. Why is this song so popular? I think it’s the rustic, scandalous lyrics and personified intoxication from a beedi that makes everyone want to get up and dance to the complex off-beat.

The other motivating factor is the super easy choreography that Bipasha Basu does — which people can actually imitate without looking foolish. Growing up, there was an uncle who always loved to dance, but always looked like he was having a seizure on the dance floor (bechara — you could tell auntie wasn’t putting out). If he can do the patang-reeling step that Bipasha Basu has used to pretend she’s a dancer, anyone can do it.

There’s not actually a lot of choreographed steps in this song. If you know bollywood choreographers, you know that Ganesh Acharya’s (the male version of Toontoon) skills and dance capabilities are…limited. Watching the video back, it’s the raw interaction between characters and acting out of the song’s lyrics without dance that makes “Beedi” so much fun. Essentially a bunch of dudes are getting drunk and wild-ing out. Vivek Oberoi and Saif dancing with unorganized abandon is incredibly hot. You know that they could throw you down on the bistar and have their way with you. (Well, Saif could at least. Vivek may be a little more of a bottom)

I love Bipasha for being a strong woman who really owns her body and presence. But the girl just can’t dance. Her movements always looks stiff and awkward — regardless of how hot she is. She’s never really in control of her movement. The only part of her body that looks natural when she dances are her shoulders. This girl can shimmy for days and I may even motorboat the twins if I was on my 4th Ciroc and Soda.

What always amuses me about this track is hearing it at a straight wedding. Aren’t the gays supposed to be the ones in “open relationships?” (kidding! don’t stop reading just one post in for our obvious disregard for political correctness) Hearing the lyrics about how a dude is going to light the veritable fire from the neighbor’s stove after a couple has just walked around a real fire or yelled “kabul hai!” always makes me giggle. Oh silly, inappropriate, straight Jersey DJs. Learn Hindi — it will save you from the conservative aunties’ thappard.

Regardless of if you are on the dance floor at Desilicious, getting it on with your flavor of the moment in the bedroom or just going for a run thinking about your next flavor of the moment, make sure that “Beedi” is on your ‘best of bollywood’ playlist. It will serve you well…unless of course, you are trying to quit smoking. In that case, stick to a nice bhajan or ghazal.