Bollywood

I finally went to see a Bollywood movie. Dhoom 2 (Dhoom translates roughly to Zoom) is a version of James Bond or perhaps Ocean's Eleven (the modern versions - heavy on eye candy, low on substance) transculturated. It has all the whizzy special effects, chase scenes, etc. But the real purpose of the movie seems to be to play the theme song, which was the credits song from the original Dhoom. The movie is long, but much of the time is taken up by dance numbers. Don't think Fred and Ginger, think Michael and Janet. I had little trouble following the plot, even though most of the dialogue is in Hindi, the Indian intermingling of English is there enough to make most conversations make sense. And the plot is not thick enough to need any explanation anyway. It is a very racy and modern movie by Bollywood standards. Ilangovan says that the actress who plays the heroine apparently decided that she wants to be thought of as hot as well as beautiful, so she shows up in various revealing outfits. The biggest scandal comes from the on screen kiss, for which there is an obscenity suit pending. It was a pretty tame on screen kiss. The movie would probably be rated PG-13 for mild violence in the US.

This shift in mores apparently helped in my understanding of the film. I mentioned that I was able to follow the movie okay, and I was told a story of a couple of westerners visiting TIFR who went to see a film a while ago (not sure how long ago, the person who told me has been at TIFR for a while). They mistook the lead's wife for his sister and the sister for the wife. Physical contact between the siblings was okay, but spouse touching spouse would corrupt the youth with impure thoughts.

Even in this movie, the fantasies that flash through the funny cop's head when he meets the sexy cop are of them getting married and popping out a bunch of kids.

Family is a big deal in India. Arranged marriages (as opposed to a "love marriage" or the more politically correct "self arranged marriage") are still fairly usual, and I see a lot of billboards for matchmaker websites - the emphasis certainly being on finding someone to marry. I'm not convinced that functional Indian families are any more common or supportive than in any other place in the world, but many Indians seem to think so. In any case, the bride-as-commodity image is pretty present.

At the theatre, the audience was at least 80% male, probably more. I asked Ilangovan about this and he said that most families came to the earlier 7:00 shows. I mentioned that not all women are married, and he didn't really reply.

On the other hand, there is Sonia Ghandi and Kiran Bedi, and plenty of other powerful Indian women, and the gender skew in the PhD students here is no worse than anywhere else.

Anyway...

When I mentioned to Sreekar that I had gone to see Dhoom 2, he was a little confused. He thought that I had said something about playing Doom 2 on the computer.

"No Dhoom 2, the movie," I said.

"It's playing here?"

"Um, yeah, you went to see it two days ago."

"Oh you mean Dhoom 2, not Doom 2." (I hear no difference.)

"I thought that is what I said."

"No, Dhoom, like 'th' in father."

"Thoom?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"But that sounds different to me. I hear a difference between Dhoom and Thoom but not Dhoom and Doom."

"But when you say Thoom, it sounds more like Dhoom than when you say
Doom."

Wierd. The difference between t and th is in the position of the tongue. But when I mimic that change and say a d, I get what sounds to me like a d in either place. The conversation resurfaced (minus Sreekar) over dinner at McRajan's. I sat down to have my soup and into a conversation about th three indistinguishable k sounds in Farsi. I related my difficulties with dh, and found that they extended to the two forms of sh, but that I could tell at least the difference between g and gh. We also talked a bit about emphasis is English, which is one of the most difficult things for Hindi speakers to get. I remember at Reed, Cam had a differential equations class with Rao where "coefficient" became "quafishen" and was mis-heard as "equation" and this led to some confusion. My ear has still not adjusted, and I have a hard time understanding most of the time.