Ek hockey doongi rakh ke!'
Loosely translated as 'I'll whack you with a hockey stick,' the energetic chorus from the Chak De India theme song sticks to the colloquial. North India has appropriated the name of the sport and applied it to the equipment, and thus is a hockey stick called, quite simply, 'a hockey.'
And so it is that Shah Rukh Khan raps energetically about the girls in his hockey team, a tough-looking bunch of no-nonsense ladies with considerable sass. Music composers Salim-Suleiman come up with a rousing 'Team India' track, and the girls are introduced mostly one-by-one in the film's promo.
The team looks fresh as does the overlong promo for Shimit Amin's upcoming film -- reportedly inspired by Tom Hanks starrer In A League Of Their Own -- but you can't help wondering why Khan started the count with Chak 2 for Girl 1 and kept counting ahead.
Oh but then, as he winds up, all the girls stand in a row and talk about Chak 1, Coach Kabeer Khan, Shah Rukh.
On cue, an elevated Khan silhouette, towering over the girls, raises his arms in trademark SRK-style.
Okay, so it really is a Yash Raj film. We were beginning to wonder.
