I was lunching with a handful of my colleagues in a restaurant. It was pouring outside. After sweeping across topics like recession, Mayawati, taking virginity tests, illegal immigration, drought-floods, Amitabh Bacchan’s woes and the amateur media, we reached the haven of movies. Naturally filled with negativity, we recommended bad movies to each other. English movies dubbed in regional languages turned out to be the most entertaining choices. But dubbing reminded one colleague of “South movies” dubbed to Hindi.
North Indians, I have noticed, continue to cluster Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam as “South” irrespective of their level of education and ignorance. In the same way that the rest of Indians cluster Eastern Indians as “Assamese”. The “South movies” they spoke of are actually Telugu movies. So even though I tried to share my guilt with another Kannadiga in our group, it didn’t last long.
“Don No. 1 is a great movie,” one of them said. “But Mass man, Mass, the awesome guy rotates his leg and stirs a storm.”
Thank God they haven’t seen the Tsunami in Boss, I thought. I didn’t mind him vilifying Nagarjuna movies. So he is awesome enough to stir a storm with his gyrating thighs. Some of our heroes are gifted and some others have acquired many much-in-demand skills through sheer hard work.
“And Indra: The Tiger,” the guy continued. He clearly had a penchant for the total family entertainers made in “Andhra”. There was no way my loyalty would sit in obstipation while Chiranjeevi’s reputation as an actor and a star was being threatened. More importantly, I am not man enough to sit through his description of the NTR Jr. movies and his taurine roars.
“Indra is actually quite a good movie,” I told them in all earnestness, well-aware of my understatement. “The thing is, we have a blood-ridden drought-ridden region where factionists fight even today. You won’t get the context.”
“Like primitive tribes? With spears and sickles?”
Primitive. I spat to one side of my plate on the pretext of a mushroom under a tooth. Man is primitive. Been around for what, a few thousand years?
“It is like in Bihar,” I said.
They nodded. I was glad to see their openness to accepting anything grave about the lands of Bihar and Bengal. I escaped while the guilt continued to gnaw my mind.
My tardy defense mechanisms kicked in much later and made me realize, or rationalize, that I had just as much reason to feel guilt about Telugu movies as Kyle Broflowski had about torturing Jesus Christ or Muslims had about Al-Qaeda’s Jihad. So I encourage and sponsor terrible Telugu movies now and then. It is not like I am sponsoring the Mafia and I choose to ignore the fact that I am sponsoring stupidity. Who isn’t?