I Discover Bollywood

This probably should have been the very first thing I posted.  Why the obsession with Indian films?  Unlike so many people for whom these movies mean so much, I wasn't raised with them.  I have no fond family memories of sitting around the tv watching Deewar, or of being one of the hundreds of millions who saw Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge in a crowded theater.  I came late to the party, without an invitation and without any connections to these films or the culture which celebrates them.

I saw my first Indian film before I knew what an Indian film was.  In high school, bored and flipping through the channels late at night, I caught a brief glimpse of a man staring in perplexed disappointment at a canopy of marigolds, petals showering down as he yelled over the phone.  Though I changed the channel that night, the film--Monsoon Wedding--later became the one I love best.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college, when my grandparents, for reasons I still can't fathom, suggested we see Bend It Like Beckham at a small theater in Greenbelt.  When the film ended, one thing stood out: an intensely overwhelming desire to experience more of what I had just seen.  The actors, the music, even the food in the film became my new raison d'etre.  I purchased the soundtrack, forcing my roommates to listen to encore after encore of "Jind Mahi" and "Tere Bin Nahin Lagda Dil."  I hunted down Indian restaurants, and became jealous of the time my grandparents had spent in Calcutta and Darjeeling, decades before I was even born.  I craved India.  A year later a roommate offered me use of her DVD collection while she was away on spring break.  The only film I saw on her shelf was Devdas.  I watched it every day.  I was in love.

Starting a blog seems the most reasonable thing I can do.  I'm long past the point where my friends will tolerate my need to listen to nothing but film soundtracks, or my spiels on Saif Ali Khan's script choices.  I need a place where I can get everything out, where people can take it or leave it without hurting my feelings.  I want to share the things I love, the films and songs that I find beautiful and which make me, above all else, indescribably happy.  This is my way of sharing my passion with the great big world, and if even one person takes away from this the idea that this "stuff" is worth watching, I'll be overjoyed.