Hello Bollywood


In recent times, my 6 yo daughter has suddenly become very interested in Hindi movie songs. This was surprising to us because we hardly ever watch Hindi movies. To begin with, she couldn’t even identify the actresses. Since that was around the time of the talk-of-the-town Virat Kohli – Anushka wedding, it was very embarrassing for her to not even be able to recognize Anushka!

And so began the binge watching of Hindi song videos. Progress was slow: she complained that Anushka and Katrina look so similar as she got them wrong yet again. In which universe do they look similar, I wondered… (Among the actors, she’s been able to recognize Salman Khan since she was 2. And till date, she has shown no signs of being able to name any other actor).

Next her interest expanded from identifying actresses to sing and hum the hit songs. I offered to download the videos of the songs she liked from YouTube thinking it might also help improve her Hindi (I know, I know, parents ruin everything by making it a teaching moment). Initially, she used to identify songs to download in weird ways: “The one where she wears a red saree”. Name the movie, sing some part of it, name the actress, I’d say. She’d have no idea. So I told her to read the name of the song when they showed it on the channel. It didn’t help: Hindi words spelt in English aren’t easy to read. So she decided to solve the problem by calling me over whenever they played a song she liked. “This one”.

Now she can recognize and name many of the actresses, can sing along to some extent, stays entertained in the car thanks to the downloaded songs, and we get to hear good songs. Everybody wins.

If she reads this piece as a teenager and realizes that:
-         Her old man introduced her to the hit songs in Hindi and helped her know the actresses (Oh! The shame…)
-         She used to share her taste in music with her parents (shudder);
-         She liked remixed versions of songs from her parents’ era (from Chalti Hai Kya Nau se Baarah to Hamma Hamma) (gasp)
-         The top hero of her day was the same guy from the prehistoric times her parents were still in college (Salman Khan). Granted he has the swag to pull off lyrics like Swag se Swaagat, but still…
then she’ll want to crawl into a hole and hide. Ah, even the prospect of that is so exhilarating… (Evil laughter)

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarMay 21, 2018 at 11:12 AM

    I read this blog with my lips either holding a smile or unable to hold together due to laughter-burst! The blog-writer has a class of humor that is akin to mine, with of course with all those characteristic ways that are one's own too. What I mean to say is that, it is pretty easy for me to tune to this kind of humor.

    In this context, (i.e where I just mentioned this humor implying there are many "kinds of humor" for writers to choose and write and readers to tune to and enjoy,) I recall this coming from an international sports photo-journalist. The German sports photographer submits his 'classy and crisp' photographs from a recent event to the editor chief. The editor looks at them as if critically examining them. He then opens his draw and deposits them inside carefully. Closing the draw he casually remarks, "Anyone can take photos in a sunny fine weather! Next week we have such and such event; let me see if you can get anything worthwhile there, that would be something!" :-) The photo-journalist does his finale with a lovely sentence, "That kind of dry south German humor takes some getting used to!". :-)

    With little Aditi in the spotlight and with Vijay brand of humor laced in the language, such blogs are a feast for me - the one who is so addicted to humor that he considers humor the next most essential thing after air, water and food!

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