The Taming of the Shruti
Or: The Style of Our Love is Very Charismatic
I had my first taste of Bollywood last night. Monica and I were looking for something new to do (other than our usual routine of going to Target or Meijer and then ending up killing time at a coffee shop or bookstore), so after we went to Target, we decided to go to a small theater she knew of in Novi that showed foreign films.
We inspected the now-playing posters outside the theater. There were several that we assumed were from India or at least that region, a French film, and “Thank You for Smoking.” Monica was in the mood for a comedy, so we selected a film called “Chup Chup Ke” based on the coy expressions of the actors on the poster and the tagline (or translated title?) “Love meets confusion meets love.”
We bought our tickets, and I was pleased to discover that the theater offered coffee and tea in addition to the usual theater fare. So we waited with our popcorn and tea for our theater to empty. While waiting, we admired the rather beefy-looking gentleman, who I think looked kind of like Hugh Jackman, adorning the posters for an action movie called “Krrish“. We decided that we might just come back to see “Krrish.”
I watched the other people milling about the lobby waiting for their shows to start. The crowd was mainly Indian, and very little of the conversation that reached my ears was in English. Then Monica called her parents and left a message in her family’s fluid combination of Macedonian and English, and I felt very monolingual.
We wandered into the theater, took our seats, and chatted over the rather loud pre-preview commercials – some of them in English, some in what I’m guessing was Hindi. They showed a preview for “Krrish.” It began with a closeup of his rippling biceps as he ran and a caption along the lines of: “Like his father, he was special.” Eyeing the flexing muscles, I muttered to Monica, “He’s special, all right.”
Here’s a little synopsis of “Chup Chup Ke”: A young man named Jeetu fakes his own death by leaping into the ocean to escape his massive debts. He is rescued from drowning by two men with their own money problems. When Jeet realizes the men expect a reward for his rescue, he pretends to be deaf and mute and becomes their responsibility. One of the men offers his sidekick and Jeet as collateral for his own debts, and they become servants in the household of a mustached gentleman. The house faces a “Taming of the Shrew”-type situation where the master forbids anyone in his house to marry until his mute daughter, Shruti, has found a husband. Shruti falls in love with the cute and clever Jeet, and Jeet falls in love with the beautiful artist Shruti. Drama and comedy ensue as the truth of Jeet’s background is revealed.
It was a cute story, and it had me rooting for Jeet and Shruti’s happy ending. In true Bollywood style (according to Monica), it had plenty of song-and-dance numbers, which were pretty entertaining but became redundant sometimes. Even Shruti broke character long enough to sing a duet with Jeet, which presumably only occurred in her daydreams. After the movie, Monica wondered aloud if Jeet was truly in love with Shruti, and I replied, “He must have been, or he wouldn’t have taken the time to learn the choreography.”
There were also plenty of awkwardly phrased subtitles, my favorite being the lyric, “The style of our love is very charismatic.” I repeated it to myself silently a few times so I would remember it for this post.
All in all, I’m sure it beats “Click.”
