The bollywood weekend........

last Saturday evening I managed to get a few friends together and watch a Bollywood movie. I had finally managed to get a copy of the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, the one I had blogged about before. I was really excited that they were willing to watch it. But by the time we started I started to have many questions in my mind. will they like the movie? I hope they can read the subtitles fast enough? Is it going to be a waste of time? Does it start too slow?will they like the songs/dancing sequences? I had a lot of questions! I was really freaking out! I then decided to try to watch the movie from a different perspective,from the perspective of my friends who had never watched a Hindi movie, who only had a stereotypical image of Bollywood(some Bruce Lee like figure obliterating everyone in his path and then bursting into a dance sequence). Though it wasn't fair because I understood the language, I decided to read the subtitles as to share the experience. And then it dawned on me when matthis pointed out, they keep switching languages, from Hindi to english(and eventually Spanish). It was something that never occurred to me. Back I'm India, at least north India there is no such thing as pure Hindi. Many English terms are used throughout Hindi. Since Bollywood is the Hindi film industry, they also use many English terms and sentences throughout movie. This had never stood out to me, but now it did and I guess it made the movie a tiny bit relatable to the others.

Another fact that I realised(or was reminded again of) was that bollywood movies are long! Most movies are over 2 hours long! this happened when we had reached the intermission(yes, most movie viewing outside the US have intermissions. It depends on the DVD publisher if they want to incorporate them on the DVD's) and it was encouraging to know that the rest wanted to continue watching the remainder of the movie. I was more relaxed now as I got hints that the others started liking the movie. I watched the second half of the movie with a peaceful mind and by the end of the movie one of the guys watching turned around as said, "that was really good!". similar comments followed later on. It was a good experience for both my friends and I. It was a new experience for them as it broke the stereotypical image of Bollywood(the songs and dancing were still there)that they had, and I was glad to do so...:)