Is That Thunder I hear?

A little while back, I watched the 2001 Bollywood film Monsoon Wedding from director Mira Nair. It stars Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, and many others. The movie depicts a most likely upper class Indian family that is preparing for the wedding of their only daughter, Aditi, who has been arranged to be married to a man named Hemant Rai that lives in Texas. Young Aditi has a deep dark secret though. She is involved with another man, who is a popular television personality and is also married. We watch Aditi go through ups and downs during the last week before her wedding, even eventually telling Hemant her secret, and finally the wedding happens an, even eventually telling Hemant her secret, and finally the wedding happens anyway.

Though this is not one of the best Bollywood movies that I have watched thus far, there were a couple of elements that interested me. The first one is a cultural element. I thought it was interesting that the arranged marriage prevailed in the end of the movie, instead of the affair. This seems to show a difference between the Indian culture and American culture because I think that sometimes Americans are looking for and are okay with the idea of the “bad” affair prevailing in the end. Generally, the woman would leave the man she barely knew and was arranged to be married to for the passion that the other relationship offers, but that was not the case in this movie. I thought it was a beautiful element that Hemant forgave Aditi and there was some foreshadowing that insinuated that this arranged marriage would develop into a romantic relationship and even a great marriage someday. The other element that I thought was interesting was the importance of what color represented in parts of the movie. There was a scene in which Adit’s father sees that white canopies had been put up for the wedding and he thought it looked like a funeral. It was also clear that Aditi’s dress has a lot of bright colors in it as well. It became clear to me that this shows a huge disctinction between American and Indian weddings because Americans try and decorate with as much white as possible at weddings because it symbolizes purity and new beginnings. For this culture, it symbolizes death.

Overall, I wouldn’t give the film two thumbs up, but it would be worth watching on a rainy day when there is not much to do!

~Kahle :)