BOLLYWOOD THE COME BACK

The Uncle Sam's influence

Through Hospitality club, we have discovered that a Finnish woman, Eeva Maya, lives in Orchha for 6 years and in India for more than 17 years. There is no hazard in life, if it is needed to have one more proof of this. As we spend some time with her, drinking tchai or having breakfast, she gives us her insight of life in India for a woman : “never trust an India, they want sex or money. It took me several years to really find good friends”. Time to find the persons you can grow with seems to be the same anywhere in the world. Cécile suddenly understands the sexual aspect of men coming to talk to us. So far she didn’t understand why one of the first questions asked is “Are you married?”. Nice and naïve (Perrine laughs in her inner self). All becomes even clearer as we go for a new try out of Bollywood. We go together with the German volunteer of Eeva and his Indian friend to Jhansi. We don’t know yet that the movie we are going to watch is once again, The Players…

It is so pleasant to go along with an Indian, someone who knows the heres and abouts of things, how to get the rickshaws, where to walk to, how to get the proper information… We let ourselves be guided. It is a true holiday. And we watch the movie again. Contrarily to what we thought, we don’t get bored at all, but the opposite. We are hooked – to our surprise- by an action movie. But it makes us think also quite much about the vision of women – and especially white women. The whole movie long, women are shown as sexual beings – also called bitches – half (or more) naked, shaking their boobs and asses. The Indian leading actresses of course dance like R&B hot stars, but they have a mission in the plot. They do it to save the love of their lives or to help their brother… But all around them, shaking their body parts, are only white female, mostly with blond hair. And they have no reason in the plot to do so. This image of Occidental women is carried by movies and TV all the time. It probably started with Hollywood movies that are popular also here. In traditional Indian movies, it is almost impossible to see a kiss. In Hollywood movies, sex is common. So for Indian mentalities, they equalled sex and Occidental females. They thing – and rightly so – that women are free in the west, compared to the social rules concerning women behaviour here.

Cécile has to face the reality of this straight during the movie. After the intermission, she gets a neighbour. And his is a very sticky neighbour indeed. He starts by leaning heavily on Cécile’s seat, and as he pronounces his introduction sentence, his right hand move accordingly onto Cécile’s knee. After very few sentences he asks to kiss him at thee end of the movie. But stupidly, he gives out also the escape road by asking “Are you married?”. And Cécile answers “Yes, I am”. End ? No ! Since she is European, she is free, so she can have lovers if the husband is not around. Then comes the illumination. From now on, we will find a ring, and wear it so that there is a proof of our loving engagement to our dear husbands, who remained in France because they have to work to build our houses and feed the dog. Since we have had one weird guy, who really thought that if the woman is far from home, there is no reason she remains alone, because “it is not good to be without husband”. But nothing more after. However, it feels very awkward to have a ring around the left hand fourth finger!