Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Day Twelve

Today's happiness came from going for a movie with one of my best friends. As we later observed, we have been friends for 13 years now and not once have we fought. Aah, those lovely childhood friendships. I call her Gosu, short for Gosudasvenoy, short for Komitet Gosudasvenoy Besopasnosty.

Gosu and I went for a hindi movie called 'Queen'. It was about a timid girl from Rajori, Delhi whose family is all set to get her married when her pragmatic fiance calls off the wedding. Overcome with grief and disbelief, she decides to use her flight ticket and go on her honeymoon to Paris and Amsterdam all by herself. There, she's initially lost not knowing her whereabouts or the language. However, she's befriended by a single-mom-socialite maid who works at the hotel she's staying in (and who coincidentally shares her fiance's name). She now has a tour guide and ends up having a great time with her. A few days later, she says a highly sentimental goodbye to her new-found friend and boards a train to Amsterdam.
Intermission
In Amsterdam, she finds herself at a hostel where she's forced to share a room with three other guys (1 Russian, 1 French and 1 Japanese). After ignoring them and refusing to sleep in the same room for the first couple of days, she warms up to them and begins to unwind her uptight little heinie. Her three roommates turn out to be sweet and fun- resulting in overnight deep bonds of friendship between them all. They spend their days traveling on a budget and discovering Amsterdam. OOOH ze blossomings of ze foreign friendships ooooooh. There's an small love angle with a cute Italian cook who talks passionately about food, who challenges her to make money by selling Indian food at a fair. So she makes pani puri which sells like popcorn. Her good-for-nothing fiance shows up and tries to win her back, but she's too busy having fun with her friends to pay him any attention. It's soon time to part ways and more sentimental goodbyes are said.
She goes back to India, returns her engagement ring to said fiance and walks away happily toward her home to upload pictures on facebook from her adventures.

I forgot to mention that her name is Rani, which translates to Queen in English.

Even though this story sounds silly and sad, it was well shot, had some interesting dialogue and a steady stream of sad jokes and good music. Gosu and I were besides ourselves with laughter and had all of the tiny cinema hall straining their heads to look for the source of this incessant barrage of cackling.

My picture for today are the seats we sat in.
(Did I mention we bought the cheapest tickets and sat right up front?)


1 comment:

Haddock said...

The success of the movie can be attributed to three things, shooting at the proper locations, (be it Delhi, or Paris or Amsterdam) each character underplaying their roles, and a good director.