PLURALIZING PLEASURES OF VIEWERSHIP move by the dog (the architect of the happy denouement) and the scales could tip either way. With the lines between conscious choice and unconscious desire being so slippery, little wonder the film is titled "Hum Apke Main Kaun?" The success of an ostensibly conservative film like HAHK is likely to disconcert many. We must remember however, that popular culture is not an 'all-or-nothing' proposition. Cultural theorist Tricia Rose observes that "cultural expressions are rarely, if ever, consistently and totally oppositional." For any culture to be popular it needs to meet contradictory and conflicting needs. John Fiske's work on popular culture has pointed out that while cultural commodities are sought to be controlled by forces that can be called "centralizing, disciplinary, hegemonic, massifying, commodifying". It meets equal resistance from the cultural needs of the people. As popular forces and cultural commodities collide cultural resources are created whereby meanings and pleasures are pluralized, disciplinary efforts are resisted and homogeneity is fractured. It is from this point-of-view that the success of HAHK needs to be assessed. Take the now famous Didi Tera Devar Deewana sequence sung on the occasion of the big feast before Pooja's delivery. The song is sung by Nisha who begins by addressing her sister ('did?} about her 'devar' (brother-in-law). During the course of the song she switches to 'becoming' a pregnant woman dancing with a surrogate *devar\ Unknown to the women, the 'performance' is watched by the 'real' devar Prem who eventually joins in the song. At first glance the sequence is a glorification of rituals and a celebration of women as wombs. But the sequence also invites multiple readings (that could be seen to) trip and subvert its own professed agenda. The song itself is a funny dig about the incompatibility between a pregnant woman and her 'devar'. When the woman asks for 'khataf (sour), the devar gets 'mitha? (sweet) and so on. At one level, the performance allows Nisha and Prem, as 'did? and 'devar' respectively, an occasion to articulate their attraction for each other. At another level, the acknowledgement of the 'devar' as possible sexual partner for the 'bhabf is unmistakable. The tongue-in-cheek lament that he always seems to fetch her the wrong things also means that he does not seem to get the 'right' message even while he makes passes at other women ("kudiyon ko daale daana...). The 'women-only' setting of the function provides occasion for 'deviancy' that would otherwise be quite impossible. The dig at heterosexual dysfunctionality can best be made by two women.