BOLLYWOOD AND DRAMA

The players, ready for some action

We have been willing to see a Bollywood for ages, and we feel that this is now the time. We find a little cinema -  as India knows how to make them : gloomy but captivating – where only one movie is shown : the Players, a remake of some Hollymood action movie, starring one of India’s most famous star, Amitabh Bachran. In the cinema, men only. People come in as the movie goes on. And the guys react strongly to the scenes, clapping, whistling, commenting, laughing… We don’t understand any of the dialogues, but really it doesn’t matter to get the storyline. One man is sitting next to Perrine, and thinking she is a man (hopefully because of darkness), starts a conversation. He explains the life of different movie stars, things having no connection with the movie. The rest of the time he answers his cell phone.

The movie is fairly bad, and we get bored little by little, when suddenly the sound goes off. The viewers scream in direction of the boss, then come out furiously. The movie is paused, we are given some food and all tension seems to vanish. All the men gather around us, and check that we understand  what to do to get food, give us sauce, explain us the movie in short. A band of young men that just seemed to be hot-blooded and happen to act like big brothers. Not an unpleasant feeling.

And the movie starts again. Everybody seats… but the boss hasn’t manage to solve the problem and the movie is brought straight to the 2^nd half, giving out some of the events away. The men in the cinema stand up in a second, screaming loud then violently. The whole crowd storms out through the doors, aggressively. It looks like a riot. The new Indian revolution. Impressive. Outside, the voices are strongly fighting. They want a refund. And they get it. If the boss didn’t give it out, the cinema would probably have gone into pieces. The man sitting next to Perrine is taking care of us. He is a young policeman, who doesn’t like to wear the uniform and left his village to come to Allahabad 6 months ago. He really dislikes this city where he has barely any friends. He takes care of our refund and invites us for a coffee. First time ever we are invited by someone without any back thoughts whatsoever. He would like to see us again and we offer to come to the Police cantonment. He is so happy at the idea.

As we come to meet him again, few hours later, we enter a very dark yard, with policemen around. They all want to know who we are but they don’t know who our man is. When finally we manage to find him, he is so proud. Probably having to white women coming to seek for him will give him a status in this cantonment. He is very sweet man, quite feminine and skinny if compared to the virile men that belong to the police forces. We say goodbye and leave towards the huge train station. But half an hour later, our policeman finds us again. He has brought us little presents: 2 bars of Kit-Kat and two Reynolds pens. Our first presents here. Thanks to Paul, we leave Allahabad with another image, that of sweetness of a man and of chocolate.