A Bollywood Experience

JUNE 27, 2017 

After another bus ride and thoroughly exhausted, we made it to Jaipur. Since most of us were not feeling up to another grand adventure, we took in an adventure of another sort: we went to see a Bollywood movie in a on-of-a-kind movie theater. It’s an experience I’m very glad I did because in addition to the absurdity that is the Bollywood trope, attending a movie in an Indian movie theater is equally absurd.

First, the theater. It is a grand complex, built in an older-style (even though it was built only in the 1970’s), commissioned by a jeweler. It’s like a kitschy version of the Ziegfield: a giant entryway with elaborate decorations, a lounge, an arcade, a concession stand that served everything from popcorn to samosas, and one giant screen. Again, we were an attraction of our own, with hoards of folks asking to take pictures with us. It was like being a movie star!

Let’s start with the movie. It is called Tubelight and is a story about two brother. The older is a little slow, the younger is his protector. The older wants to join the army to fight in the Indo-China War, the younger joins, too, to protect him. The older is rejected from service, the younger goes on to fight. The rest of the story centers on the life of the older brother while his younger brother is away at war. He befriends a young boy, who is Chinese ethnically, but Indian nationally, which becomes contentious because war. I gathered all of this despite the lack of subtitles (it’s pretty cool what you can gather without understanding what’s happening). Despite the fact that this was a serious film, they managed to throw in two Bollywood dances, since no Bollywood movie would be complete without at least a couple of elaborately choreographed dance scenes. Also, like any good made-in-America movie, there was a happy ending...even when you thought it was going to be sad.

While the movie was entertaining in and of itself, the real entertainment was being in a theater full of Indians. Indians have very different movie-going traditions. Talking, for example, is totally fine. This worked to my benefit since one of my travel companions and I spent the first 45 minutes coming up with subtitles of our own. But there is no shushing that happens. People pick up the phone and have a chat. People bring their young children, who do what young children do, especially when the movie drags into hour three….One woman sat breastfeeding her child halfway through the film. Towards the end, when her children were board, she took out her phone and the kids watched another movie sans headphones. The best part, though, is how into the movie people get. Famous person comes on screen? Loud cheers? The older brother manages to pull off a magic trick with the help of a compassionate itinerant magician? The crowd goes wild. The younger brother returns from war and is reunited with his older brother? Everyone screams.

The moral of this story is: if you ever find yourself in India, take an afternoon to go to the movies, because it is a truly unique experience that you can have only in India.