I Watched ‘Loins of Punjab’ with White-Skinned NRI’s.

I had wanted to see ‘Loins of Punjab’, since the day it was released but every time I made plans to see it, it failed miserably. Either my friends were not in mood or they were not happy with the title, so I was wondering if I could give this movie a miss. Luckily I had a NRI cousin, who wanted to kill time and I decided to hijack him for this movie. My NRI cousins have no patience with 3-hour long Indian movies, so he was quite glad to accompany me for this desi-English-short-film. We booked the movie in glamour, a 40 seated mini theatre, in Bandra. What was surprising was 20 seats were occupied with white-skin foreigners. I knew this was a comedy film on ‘Desi Indian Idol’ show in New Jersey. I wanted to see Shabana as manipulative contestant. But I was quite distracted by these white-skinned NRI’s who were sitting in front of me, especially when Ayesha Dharker’s Jewish boyfriend, who looks a bit like Ralph Fiennes, sings Bollywood songs. He knows only two Hindi songs: ‘Ae dil hai mushkil jeen a yahan (Pyasa)’ and the ‘Indian National Anthem’. When the audience in the movie say “Gora..go back, this show is only for Indians”, to this dude could sing Hindi songs, I was wondering if these NRI’s would feel embarrassed and walk out from this theatre. But they sat through out the movie, enjoyed and laughed at those jokes and even stood up in union when their country man sang Indian National Anthem. There was a pleasant grin on everybody’s face when the winner was ‘Gora’ and they sat in the theatre till the last clip, savoring every scene long after all the Indians were out of the theatre. And surprise, surprise, surprise, the theatre was dirty with plastic bags and scattered popcorns under their seats, like it is supposed to be. When in India, white-skinned foreigners do as Indian do……help India keep its city filthy and dirty.