India Uncut

I'm a huge fan of Jai Arjun Singh's writings on cinema, but I must confess here that my favourite bits of his writing are not about what happens on the screen, but about what happens in the hall. In a post about Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, he writes:

One man spent half the film with his cellphone aimed at the screen, taking photos or videos; he recorded the entire “Where’s the Party Tonight?” song and then, irritatingly, played it back later, drowning out the sound from a subsequent scene.

Young boys in my row burst into orgasmic yelps each time there was anything resembling an innuendo in the dialogue, or if a woman appeared in a low-cut blouse. At one point Rani tells Shah Rukh, “Sorry, galti se dab gaya.” (She made an unintended cellphone call.) “Galti se dab gaya!!!!” screamed the lads ecstatically, and the collective outburst reminded me of Arthur Clarke’s short story “Love that Universe”, wherein billions of people are asked to synchronize their love-making so that the combined orgasms send out a crucial energy signal to a distant civilisation.

Ah, in case I forget, I'm also a huge fan of low-cut blouses. As Mother Teresa once remarked, "Come, my love, fix your eyes like rubies/ on my lovely, lovely ____."

It's my favourite couplet of hers, and compares favourably to Beethoven's poems. No?