India (Frommer's, 4th Edition) - Keith Bain [40]
These are probably more likely to be the types of films that provide insight into what India looks and feels like—as does, paradoxically, the British film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), directed by Danny Boyle and codirected in India by Loveleen Tandan. If you want a deep, hard look at the social consciousness of the country, look to the wonderful works of Mira Nair, who has crafted fantastic entertainments that tug at the heartstrings and probe many issues without stooping to cheap preachy politicking (the notable exception being her recent work, The Namesake, 2007). You would be amiss not to see her Salaam Bombay! (1988), about the life of a group of Mumbai street urchins, and Monsoon Wedding (2001), a beautiful and poignant romantic comedy about a well-to-do Delhiite family dealing with generational conflicts that complicate traditional marriage arrangements. Work on the much-vaunted film version of Shantaram, which Nair is directing, came to a grinding halt in 2007 due to a Writer’s Guild strike, but there is talk of production commencing in 2010; based on the riveting best-selling novel (see above), the Johnny Depp–headliner is destined to take the world by storm—if it ever gets made.
Another top-rated woman director to look for is Deepa Mehta, whose trilogy Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005) are superbly moving works of high-grade cinema—and certainly preferable to her slightly irritating and kitschy Bollywood/Hollywood (2002), set in Canada.
Art listings aside, playing in a theater near you in any city in India will be a film in which the rich hero meets the poor heroine and falls almost instantly in love. He will declare this in song, and the scene will change to New Zealand, Switzerland, or Southeast Asia, depending on which country is most eager to attract the new beneficiaries of India’s globalization. The couple will find obstacles put in their path, some by their parents and others by the villain, who will at some point have cast his lecherous eyes on the heroine. Fairly standardized violence will follow—after this comes a misunderstanding that paves the way for another song expressing the grief of betrayal or the pain of parting or that sets up what the industry calls an “item number” (which may have derived from Mumbai slang for a pretty young thing, or an “item”) in which a young dancer performs the equivalent of a pole dance for the audience. When the air is cleared, justice and peace have returned to the world, the good have been rewarded, and the villains are dead or rounded up. At the film’s end, you will either be floored by the extravagant color, ravished by floods of emotion, and converted to another way of telling stories; or you will be repulsed by excess and sickened by melodrama and the way in which Caucasian extras are used to represent the decadent sexualized Other. But you will not be unmoved.
Chapter 3: Planning Your Trip to India
Once the playing fields of only die-hard budget New Age travelers, India has in the past decade come into its own for top-end travelers who want to be pampered and rejuvenated as well as spiritually and culturally challenged. Given its vast size, the majority of India’s top attractions are remarkably easy to get to, using a clever combination of internal flights or long-haul train journeys and chauffeur-driven cars (no sane traveler would self-drive). With your own car and driver, it’s also simple (and increasingly recommended) to get off the beaten track, to avoid the crowds, and perhaps discover India as it was just a few years ago. Hotels, particularly in the heritage category, offer excellent value-for-money in Western terms, and every variety of accommodation, from long-term house rentals to houseboats and homestays, is available in a range of price categories. You will dine, or rather feast, on unique and exceptional flavors, and find yourself overwhelmed by the enormous variety of cuisines; vegetarians will rejoice and carnivores might find themselves rediscovering the pleasures of “pure veg” dining. Despite a number of potential health concerns,