Everything I have learnt in life, I learnt from Bollywood!

India produces more than 1500 movies every year and the movies of my era (the born in the sixties generation) influenced me in many ways. They taught me Indian values, culture and racism. Please allow me to elucidate.

• Don’t ever depend on the police – they always reach late. The sprightly hero weighing perhaps a full 42 kgs, having bashed up 100 villains (each weighing 100 kgs) and just about to give one final satisfying ‘dishoom’ to the main villain will invariably be interrupted by the police (led either by Iftikar, or Jagdish Raj) with a ‘giraftar kar lo inhe’ (arrest them) 75 seconds before the movie ends. (Incidentally, Jagdish Raj has acted as a Police Inspector in close to 150 movies. Finds his name in the Guiness Book apparently. Just saying).
• The main lead is always introduced in slow motion. Particularly if his first scene is him walking in just when the heroine is in some strife with two dozen local baddies. His fists will dispatch them flying in all directions. Some baddies, impressed by the hero’s slow motion, will dispatch themselves too in a physics defying slow motion arc.
• South Indian action movies go a step further; because they first zoom in on the hero’s shoes, then legs, then upper torso and finally his sunglasses donned face; to a thunderous applause from the audience (all in slow motion. Not the applause, the entry). The baddies thus dispatched, leaves the heroine with nothing to do but simper and act coy. Cut to a song. I tried the slow motion during my courtship days. The to-be-wife did not simper even a wee bit. Onlookers were even more perplexed.
• The hero will always have a Muslim friend/sidekick. If a sidekick he will wear a skull cap, a tabeez and have kohl rimmed eyes. If a friend, you know he is gonna die by the interval, but not before saving the hero’s life.
• The Rich always have beautiful empty-headed daughters. These daughters never do any work, never have a bad hair day, and always rise in the morning (quite unlike The Wife), looking like angels; lipstick and mascara intact. They go around hugging their papas with gay abandon and pout out their demands for a new car/necklace/what have you. (Impressed with this successful methodology, I tried the same with my father when I wanted a new pen. The results were mixed – a mix of dazed astonishment and extreme awkwardness; no pen either). Rich daughters have a strange lack of commonsense. If for some reason she and her paramour and/or friends are in an abandoned building at night (apparently it happens all the time), she WILL set out to investigate eerie noises by herself; dressed as skimpily as possible of course. She hears something behind a door.  Now, I know she shouldn’t push open that door, the audience knows too, but commonsense is a quality that is lacking amongst those who need it most and open the door she will. Well you know the rest.
• It is firstly, never a bad time to break into a dance and secondly, unlike real life, everyone has silken moves; the hero, the heroine, the hero’s friends, the heroine’s aunt/cousin/dog, everyone. (I know the nitpicky ones will point, not to the dog, but to Dharmendra. However, exceptions prove the rule, right?) The hero falls in love and immediately starts lustily thrusting his hips hither and thither as if a particularly vicious gnat has found its way into his undies. The heroine, fully emancipated, joins in solidarity. Ever seen that in real life? Now I can, with some persuading of my sceptical mind, understand two people in love grooving a bit. But how the random passersby sync their steps is a mystery to me.
• The lawyer, if he is the hero of the film, needs no degree or knowledge. All he needs is a long monologue on the evils of the system.  Some flaring of the nostrils, some glares and some desk thumping helps too. Try that for real and the Judge will throw you out of the court room on your butt in less time than it takes Amitabh to say “Deviyon aur Sajjano”. The filmy Judge on the other hand, and who’s only job till then was to say “order order” every now and then, gets deeply affected by the monologue and all he can do, with moist eyes, is rule in the hero’s favour.
• Doctors are always on call. All someone on the screen has to yell to no one in particular, “call a doctor”, and the gentleman will appear, bag in hand, stethoscope around his neck. (Ever tried calling a doctor in real life? You will find that they can be, like Uber drivers, delightfully elusive). Incidentally, there is nothing a filmy stethoscope cannot diagnose – lymphosarcoma of the intestine and fatty liver included. Having diagnosed, filmy doctors have two eminently sensible prescriptions for everything; Either “Maine neend ki goli de di hain”, or, if confronted with a particularly confounding illness, “Maine injection de diya hai, parantu isse dawa ki nahin, duwa ki zaroorat hain”. 
• Disguise is easy. Want to go sneak into the villain’s den? No need to spend hours in a makeup studio. Just stick on a moustache. It changes your appearance so dramatically that while the entire audience may recognise you, the genius evil underworld don never will (doesn’t say much about the genius, does it?). Want to avoid your girlfriend’s father? Just don spectacles. Add a comically large false mole on one temple if you want to play safe.

If you are:-

• A Punjabi – you will be loud, wear garish clothes and compete with a particularly dull dodo in terms of IQ. You enjoy whiskey and lassi. You get ecstatic on sighting tandoori chicken. (Never mind that around two third of Punjabis are actually vegetarian.) Your vast vocabulary comprises as many as four phrases; burrrrah, balle balle, puttar and oye hoye. Your aunties will all be plump, hearty and endearingly inquisitive and your uncles plump, hearty and tipsy.
• A Goan – you will either be Antony (if male) or Miss Braganza (the Miss gives it away, but female obviously). (Incidentally only about 25% of Goans are Christian).  If you are Antony, you will wear floral shirts and proudly exhibit your spindly legs in equally floral Bermudas. You do no work, lounge on the beach all day feni in hand, but have a kindly heart. If you are Miss Braganza unfortunately, your career choices are limited that of stern (but ultimately kind) landlady stuck with penniless tenants.
• A Christian woman – you can only be named Suzie. You will smoke and drink, but underneath all the ‘modernity’, you will, like the Goan landlady, have a traditional heart of gold.
• Heartbroken – life will compensate you by giving you a mellifluous voice and an admirable command over the piano. You will sing while looking dolefully at the heartbreaker with an occasional swig from a conveniently placed glass during interludes. And no one, other than the said Muslim friend or the heartbreaker will guess who the song is aimed at. The friend will look on commiseratively and she with a glycerine tear daintily trickling down her alabaster cheek.
• A South Indian – Your vocabulary, unlike the vast repertoire of four phrases a Punjabi is allowed, will comprise mainly, ‘aai yaai yo’. You will be dark, wear a lungi and eat only sambar rice. You will never forget to put the sacred ash on your forehead. South India may be spread over 650,000 sq km, have five states and four languages, but you can only be a Madrasi from well, Madras. And because you can’t speak Hindi, it is but natural that you will speak, not in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada, but in heavily accented English. Why? You got me.

Now wasn’t that a master class on understanding India better?