26.2.10

Manual of Life - Things You Didn't Realise Till You Did #99

I have yet to see a mainstream Hindi film where a character who's supposed to be talking in a non-Indian non-English language, is actually speaking in that language.

In no Bollywood flick has any character who's supposed to be African, or European, or Middle Eastern, or any other Asian talking in anything but nonsense lingo. Not even in those NRI flicks - where the film may feature a scene where some local in Switzerland will be talking in French, but the desi character will still be talking nonsense words. This would be just about acceptable if the character was simply pretending to be (as part of the script) a person of such a nationality, but even when the character is supposed to be a resident of said country, they still speak nonsense lingo.

Not. a. single. Bollywood. film.

And then we have the gall to get upset when Hollywood films show Indians talking in exaggerated Peter-Sellers-in-The-Party accents. At least they have us talking in Hindi, or Punjabi, or Tamil, or whatever.


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This only occurred to me while having to endure some ridiculous OTT flick that these long-distance buses insist on playing even if it's night-time and people want to sleep, where Sanjay Dutt plays some guy who's supposed to have been living in Africa for 20 years, and whose idea of the language of whatever country he was supposed to be from went something like 'Karaka baraka! Maraka baraka'.

No, I'm not kidding.

Also, this is possibly the last of the India posts for a bit.

8 comments:

km said...

'Karaka baraka! Maraka baraka'.

Dude, that's a famous proverb from an obscure African language.

Tabula Rasa said...

yes, i think it means "yes we can!".

NightWatchmen said...

And to add if the heroine has any bangla blood in her (a.k.a Rimi Sen or Bipasha Basu) will always go "Ekdum Mishti" making us want to bang our head in frustration, which come to think off it would sound like bong our head in a thick bong accent (hmm long travels does get the bad puns going)!!!!

km said...

@Nightwatchmen: When Bogart says "Play Mishti for me" in Casablanca, I just lose it.

And I am not even a Bengali.

??! said...

KM:
You're in top form this year. Brilliant that was.

88 said...

I need to know this Sanjay Dutt film's name. I have taken to watching rotten Bollywood flicks after having smoked up. Thre is NO experience like it in the world!!

My last one was a movie called Wafaa. Classic! Although it was a good thing I was stoned coz I think I'd have lost interest in sex forever (Google 'Wafaa Rajesh Khanna' to see what I mean...)

??! said...

Blackfayth:
Eeesh. Like I'd try and remember.

All I know is it also had Ajay Devgan and Fardeen Khan (?), and everybody was super-over-acting.

??! said...

Update:
The ever-resourceful IMDB tells me the film was this one