Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

On a cold winter night, in the streets of the small town of Luzern, while the snow gently spreads its flakes, an Indian man and a French girl are walking and conversing cheerfully. Our as much as nature allows: while her teeth are chattering, his jaw seems to be completely clenched by the cold... 

Suddenly the man interrupts the conversation: “So, are we gonna play it Indian style or Swiss style?” The time the message reaches his colleague’s brain, and she wonders what the heck he is talking about, she realizes that he is no longer by her side. So she turns to see where he might be and... he is by the signal, pressing the button for the red light to come. She then looks around her and realizes that she is... in the middle of the crosswalk! And the signal? But what signal? In these empty streets it didn’t even cross her mind to look for a signal! 

It’s the world upside down, almost! The Indian one crossing wisely like a (German) Swiss and the French one wildly like an Indian. Well, ‘almost’ because one needs to know that Parisians actually do not care much about signals nor crosswalks – and all that would actually be the drivers’ fault!* 

Thus the Parisian is better prepared to India than the Luzerner or the Hamburger (or any German). This being said, nothing really prepares a non-Indian to street-crossing in the chaos of Indian traffic where pedestrians have to compete with animals, cars travelling in the wrong direction, buses that never stop. The best (safest) way to cross is to stick to an Indian (and in a way that he would get hit first)... (sticking to a cow also works but it can take a long time because they often decide that the middle of the street is in fact ‘the place to be’...). 

* “When it comes to cars and pedestrians, all Parisians know that a car won’t stop for a pedestrian. Especially at a pedestrian crossing. A car which actually stops at a pedestrian crossing shall be honked at and its driver immediately suspected of homosexuality. Knowing that they don’t belong at pedestrian crossings, Parisians cross the street mostly randomly. So it’s only logically that Parisians cross the street whenever they feel like it or whenever there is a break in traffic.” Source: http://www.o-chateau.com/stuff-parisians-like/crossing-the-street-in-paris.html

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.)