Just got out of 2 hours 45 minutes (minus 5 minutes of intermission) of big screen Bollywood. The picture had to keep refocusing, and the speakers were not ready to make that much loud and it showed. Still, it was damned good.

I couldn’t understand more than 3 or 4 Hindi sentences of all the movie, but the plot was pleasantly followable. Essentially, the movie was your basic Romeo and Juliet plot, but set in disputed Kashmir and with religious themes on top and lots of dancing and signing. Boy is secret Indian agent, infiltrating Pakistan to find some militant Jihadeen. On his way he rescues Girl from a fire. He falls in love with her despite (…or because of…?) her being unconscious. Later it is revealed that she is the daughter of a Pakistani general – convenient for general building up of conflict in plot because Boy is the son of an Indian general. People sing and dance, fight, die, get kidnapped back and forth over the line of control, and then sing and dance some more. Boy and Girl fall all kids of in love. We find out that she is secretly Hindu, while he really is Muslim, not just pretending to be. Their love surpasses all that though. We got to see some very patriotic scenes with very emotional songs in which I was able to identify about every fourth or fifth word as “Hindustan(i).” There was some whistling and cheering when valiant muscular Indians killed slimy scary Pakistani Jihadeen screaming “ALLAHU AKBAR.” I have to wonder how the many Muslims in the audience felt about it all. Maybe some day I’ll learn some Hindi/Urdu and ask. Anyway, in the end, Boy and Girl are stuck on the Pakistani side, he is revealed as a spy, and she as a Hindu. They are sentenced to death by an old dude with a beard and a funny hat. They die holding hands, and manage to get lots of signing and dancing in the afterlife. The end.

As far as my take on “ALLAHU AKBAR,” I think the call to prayer is kind of neat when it comes bellowing out in the afternoon. But my room must have been right next to a minaret and the decibels at 5:30 this morning were enough to make any infidel with his head inside a ringing church bell question his faith. God may be great, but do you have to invite me to pray to him so painfully?!? AND SO ALLAHDAMNED EARLY?

Got another night train, out to the Great Thar desert, one half of which is in India, the other half in Pakistan. The question of the exact size of each half makes some people very nervous. Maybe there will be some Pakistani infiltrators for me to fall in love with.