Bollywood Ear Candy: Sheila Ki Jawani
by Laura Witkowski
Do you like fire? Chandeliers? Waking up from a nap to a dozen men in your bed wearing MC hammer pants thrusting their pelvises at your face? Well then, the video for ‘Shelia Ki Jawani’ is easily your new favorite. This catchy, Beyonce-style, should-be-club-hit is easily one of my top songs of 2010.
‘Shelia Ki Jawani’ comes from the movie Tees Maar Khan starring Katrina Kaaif (the lady in this video) and Ashkay Kumar (the guy in the gold trench coat who bursts through the door and kicks that dude in the butt at 1min 10sec). Tees Maar Khan is basically about a macho-yet-flamboyantly-dressed con man (Kumar) who tricks a whole village into thinking he’s a famous movie director in order to get them to help him rob a train filled with precious antiques. But the scene in which this song takes place has very little to do with the plot of the movie, so don’t even worry about the poor suckers from that village! Instead you should probably pay attention to Sheila. She’s kind of demanding you do so. Sheila’s message is direct and has four main points: Her name is Sheila, she’s too sexy for you, nobody has a body like her and you are never gonna get her body. So dance all you want fellas, the odds are stacked against you!
Some of the Hindi lyrics roughly translate into, “I feel the urge to hug myself/Why would I need anybody else?/I’ll just admire myself.” Oh, you’ll just “admire yourself”, will you, Sheila? Yowza. This sure comes across as a very polite way to say something very dirty! But considering it is rare to even see kissing in Bollywood movies, it is unlikely ‘Sheila Ki Jawani’ was really meant to be a “sisters doin’ it for themselves” pro-female masturbation anthem. It is likely you’ll have a hard time getting it out of your head. Thankfully, I can also attest that repeated listens will not make you go blind.
