My Bollywood Adventure

Thursday March 11- The day after my birthday was just a normal, average, ordinary kind of day. I worked on homework and, because the hike was on my room's laundry day, I had no clean clothes. It was not my laundry day but I washed my clothes late at night anyways but the fact that I had no clothes to wear means that I didn't leave the Centre all day.

Friday March 12- Today was a class day to make up for the day that we missed on Tuesday. After class we went to what is probably my favorite museum in London. When I say the name of it, you may wonder why I liked it so much, but it was just so good. It is the Imperial War Museum. We went to this museum in my Political Science class since we just finished discussing the World Wars in lectures. I got so much out of our visit to the WW1 and WW2 exhibits having learned about them before hand and it was so much more interesting than just me wandering around an art museum seeing pretty colors.

One of the first things we saw was an exhibit showing all the propaganda used in England in the First World War. At first, the war was supposed to last 6 months at most, but when it dragged on and on moral sank fast and the support of the war began to wane thin. Posters like this were supposed to rally more men into enlisting and instill the pride of the English back into the people. This poster is my favorite one, I just love it :] As you can see it is targeted towards the young women in Britain. I wonder how many young men went to fight because their girl told them to? Would this still work today? I assumed that all posters would be like the Uncle Sam ones, speaking to the young men, but there were posters towards everyone and using every emotion to get to you, guilt, love, hate, pride, patriotism, bandwagoning, peer pressure... everything was used and must have been successful!

There was one room that was wall papered with street signs and direction signs from the war. Some were street signs of bombed out towns, some were mile markers, some in French, some had horrible names (Suicide Lane, End of Hope RD...) This one is a warning sign close to the enemy lines.


The part that most intrigued me was the bit on nurses in WW1. Nurses were the only women allowed near the battles and they had to have been so brave. There was one nurse I learned about, Edith Carell, who is now one of my heros. She was captured and taken to a POW camp in Germany during WW2 where she helped over 200 prisoners escape back to England. She and a few of her helpers were beheaded for doing that. Wonder if I could be so brave if I were her.


Another part that I really loved for some strange reason was the exhibit on the children in the war. It was so sad reading about the struggles of children and how they were shipped out of the cities to escape the Blitz in WW2, one story that I cried while reading was about a ship load of evacuated children sailing to America was torpedoed and every child died. If I was the mother of one of those children I don't think I could live with myself for having sent them away. It was interesting to see the war from the child's perspective.

This is me in a WW2 air-raid helmet with a bomb shelter behind me. If I had lived in this time, this is the permanent scared face i would have had :] All in all, it is my favorite museum and I will be going back to the other war exhibits, maybe even the holocaust exhibit if I can stomach it, another time.

Saturday March 13- I finally got to do something that I have been trying to do for weeks today, I saw a Bollywood movie on the big screen!! Let me tell you, it has been a long hard journey to see this movie! My wonderful old roommate, Eleanor (who is the person to introduce me to Bollywood), told me about this film. This was almost a month ago when she told me but because of classes being flipped around, midterms, and class, I have not been able to go. Today was the last day it was in the cinema so I simply HAD to go see it. The only place it was showing at a reasonable time was at a cinema that took just short of an hour to get there. We are not supposed to be out by ourselves for very long but 2 of my roommates were nice enough to join me to the cinema. They were going to see "Alice in Wonderland" while I saw my movie, "My Name is Khan." That was the plan at least, but it did not work out.
First, I had to take a test for my religion class and shower before we left at 10:50am and the test took longer than expected so we were late leaving. Then we got lost coming out of the tube station and walked a half an hour towards the wrong cinema. Then we had to walk in the other correct directions for close to an hour. When we finally got to the proper cinema, my movie (which started 40 minutes before theirs did, had already been going for 50 minutes and "Alice in Wonderland" had started too. Not to be deterred from seeing my movie, we all bought tickets to the next showing of "Alice" which was for 1pm and I bought a ticket to the next showing of "Khan" at 5:40pm. It was 12:20 so we decided to get lunch at Nando's. I love Nando's. I was very discouraged from having missed my preferred movie time and scared to be at the cinema by myself for so long (the others had to go back to take the test) but Nando's relaxed me. I was able to enjoy "Alice" it was actually very good. I did not expect to like it but I did. After the movie we figured out the bus schedule to get to the tube stop and they left. I still had almost 3 hours to kill before my movie started. Good thing the cinema was in a shopping centre! I had no problem shopping for 3 hours while waiting :] I found a great store where I bought a cute new jacket for my Paris trip and new jeans since mine have almost all ripped. After eating dinner, reading a few books at a bookstore, it was time for my much a waited and anticipated and better-be-worth-my-time-and-effort movie :]
"My Name is Khan" exceeded all my expectations and was definitely worth all the time and effort put in. It is the story of a family with a Muslim father who are persecuted and the son murdered because of prejudice after 9/11. My favorite Bollywood actor, Shah Rukh Khan, was the father and was absolutely amazing. I can't tell you all the details of the plot (you'll have to see it for yourself!) but I can say that he deserves ever award ever made for his performance. I have never cried so much in a movie, and I cry in every movie. My jacket was still wet from my tears hours after the movie ended. Such a great film. If you want a well acted, deep, meaningful, and thought provoking film, see this one. It is unlike any movie I have seen. For one thing, there were no musical numbers like I have become accustomed to in Bollywood movies. There was also an Intermission. I knew that each Bollywood movie has intermissions, I just never experienced one while in a theatre. It was pretty neat. The lights came on, people went out to use the bathroom and get snacks, and the theatre played the "Goldfinger" James Bond soundtrack. Very interesting indeed. Wish I could see it again in theatres, guess I'll just have to wait for it to come out on DVD.
The adventure does not end with finally seeing this amazing film! After leaving the theatre, I got onto the planned bus to take me back to the tube stop, but I was still reminiscing and thinking about my movie that I missed my stop. Cursing myself, I got off at the next stop planning on back tracking but I saw a sign to a different tube stop that said was closer than my planned one. I decided to be adventurous and wander by myself, alone, at 10:00 at night, in a strange part of town, south of the River Thames, to an unknown tube stop. Looking back this was not one of my smartest ideas ever, but I survived. After wandering around for a little bit I found the stop and got on. Let me tell you, I was never so relieved to see anything like I was when I saw the Underground sign. After sitting down all safe and sound, I was hit on by a crazy Asian man who spoke with a German accent, had braces with bright blue elastics on them, and answered his phone in Russian. Never before have I seen such a mix of cultures and I doubt I will again. I do not plan on ever again breaking the rule of being out alone at night, but I am glad I could see such a wonderful film and lived to tell about it :] My next adventure awaits me in Paris so au revoir! And have a great day :]