Mysteries Shaque (2004)

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Cast and crew

Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

All the students (left) gang up against the highminded Janki Shah (right) in Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Janki Shah accepts the challenge and makes a clean breast of it in Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Having made her point, two in fact, Pooja (Janki Shah) continues to argue angrily with fellow students in Mysteries Shaque (2004), telling them that what she has done is no big deal in Canada. YouTube

Aarti Puri in Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Simran (Aarti Puri: face) tries to kill Pooja (Janki Shah: back) in the pool in Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Pooja (Janki Shah: bikini) tries to flee; Simran (Aarti Puri: head) follows. Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Pooja (Janki Shah: bikini) runs for safety; Simran (Aarti Puri: head) tries to get out of the pool. Mysteries Shaque (2004) YouTube

Director: Vinod Chhabra

Stars:

Dhananjay Chauhan

Janaki Shah as Pooja

Aarti Puri as simran, the vamp

Prem Chopra

Highmindedness

The students have a heavy conversation about who is greater in history, religion and the epics: women or men. Not bad for a B- or C- movie.

All the students are on one side, and Pooja (Janki Shah) all alone on the other. She angrily rebuts every one of their points, e.g. about who is greater, Shah Jehan or Mumtaz.

They get to Draupadi and her Mahabharat (the bimbos mention attempts to strip her).

Pooja, clad in short-shorts and a knotted shirt, replies, ‘We must thank Draupadi. Had her Mahabharat (i.e. the attempt to strip her) not happened, how would the world have received the message of the Geeta?’

‘Why did Maryada Purshottam Bhagwan Ram have to kill Raavan?’ the guys ask.

Pooja, with her pseudo-Canadian accent takes them on. ‘You should be ashamed of your ignorance of Indian culture, though you live in India. We who live away [in Canada, in her case] are better than you. we know more about our culture than you. Ram became Bhagwan Shri Ram only after he killed Ravan because of Sita’

The guys, ‘You mean to say that women are greater than even God?’

Pooja, ‘Yes, because God was born from the womb of a woman.’

Guy, ‘That means a woman can do anything.’

Pooja, ‘Absolutely.’

Guy, “Then you do what I just did [take off your shirt].’ (Laughter from all the other students.)

Pooja self-righteously says ‘Then take this’ and obliges [on some YouTube videos the topless scene has been deleted] and shows them her breasts. She sermonises to them. ‘Yes, a woman can do even this. And where I have been brought up [Canada] this is no big deal.’

For Indian cinema is was. Though bare nipples had been seen before (a glimpse in Ram Teri Ganga Mail, a somewhat distant shot in Kasba, a hint in Siddheshwari and clearer in The Cloud Door) this was the first commercial film with naked breasts.