I Bollywood If I Could (Sari About the Pillai on Words)

well thanks to joelene, i've come across another gem of south africa. the gem: indian theater. up until last weekend, my only serious exposure (not counting eating dinner at 'falafal house' in downtown s.c.) to bollywood or indian music videos was the episode of the simpsons where abu stays with the simpsons.

that all changed dramatically this last weekend. y'see, joelene's position as p.a. to the ceo of umgeni water gets her all kinds of perks. umgeni water has boxes at all the sports stadia in durban and she's always being given tickets to shows. this time she took them, we hopped in my car and off we went to durban.

at dinner beforehand, i learned what i already knew. i can't eat spicy food. everyone in this country must grow up nursing off of a chilli pepper or something because nothing fazes the indian population around here and the sauces are created accordingly. this chain, "mugg & bean", had four sauces and joelene just put the hottest one on her french fries (chips) like it was ketchup (tomato paste). i had one fry and couldn't eat for five minutes. it hurt to breath.

before the show, we waited in the foyer and i played one of my favorite games, "find a white person", while i sat with joelene and slowly sipped my second jack daniels on the rocks in 15 minutes. why the sudden interest in booze? the synopsis made me do it: something like, "when the star of the show quits a week before opening night, the director must find a replacement. but the replacement is inexperienced so the director insists he must attend a film and acting school first." the plot turned out to be totally irrelevant. the whole thing was a vehicle for everyone to lip-sync and dance along to famous bollywood songs. the dancing was AMAZING. hours and hours of it, all of the indian hand-thingy style. the costumes were constantly changing and that was the show's one hiccup. instead of having one or two people come out and dance while everyone else was changing, they'd have dialogue. i might be the only one complaining though seeing as i might've been the only one who didn't get the impersonations of all the famous bollywood actors. the film ended where the whole school sequence was just a dream he had after falling asleep the moment after having the conversation about going to attend "famous film school". i think. it was complicated.

one last thing to comment on was that the cast was mixed. it had several black women and men and even a white girl. regardless of skin color, almost all of them at one point had to lip-sync the words of some of the songs in hindi. but while they could all do the indian style moves, make no mistake, it was the indian girls (and guys) who could really really move their feet and hands. anyone that comes here has to experience one of these shows.