My first Bollywood film experience in India!

Here at the farm house we get a TV channel that shows all movie trailers and all or nearly all of the music videos that play on another channel come from a Bollywood movie so after all that Bollywood exposure, I've been aching to go out to a real Indian movie theater for an authentic Bollywood experience. All the other Bollywood films I'd seen were in my living room, but I wanted to go to a theater where there'd be a real intermission in the film and you can hear the audience since I'd heard that the audience might be more vocal or reactive in India.

On Saturday, Swathi's relatives took us out to see Sarkar Raj, the latest Aishwarya Rai film which also features her new husband and her father-in-law,. The movie theater we went to was old, but in a somewhat grand way, with large staircases and ramps leading up to the balcony seating and an usher. Unlike American movie theaters, there's assigned seating and your ticket price depends on whether you sit in the balcony or below. since we sat in the balcony, I think our tickets were 70 rupees each, or less than 2 USD.

It was surprising to see so many people using their cellphones during the movie, but with the movie playing so loudly, it didn't really matter unless you were sitting right next to that person. Unlike in the US, the audience whistles when the hero comes on, although with the movie being in Hindi without any subtitles,I wasn't sure who the hero was! I initially thought that someone was just whistling to their lost friend so they could find their seat!

During the intermission, Swathi cleared up a few things where I had a sneaking suspicion about this or that. Since there normally isn't much PDA in Bollywood films, I wasn't even sure if two certain characters were married or siblings since I obviously couldn't understand the dialogue between them and the way they interacted with each other was sort of on the platonic side.

Since I couldn't follow the film as well as everyone else in the theater, the ending dort of surprised me and seemed kind of sudden,. Swathi was a bit disappointed with the film because of certain parts of the plot but I guess I liked the film- it was cool to see some of the big Bollywood stars on-screen, in the country in which they're so famous, and there was a lot of action in this film. Since this one was obviously a serious action film, there was an intense soundtrack but no choreographed dances and cheesy songs like in the other films I'd seen before. Hopefully, our next film, Thoda.. [something- something -] Magic (sorry, these names are hard to remember when you don't speak Hindi), which comes out in a couple of weeks should satisfy my Bollywood craving. It has one of the actors from my favorite Bollywood film, Dil Chata Hai, who plays some guy who alongside an angel, takes in 4 orphans. It looks happy and cute with some romance, so I'm looking forward to it!