On social media, Chinese repost the ‘warning’ in droves

NEWDELHI:Social media platforms in China are abuzz over official statements, including the one issued by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) late on Thursday, demanding India withdraw its troops from Donglang (Doklam) near the Sikkim border to end the military impasse.

Many Chinese on such platforms have interpreted the salvo of ministerial and media statements as part of a “last warning” to India though none of the statements explicitly say so.

The brief PLA statement, for one, has been reproduced in leading newspapers and official media and has been reposted, commented, and liked thousands of times.

What has added to the online buzz in the last 24 hours is the coordinated effort by the foreign and defence ministries and official media outlets to widely publicise the latest government statements that rejected India’s arguments and demanded the immediate withdrawal of Indian troops from “Chinese soil”.

All major newspapers, news websites, and social media platforms have articles and comment pieces criticising, warning, and demanding that New Delhi pull back its troops for talks.

Imtiaz Ali Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma

Shah Rukh Khan’s Harinder Singh aka Harry has a palpable, barely concealed frustration about him. Frequently in and out of relationships, he’s clearly running away from something. And he’s ended up in Amsterdam, with a career as a tour guide.

All good so far. Shah Rukh lets us into the character he’s crafted. There’s depth; there are layers.

Then he runs into Sejal Jhaveri (Anushka Sharma). She is part of one of his group tours, but then she loses her engagement ring and has to stay back to find it.

Her character is a compendium of clichés — she’s a talkative Gujarati woman who has had a sheltered existence and slowly begins to discover the world, wide-eyed, with the help of her new friend, whom she trusts unquestioningly, and whom she calls ‘Hairy’. Sejal is naïve bordering on silly, and this somehow endears her to Harry, who decides he must be her protector. “Tum us type ki ladki ho hi nahi,” is one of his highest compliments.

The slow build-up gives SRK sufficient time to showcase his skills as loverboy.

There’s a back-story too but it’s essentially a remix of director Imtiaz Ali’s earlier films.

From title to climax, everything screams ‘been there, done that’. And that is not typical of Imtiaz Ali. It’s like he doesn’t know where to take the story, and so it lurches from one song to the next, the screenplay feeling like it was reverse-engineered to lead into each jig.

There’s a terrible angle involving Chandan Roy Sanyal and his gang of unfunny migrants.

Anushka tries desperately to look cutely silly, even when mouthing lines like “Main waisi ladki nahi hoon jo apni engagement tod degi” and “Lonely feel nahi karna hai”. There is no subtlety here. There are some hummable tunes. All in all, it’s 143 minutes of lethargic storytelling.