Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

During my recent stay in France I was taken to see a movie on... guess what... India! It's crazy you know, it’s like when I’m taken to eat Indian food... Like I am in France for a few days and I am so addicted to curry that I can no longer sustain without! But in fact it is something completely different I think. It just makes my friend happy to share a piece of India with me in memory of all the pieces of India we shared together in India. So I eat with pleasure my naans without butter (this scene in an Indian restaurant run by Sri Lankans in Paris, when I once asked for a butter naan and they did not have it. Cheese naan yes but no butter naan (that’s a true example of that thing called adaptation, since they are in France !). Bah you take a naan and you put butter on it!). 

So I went to the theater. And there, nice surprise! It was a film not on India but in India. It was first and foremost a love story (and I like love stories) which takes place in the country of sadhus and gurus, the film focusing on these two “aspects” of Indian spirituality (offering a lot of images of the Kumbh mela (the gathering of millions of sadhus) and Amma Cuddles (a guru from Kerala who changes people’s lives by embracing them)). Is it cliché? I would ask “how can one show India in a one and half hour movie without clichés?”

Anyway, for me, it is rather the version of a foreigner in search of spirituality in India and the film makes you discover what he/she would be given to discover in real life (and not really more than that, except if he/she goes on a real and long quest). No, really, I found the description of these phenomena quite right and the images very beautiful. 

I did not understand the confusion between Delhi and Mumbai, the film leading you to believe that the scenes shot in the capital were taking place in Mumbai, and found a little bizarre to put plans of Udaipur during the trip to Kerala. But these are details!

To sum up, this movie kind of made me want to go back to India! (desire which usually decreases as the days pass in France ;-)). 

And on poverty, which remains the ultimate “cliché”, it is shown only once, with poor people standing at a junction – and there are poor people standing at junctions – and I found the dialogue interesting. It gives something like this:

• The foreigner: and these guys, life, how do they take it?
• The Indian guy: Oh well you know for them there are several lives. This life is a draft, they are learning for the next one.

(Some might say it is a bit of a light, easy comment - at least in a movie made by a non-Indian guy - but at least no one can say that the movie focuses on misery.)

The simplest solutions (and less expensive) are often the best, and Indians know it. Where a French doctor cuts you to drain an abscess of its pus and leaves your leg with a hole that takes weeks to scar, my Indian cleaning lady applies an onion... And when I mentioned the said onion to the said doctor (found this to be interesting small talk while he was butchering me), I replied “well, and why not a banana while you’re at it??”*. Which brings us to... 

... if you have something stuck in your tummy (for example a piece of stolen jewelry), the most effective way to get out is to eat bananas until you burst. It is recommended to down at least 48 fruits to get the desired result. So here is what happens from time to time to Indian hungry thieves (source). But be careful! If you read this post and are suffering from constipation, wait a minute before jumping on the first banana you see! It is indeed necessary to choose a very (or even overripe) one; otherwise it will just make things worse as not ready bananas have a constipation effect... 

And to get back to my French doctor – whom I almost believed when he mentioned bananas but who was actually “kidding” – bananas do have virtues for the skin*! You can brush yourself with its skin to treat shallow burns, nettle and mosquito bites; make a dressing of banana peel to cure warts (in which case you must also be armed with patience since natural remedies being effective slowly but surely, it takes 3 weeks); use the inside of the skin to remove black spots, and its flesh to make nourishing masks for the face (and the hair, then mixed with olive oil).

And it’s an anti-depressant! But be careful! If you read this post and suffer from acne or/and depression, wait a minute before jumping on the first banana regime you see! Indeed, you should know that bananas contain a lot of sugar (two bananas would bring a sufficient caloric intake for a 90-minute effort) and so one a day is enough – at least according to my gynec who, while I was discovering by myself the anti-nausea effects of the fruit during the first trimester of pregnancy and ate almost only bananas, was discovering (with horror) the kilos piling up... 

* I will get back in a future post to this crazy adventure of my abscess... 

** Source: http://www.savemybrain.net/v2/2010/10/25/la-banane-un-produit-miracle-15009423/