"Main Dilli se hoon, bh#$ ch*~!" roars Saif Ali Khan’s character in last year’s Bollywood movie, Go Goa Gone (or GGG). To great amusement of an audience. The film’s other three protagonists -- the party-craving, sex-crazy, twenty-something lads from Mumbai -- are also never short on swear words and profane jokes that allude generously to human genitals. For Raja Sen, the scriptwriter of GGG and also one of India’s most popular film critics from the younger crop, "the [abovementioned] gaali is very common in the streets of Delhi today. And, when Saif’s character utters it, an instant connection is established between him and his origins."

"A Delhi boy" by his own admission, the 32-year-old Sen says he knows the language and mannerisms of the city’s urban-based youth intimately enough to be able to capture it successfully in the film. Even though it opened to lukewarm response at the box office in India and elsewhere, GGG remains a little milestone in the history of Bollywood by being the first mainstream ‘zombie’ film which borrows from the tradition of the National Lampoon movies, with a dash of dark humour. The result is a fantastical spoof of the ‘horror,’ ‘slasher’ and ‘mystery’ genres.

Currently based in Mumbai, Sen recently finished work on his first film as a co-director, titled X. Again, he gets to deal with the part of the film which is "dark and sexy," he tells The News On Sunday, in an exclusive interview from his hometown in India.

Having been exposed to films from all parts of the world and of all possible genres, Sen is able to shed light on some of the most interesting trends in language as it is used in dialogue form, with special reference to the Bollywood of today.

Excerpts follow.

The News On Sunday: How do you look at the ‘trend’ in cinema, especially Bollywood, where the dialogue is increasingly becoming ‘chatty’ and slangy and may easily incorporate expletives that never featured in Hindi cinema till, say, two decades ago?

Raja Sen: I feel that Hindi cinema has always had two kinds of films: those that boasted larger-than-life lines and oft-melodramatic dialogue-baazi, and those that spoke, well, like you and I do. Cinema by the art-house masters of 30 years ago such as Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Sai Paranjpaye had wonderfully natural and relatable conversations. At the same time, the Sholays and Karmas by Ramesh Sippys and Subhash Ghais of the world were always filled with heavy but entertainingly unrealistic dialogues. These weren’t conversations. These were ‘filmi,’ so to say.

What I feel has changed between then and now is the quality of the ‘filmi’ dialogue, not of the conversation as such, which mirrors the spirit of the times anyway. I think those poets and sculptors of words who wrote the formidably ‘filmi’ lines of yore are now gone, and so -- in a quest for flavour, perhaps -- the filmmakers have all taken to a more conversational style in general.

TNS: Isn’t the use of expletives a more recent phenomenon?

RS: Yes, it is. Parinda was a cult ‘gangsta’ movie of late 1980s, and it had none of the gaalis you find in today’s gangster movies of, say, a Ram Gopal Verma or Anurag Kashyap.

Globally also, it wasn’t until Martin Scorsese came to Goodfellas [in 1990] that he began to use the F-word profusely. Godfather had none of it. When [Quentin] Tarantino surfaced during this period, he took swear words to another level of profanity.

But you can’t label it as a ‘bad’ trend. Filmmakers like Vishal Bharadwaj and Dibakar Banerjee use such language where they mean to capture the vernacular in a realistic fashion. And, they are doing it most creatively. Consider Omkara’s opening line, "Bewakoof aur ***** mein dhaage bhar ka farq hota hai!"

On the British television of today, a serial like The Thick of It has a character named Malcolm Tucker which has become iconic just because of his twisted swearing. He’s made it into a complete art form.

TNS: As a film critic, how different, in your view, would Go Goa Gone be if it was made in, say, the 1970s?

RS: Ha. That’s an interesting question since it is such a modern product in so many ways. But I’d imagine that only someone like Dev Anand could have tackled a topic so unconventional and ahead of its time. Maybe he could have played Saif’s role. Imagine Dev saheb as the zombie hunter! Wow. Agar aisi film bani hoti toh woh meri favourite film hoti. Without question.

Seriously, though, I think a GGG of that time could have been either a zombie film (made earnestly by the Ramsay Brothers) or a comedy, not both -- it took the West a long time to crack that combination for us to follow.

In terms of the language, I think there wouldn’t be any of the swearing or profanity, but it would still be colourful and young.

TNS: What about the quality of restraint and ethics and conventions? Where to stop?

RS: I think the ‘where to stop’ is indeed the filmmakers’ prerogative, depending on what they are interested in. A tawdry film might bring in single-screen audiences but no appreciation, but that might be what the filmmaker wanted. Also, I believe, when things get truly tasteless or when filmmakers start making films only for themselves -- like, say, Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking -- the audience gives it its own verdict which can be pretty damning.

TNS: How much blame would you place on the cinema audiences for not giving the ‘right’ response?

RS: Well, yahan loag gaaliyon pe hanste hain, in an immature sort of a way. Even if gaali is being used in a violent context, they seem to ‘enjoy’ it. I think our cinema suffers because of this kind of an audience.

Having said that, I firmly believe that we need to be more explicit in our films. Several barriers remain and censoring filmmakers and storytellers is not the answer.

TNS: As a dialogue writer, who are the people you think are leading the new pack in India -- and why?

RS: Jaideep Sahni is the most consistently competent screenwriter we have today. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an overwritten line of dialogue in a Sahni script -- which is an even more remarkable feat when you consider the unsubtle moralising all his films seem to have.

Habib Faisal is quite good as well, and so is Dibakar Banerjee -- both present very different sides of the local Dilliwala dialect. And, Vishal’s lines are always a joy.

Internationally, I’d have to say dialogue doesn’t get better than when written by Woody Allen, David Mamet or -- once in a while when he decides the line should be sharper than the samurai sword -- Quentin Tarantino. Oh, and the great Aaron Sorkin.