[lit-ideas] Crouching Indian Flying Pakistani

I rented a Bollywood movie, saw it last night.  The particular one I rented is 
called Main Hoon Na, but I hear they're all pretty much the same.  It was in 
Indian, English titles.  In a nutshell, if you take Schwarzenegger, Michael 
Jackson dance videos, Beach Party Bingo, Grease, a little Vishnu, mix it all 
together with a little Matrix, and make it three hours long, that's Bollywood.  
The plot is irrelevant.  There's a lot of cartoon-like violence, with spurting 
blood.  About half way through it (it's very, very long), we stopped reading 
the subtitles and and began talking for the characters ("You think it's easy 
being green?"  "I told you to get the plumber!"  Much better than the actual 
dialog.)  I did notice some interesting things though.  One is that even though 
they were speaking Indian, interspersed throughout were English phrases and 
words, concepts that could easily be said in Indian (whatever Indian is), like 
"I promise you I'll get you".  Clearly Indians think in 
 both Indian and English.  And clearly India is a youth-oriented culture.  The 
younger the character, the whiter their faces, to the point where they were 
indistinguishable from Europeans.  I also learned that Indians have 
cheerleaders (sport unknown) who dress like American cheerleaders.  Much of the 
action was set in a school called St. Paul's.

Something that surprised me, though, is that under the fluff there peeked out 
some serious issues.  At the end of the movie there's almost a wish fulfillment 
style reconciliation between the Pakistanis and the Indians.  The bad guys in 
fact are the Indians who don't want to reconcile.  They become the terrorist 
bad guys and are killed at the end.  Reconciliation is completed with the 
shaking of hands between Indian and Pakistani military, and there is an 
exchange of prisoners between the two groups.  

Another issue I noticed was a tackling of father issues.  The illegitimate son 
is raised by the father and has no mother; the legitimate son is raised by the 
mother and has no father and is the more wounded by his father's abandonment.  
His real father is unfortunately killed in the beginning, so Lachsman ("Lucky") 
cannot reconcile with him.  The female lead character is rejected by her father 
for not being a son, and tearfully reconciles with him at the end.  She also 
questions female inferiority in Indian society.

The last issue that I noticed was the Koenigsberg-esq war/military life as 
sacrifice.  In addition to visually portraying the concept, as in the 
abandoning father taking a bullet in slow motion in the beginning of the movie 
for the Indian general who was in favor of reconciliation, and thus making 
himself a dead hero, it was repeatedly emphasized that there is no greater 
glory than to sacrifice for one's country.  Certainly there was no rejection of 
war, but there was at least a willingness to find entertaining the possibility 
of reconciliation with one's enemy.  I suspect it's far more than the 
Palestinians and Israelis could do in a movie.  All in all, if I were an 
Indian, this would probably be a feel good movie.  I have to say I did like the 
dance sequences and the lyrics that either lost or gained in translation.  It 
was a bit on the long side, however, especially once we crossed midnight.  On 
the other hand, for as much as was in this movie, it was no small accomplishme
 nt to put it all into only three hours.  

Andy Amago

Other related posts: