Salaam Namaste!

So Salaam Namaste. It was my first cinema trip in India. I went with those three hard-to-satisfy Israeli girls to the Raj Mandir theatre. I was a little disappointed frankly. Firstly I had heard stories about Indian cinema audiences. I had heard that they usually sing and shout and dance and laugh and get involved. Not this audience. Despite being a 6.30pm showing on a Friday, it felt pretty empty. It probably doesn’t help that Salaam Namaste (quick vague translation: ‘Peaceful Hello’) is a very ‘Westernised’ Bollywood effort. It managed to be a three hour epic love story with only one of the measly four songs having any ‘extra-spotting’ large-scale choreography.

The plot begins in New York and involves some top male chef meeting some empowered female radio DJ under some unlikely contrived circumstance. Like Jo Whiley shacking up with Jamie Oliver. They first begin to fall in love at an impossibly beautiful beach wedding in Australia (cue white girl’s asses in bikinis and long-haired traveller-extras jumping around at the back). They decide to rent a ridiculously expensive luxury beach house together in Australia.

But, now get this, they are going to have separate rooms!

For about a week.

Then they cave and get down to it in various romantic locations. My favourite being a large mosquito net next to a log fire in a garden.

Then she gets pregnant. He flips out, decides he wants to live a life free from the chains of marriage and children.

They split up but (get this!) decide to continue living together during the pregnancy.

Then he thinks she is having an affair (despite being nine months pregnant) which makes him realize that the past nine months of having a whingeing pregger in his ears has made him desperate to settle down. And it all ends rather happily with some ‘hilarious’ moments.

I liked the way that everyone they encountered in New York and Australia was Indian and spoke Hindi. And everyone in the background was white. Key points in the plot were in English so dullards like me could keep up.

E.g. "Hindi hindi hindi. I’m pregnant! Hind hindi. Etc."

The film in many ways was curiously Western in its attitudes. The songs barely had an Eastern feel. Every prop, meal, outfit, piece of furniture – it was all modern American. But seriously, throughout the entire sordid love affair and illegitimate pregnancy, where on earth were either of their parents?

It was rather confusing as a piece of entertaining propaganda. The prevailing messages seemed to be as follows:

1) Sex before marriage is (despite still being a tinsey bit frowned upon) is actually rather fun. Just make sure the person you are boning is halfway decent. Oh, and make sure you live a few hundred miles away from home.

2)Contraception is NOT 100% effective! Even the pill. So be afraid kids.

3)Indian people would like to be pale-skinned and live on a beach in Australia or a big city in America and have shit loads of money. And lots of sex. Nothing new there I suppose.

4)White people are fucking idiotic, easy lays and utterly morally bereft and untrustworthy. Cool.

5)Family life, despite everything we’ve just told you, is actually (paradoxically) still the preferred way thankyouverymuch. Oops, where are the parents? Nevermind.

Needless to say, at least two of the Israeli girls huffed and puffed throughout the entire film, whining about how bored they were. I didn’t ask them to stay!