As the world views us !

  Travelling economy strapped to your seat on a american airline that makes you pay for your drink at 39,000ft, doesn't leave one with too many options but to pay up. Good enterprise but shitty if you'ev wiped out your life savings to buy the ticket. Now, with no chance of any alcoholic beverage its hard not to stay away from your inflight options that could range from hitting on a air hostess, who could well be my mother's age or watch how i met your mother season outdated, which was downloaded and shared in the last decade before it was conceptualised ( is that possible!? wait i see a series in the making here). Okay this usually happens when your brain doesn't adjust to the cabin pressure, you start to imagine things, horrible things like being Michael    jackson's crotch grabbing hand ( wait is that possible too!! hmmmmm.) Now, back on the original flight path after a brief course alteration to talk of what you do when on a flight with no money (wait how did i get on that flight!! shit this is freaking me out). okay, after touch screening my options i choose to entertain my self with a film called "The last marigold hotel " which i think should have been the titled "i am the director of this movie and this is my last film but the hotel is still operational".  The film has a stellar cast of british greats and a boy named Dev Patel who should have stayed in birmingham or where ever he's from and not be forced on us by the brits as the slumdog or even a hot dog ! Also there were some indian actors trying hard to be indian (is that even possible, oh! wait, there's Dev Patel). So i decided to give danny's boy a chance again ( we indians do believe in lending the other cheek, maybe this could be used as a marketing gimmick for a indian s&m store  specialising in kama-masochism). The film had a good premise and a chance to be something special but it becomes a travel catalogue for brit tourist looking from cheap hip replacements ( medical tourism it seems is big business that can afford a two hour corporate film ). I am surprised that the west still has no real idea of modern india or maybe they still have this anglo colonial antheroplogytical approach to third world tribes. The film represented a world I live in but not that I recognise even if I wore a turban, climbed a rope and ate aloo parathas all day. You can not grasp the soul of this nation from eating at a Indian restaurant in Birmingham that sends you extra pickle with every home delivery, run by immigrants from a village in patialla or by taking a trip to Rajasthan . It's  a different thing to have a Merchant Ivory production showcase a colonially suppressed india per independence or a Salam Bombay showing the plight of the poor in a country where two square meals are a luxury and so is the new turbo charged Bentley. The last marigold hotel lacks the vibrance of the flower or the country it attempts to showcase with it's tuk -tuk version of a bad travel log for European  geriatrics looking for dal makhani severed by a someone who speaks like Appu in the Simpsons. The pain is deep felt when the world views us as these these conner store, floor scrubbing under privileged people who live in abject poverty of intelligence. Every country has its stereo types, like the beer guzzling, wife beating, bloke from the north of england who can't seem to form a coherent sentence in english, even if his life depended on it  or the east ender who seems to have no idea of operating a compass.  Indian cinema needs a voice, a standard and the content that counters these idiotic western perceptions or we will always be subjected to being called the slum(dwelling)dog. Its fantastic when countries like iran, hong kong, brazil challenge western perceptions with magnificent cinema and get the so called first world to get off their formulated thinking shit pots and think before they type cast cultures. countries like this celebrate their tradition, embrace their cultural diversity, explore the changing patterns and tell stories about real people that are not afraid to speak in their own voice. We on the other hand are only concerned with box office figures, a song with some pelvic thrusts and playing call centre characters who speak like inter galactic space lords from the hinter land. Lets stop welcoming foreigners with marigold flowers or we will end like an island on hawaii with bad cinema where culture surfers fear even the large tub of free pop corn( i think that's a possibility). Just then, at that very moment the air hostess  acknowledges my plight and slips me a free gin and tonic.   yudhishtar urs