I have to admit, I’m a fan of Indian films. When you have a few hours to kill and nothing else can entertain you, Bollywood will always save the day. Not to mention, in the process, it will end up teaching you a lot of life lessons. Trust me. Like how to diffuse a bomb when it has only 30 seconds left before it goes off. Or if your intentions are good, you can literally send ten bad guys flying off at the same time. And that if you are an underdog at school, all it takes it one talent competition to win fame and popularity.
For today’s condensed lesson, we shall revise everything that our beloved Hindi film industry continues to educate us about life in the beautiful rural regions of our nation. In no particular order, here are ten things that the great Indian film tamasha has taught me about village life:
1) Every village has a female population divided into three categories- the old women who have toothy smiles and will either smile in the background while grinding flour or give you random words of wisdom, the beautiful village belle, and her somewhat less beautiful friends who will keep giggling while carrying pots of water.
2) Even if everyone in the village has a pronounced region-specific accent in their speech, our village belle will speak in perfect Hindi when she effortlessly charms our hero. If not, the only words that will be added will be “humaar” and “sahab”.
3) If our protagonists are city folks, they will enter the village in a shiny car, which will inevitably be led through the village by a throng of excited children and grumbling old men.
4) Even if the village is shown to be one that uses fuel lamps, gas lights and hand fans (implying no electricity), our heroes will always walk around with fully charged phones.
5) Every village has one evil figure who has no rural accent, wears gold chains and has a giant warehouse near the village. He will, most likely, be wearing a safari suit and have a large mole on his face.
6) Irrespective of where the village is located in India, the women will all wear clothes with the same kind of embroidery on them. Because geographically relevant clothing is so passé.
7) Every single village will have at least one hole-in-the-wall style chai ki kitli/dhaba/other refreshment place which will house a large red telephone on the table, and it will often also feature a song around it.
8) Our leads will always have perfectly ironed clothes, along with styled hair- just one strand meticulously left out of place, not to mention, perfect make up. Never mind the dust. You never know when a song sequence might come calling, right?
9) Village? Villagers? They gather around a local temple on a mountain and cry to God through a bhajan every time they have a problem, naturally. Whoever’s heard of helping themselves?
10) If everything goes as its supposed to, by the end of the film, the protagonists will fall and love and get married. More importantly, they will be so enchanted by their time in the village that they will decide to stay there, or vacation there with their kids every year. Happy time of the poor gaonwalas.
– Contributor, DU Times
