Bollywood bonanza

So last night some of my friends threw a Bollywood night. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Bollywood is India's equivalent to Hollywood. Despite being homeless at the time, and being engaged in a semi-casual search of a place to live, I couldn't in good conscience turn down an opportunity to eat some amazing home-cooked Indian food and watch a film with a dozen of my friends. It was a blast!

The best part of Bollywood night was that we watched a Bollywood film. Allison did some fantastic recon and found four or five different filsm we had to choose from. The one we finally settled on was Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave-hearted will take the Bride) starring one of the demi-gods of Indian pop film, Shahrukh Khan. Let me break it down for you:

I know of no good Bollywood films that have running times of less than 3 hours. This film was no exception. Melanie put it best when she commented after the movie, "I can't remember what life was like before we started watching that movie!" It was long, but it was power packed.

You see, in addition to being many hours long, each blessed Bollywood movie combines at least like 5 differnt genres. You gotta have the romance, you always have some of the kung-fu fighting (in all its obviously fake punching glory), you get musicals complete with the best choreography your eyes will ever witness, you are never at a loss for the comedy element, and always the good Indian culture/moral instruction throughout every film. Believe you me, any self-respecting Bollywood film has got the plot twists and turns to weave all these elements together like this was going to be the last movie ever produced. It's pretty crazy.

Another cool thing about Bollywood is that you always get the subtitles going off and on during the film. This happens because there is a good amount of English phrases that are scattered in the conversation. You will hear some over protecting father rail his son in Hindi, and then a few seconds later you hear "I'm sorry Pops." Quite the mix, let me tell you.

All in all, it was the best 4 hours I have spent yet in my spring/summer Monday nights. Not only did it get me psyched for cooking some mad Indian cuisine (in the kitchen of the new house I called about, looked at, and got a contract all in the course of the middle of the film) this next few months, but I now know a little better the meaning of the phrase "enduring to the end."