Bollywood

There was a time in my life, for a period of about a year, I was addicted to Hindi movies. It all started when I saw the excitement in my late niece, Erlinna, when the movie Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was showing on TV. I was playing mahjong at the time, and was wondering why she was so excited. I took note of the title of that movie, and when I returned to Brunei after the holidays, I went to the shop to buy the VCD. I surprised myself for the endurance to be able to survive the entire 3 hours of the movie. It was indeed a good movie.

Then the curiosity got the better of me, and I started exploring other Hindi movies. This movie, that movie, and it soon became an evening routine for me to be glued to my TV almost every evening. I have forgotten most of the titles, except for some such as Maan and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. But after a while, somehow my interest in Hindi movies began to fade. You see, after watching so many Hindi movies, I reached a point where I could almost predict the endings, perhaps up to 90% accuracy; and that was just a deal breaker. I sometimes would like to be surprised by the ending, if you know what I mean. 

A typical Hindi movie usually has everything in it—it has the funny parts, it has the sad parts, it has fightings too, and of course a ton of songs and dancing. Heck, they can take up to acres and acres to dance a single song! As far as I know, nobody has come up with an acceptable explanation where the music is from when they start to sing and dance.

But this post is not really about Hindi movies; and I'm guessing that you already know that, right? I raised the story about Hindi movies to make a point, which is this: a story may be very good when you hear or see it for the first time, except for some isolated cases, like the movie Top Gun which I've seen perhaps at least 50 times. But if you keep hearing and seeing the same movie over and over again, there is a kind of exhaustion, thus resulting in finding even the most exciting movie rather boring! If you have seen enough Hindi movies, I think it's just a matter of time when you will become tired of it. The stories are not exactly the same, of course, yet they are very similar.

Well, you know what, this post has a similar ring to the Hindi movies. About 4 years ago to the day,  I posted an article entitled Surviving A Heart Attack. I provided a link to that article in my facebook page, and apparently it almost killed my niece, Ramona Jane, because of uncontrollable laughter!

Today, I'm gonna do the Bollywood thing too; but this time the main character is not me. Instead, it's my daughter, Jamie. She had the shock of her life this evening when she was seated on the toilet. A baby monitor lizard (biawak) appeared in her toilet bowl. How it got there is still a mystery, although I did have a possible explanation in my earlier post. I'm not sure if JJ will have nightmares about the monitor lizard after this. But at least there is variety in her life now—she has baby monitor lizard to worry about apart from spiders.

But anyway, both JJ and I have survived a heart attack from our respective experience. And if the next visit by a monitor lizard is in any way based on a 4-year interval, the next visit will be in 2020. I wonder if next in line will be Mia? I guess I just have to ensure that she keeps up with regular exercise to make sure that her heart is up to the challenge.

I know I said Bollywood movies no longer excite me like before, but somehow this story about a possible return visit by the baby monitor lizard is something that I'm looking forward to!