Confession No. 2

While I may be a swooning idiot for the romances, there is one Bollywood-induced emotion I am apparently immune to: I have yet to cry during a Bollywood film. I'm not admitting this as any sort of accomplishment; on the contrary, I feel like a bit of a freak. Not even Kal Ho Naa Ho or Veer-Zaara could make me shed a tear and they had totally sad moments. 

This is not to say I never cry during movies; I cried during Little Women, and Dances with Wolves, and The Namesake, and Dumbo, to think of four at random, and there are plenty of others I just can't remember right now. But no Bollywood films so far. I don't have a whole big theory why this is*; I just had to get it off my chest. Admittedly, not every Hindi movie I watch is a tearjerker, but I've seen quite a few with sad, sad scenes in them, and yet I remain strangely dry-eyed.

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*Maybe it's because I know that Bollywood films will usually (usually!) end happily despite trauma and heartbreak in the middle bit of the picture?  But there has to be more to it than that. What is it? I haven't been able to figure it out yet. Maybe it's because I'm the figuring-out type and not the heart-on-her-sleeve type? I have no idea.

Confession No. 1

This will most likely be the first in a series. This post was originally going to be a set of one-line bullet point confessions by me of my unpopular opinions about several different movies, but once I got started on one movie, I couldn't stop. Man, this article wrote itself! Stay tuned for more!

Confession: I didn't really like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) all that much. I really want to have liked it, I do, I do! But my delicate fashion sensibilities* were overwhelmed by the shockingly loud and brightly colored early-nineties style, name-brand type outfits, and subsequently I couldn't pay much attention to the plot. First of all, the clothing was way too reminiscent of the clothing worn by everyone during my own high school years [shudder] (. . . but much, much more garish).

This cover doesn't actually come close to portraying the full extent of it.

Secondly, it wasn't just the clothing that tickled my shallow-bone, but also the sets. It's supposed to take place at a college, not a high school. It didn't look like any college I'd ever seen or been to. I just kept getting the (loud, garish) high school vibe. Again, distracting.

While I was looking for pictures to illustrate my post, I came upon this slide show article from ABC News entitled "The Biggest Movie Star You've Never Heard of" (i.e. Shah Rukh Khan). ABC describes Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as "Archie Comics come to Bollywood," which pretty much sums up the look of it, anyways. I mean, I know why director Karan Johar did it--because he was trying to drag Hindi films into a more modern era with the American designer duds and all, but oh, Karan! Too much!

I don't even know who that girl is. It looks like . . . Preity? She's not in the movie.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was one of the first Hindi films I saw after becoming a Bollywood convert. Maybe I would like it better if I saw it again now, a year later. I could ignore the shockingly bad clothing and the sets and just focus on the plot (I will like it! I will like it!). Or at least try my darndest.

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*If you knew me, you'd probably laugh at this.

Hindi Word of the Day Archives for November 2008

kahaan? (where?)

jahaan (where . . . ; in the place where)

yahaan (here)

vahaan (there)

kahiin (somewhere)

kahiin nahiin (nowhere)

kahiin bhii (anywhere)

sab kahiin (everywhere)

kahiin na kahiin (somewhere or other)

kahiin aur (somewhere else)

jahiin (in the very place where)

yahiin (right here; in this very place)

vahiin (right there; in that very place)

jahaan kahiin (wherever; everywhere)

kab? (when?)

jab (when . . . ; at the time when)

ab (now)

tab (then)

kabhii (sometimes, ever)

kabhii kabhii (from time to time, sometimes)

kabhii nahiin (never)

jab se (since, from the time when)

jab tak (as long as, until)

jab jab, jab bhii (whenever)

ab tab (now and then)

ab se (from now on)

ab tak (up till now)

ab bhii (even now, as yet; even so)

abhii (right now)

tabhii (just then)

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Disclaimers:

I am not a native Hindi speaker. The words I list are either ones I have picked up by watching Bollywood movies or from perusing my Hindi reference books, including Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script, Teach Yourself Hindi Dictionary, Teach Yourself Hindi Complete Course, Living Language Hindi Complete Course, and best of all, the enormous Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. Despite all these reference sources, it is still totally possible that I read something wrong or misunderstood it--so keep in mind that this list is made by someone who's only been watching Hindi movies on a regular basis since November 2007 and has no previous experience with the language.

What just happened here?

So, Jewel Thief. What? I'm totally lost.

Apparently I should have read a detailed plot summary first before I watched it. And followed along. And taken notes.

Don't get me wrong; I liked it. I just can't figure out who's who, or what's going on.