What to expect when you're expecting to do some quantitative research in rural Nepal: Part 2

So, having described some of the obstacles to actually finding these kids, I’ll flesh out what the survey process actually looks like, from start to finish.

Step 1: Approach the house unannounced. Call the mother away from her chores to ask if she has “any children ages 14-21 years old in their home.” The woman considers her children for a moment and replies no, she doesn’t.

Step 2: Repeat the question. She might change her mind.

Step 3: Lure the boy or girl close enough to explain the survey. If they are under 18, request their mother or father to sign the consent document. *Note: this is a particularly cruel part of the process, as many parents are illiterate and writing their own name is embarrassing task.* They take a moment to wash their hands for this special occasion, wiping them on their clothes to dry. They regard the pencil and paper with alarm, as if the proffered objects are snakes, or a pistol. They write it painstakingly, and hand the paper back to us proudly and a little relieved, at which point I must inform them that they have to sign their name three more times. Sometimes, they just bag the whole enterprise and start making scribbles across the page.

Step 4: Conduct the survey. Interviews and surveying are quite public events in Nepal. Kids, relatives, and utter strangers want to listen in; but this poses a problem when the survey contains sensitive subject matter, as these people are generally just putting their nose in where it doesn’t belong.  Two options for dealing with unwanted spectators. You can a) hatch a diversion, or b) shoo them away. I am unfailingly the bait for the former strategy. I lure the onlookers away from the interview, and showcase my outrageously bad Nepali skills. During this time, I refer to a script I’ve developed, which includes everything they could possibly ask me during this brief interaction. I’m from the United States. America. Yes, I like Nepal very much. Yes, I suppose I could marry your son. Is he handsome? I’m 27 years old. Yes, I know its past time to have children, don’t rush me. Yes, I have gray hair, and no, I will not dye it. 

Step 5: At the conclusion of the survey, extricate yourself delicately from the situation. Our questionnaire, because it focuses on issues of mental health and identity, includes some sensitive questions, compelling the kids to reflect a little bit on their own emotions. Some teens flippantly answer the questions, as if they’ve never experienced any symptoms of depression or anxiety first hand and can’t be bothered with it. (I’m usually incredulous with these types—what teenager hasn’t “been irritable with others in the last two weeks?” Clearly they are in self-denial.) Other kids need to take a few moments to compose themselves; every prompt an unwelcome ghost of the darkness that threatens to choke out the light. 

Step 6: Give yourself some poorly composed justification of why you’re doing this research in the first place. It’s at these times when I feel like a spectator of human suffering—like the nosy neighbor wielding binocs, peeping in an achingly personal expose from their window—not an ethnographer. I can’t offer them any reprieve; I only come to put hash-marks on paper, the contents of their bared souls I check into neat boxes. After such an intimate exchange, it seems rather churlish just to get up and walk out, as if you don’t have to do 299 more of just the same, and their experiences aren’t just a tiny cog of a large statistical jigsaw. The post-survey climate requires some validation.  Some reassurance that this excavation of their emotions wasn’t to no end, and that you appreciated them giving official authorization to mine pieces of their life. In lewder terms, do some pillow talk. 

Because in a way, the ethnographic encounter is like a romance, and survey research a one-night stand. You must, on a smaller scale of course, and keeping your hands to yourself, establish an element of trust, and capitalize on that tenuous trust in order to get what you came for—reliable data. Sometimes it feels manipulative. Sometimes exploitative. Sometimes you have to tiptoe out of the room before the subject begins to openly regret the encounter, with a muttered "I'll call you" or "We'll talk later." And true to expectations of all bad one-night lays, we rarely do. 

But, ultimately, I can’t say that this trust is altogether misplaced. Something will come of it. Because, unlike a snooping neighbor, after witnessing this sort of suffering, we will phone the authorities. Intervention is at hand, but evidence must be collected and presented. And the basis for that bond between researcher and subject, however slight, must be made manifest. It must be followed through as something more than a blurb on my resume and a few published articles to advance a career. Something so that, through this brief acquaintance forged over several pages of checklists, we together have contributed to the alleviation of the suffering of others. Something. 

What to expect when you're expecting to do some quantitative research in rural Nepal: Part 1

Many of you (OK, let’s be honest, only some of you) have asked the following, very appropriate question: What exactly are you doing over there in Nepal?

The answer, right now, is a multitude of different things and they include, but are not restricted to: Running away from small children who believe that I, on account of my white skin, have pockets full of candy; and roaming around rural villages with a saddle-bag that is (in reality) stuffed with survey packets and dull pencils.

However, currently, our main objective is to collect 300 questionnaires from teenagers about their economic status, emotions, and ideas about caste-ism. Teenagers, and this may come as a surprise, are particularly… challenging. They are simply too cool. Kids are easy. They can be lured by candy. Adults are easy. Playing on their compulsion to chastise, all a foreigner need do is make cultural blunder before they feel it’s their moral obligation to correct you. With finesse, such a reprimand can quickly transform into a mutually agreeable conversation about the weather, kids these days, or the perils of drinking un-boiled milk. Kids want you to teach them. Adults want to teach you. But teenagers… they want NOTHING to do with you.

I’m pretty sure I now know how it feels to be a Grade 3 Creeper, as we spend considerable effort strategizing about “how to get closer to the teens.” We’ve tried offering candy and treats; we have followed them home; we have asked their friends to tell us the whereabouts of other friends; we have laid in wait outside the school, ready to pick off the stragglers at recess; we have loitered near playgrounds and soccer fields. Yes, our methods in finding these 300 consenting kids to survey certainly smack of sexual predation, though it truly is ethnographic work. I think we’ll get a van for next field season.

Tuberculosis and Healthcare Inequalities: It gets personal

I had tabled this particular blogpost because I felt it wasn't quite complete enough to tackle the controversy that I'm trying to expose. But as this blogs is merely a platform for an exercise in writing, I thought I'd post it in hopes for a lively discussion or searing critiques. 

I’ve always loved a good story, particularly when the subject matter revolves around my favorite celebrity—me.  To start with, I realize my fortune; I don’t have any serious medical conditions and I have health insurance. But sometimes, I want sympathy, I want shock value, and saying you’ve got a sore back when you just finished 5 rounds of disco-bowl doesn’t usually make friends and family come running with a heating pad, foot rubs, and chicken noodle soup. So imagine my incredulity when I tested positive for TB.

This Christmas, when I was in town, I visited my pediatrician, whom I still visit occasionally for inexplicable reasons (mostly because he wears a teddy bear bow-tie) due to a persistent cough and cold. My mother strongly suggested that I get a TB skin test as well, in the same way that she strongly suggested my sophomore year that I wear a helmet and hockey pads while riding in the car with my girlfriends. That being said, I brushed her off initially, but then, on a whim, decided to request it anyways.

Three days later, I came back in with an angry, red lump underneath the skin of my forearm. It was clear. I was positive for the TB bacteria. He called the public health department and ordered a blood test and a chest X-ray, looking wide-eyed. As one of the only positive results in his three decades of practice, I’m pretty sure my case was an exciting break from his routine of baby hernias and snotty noses. After all, most pediatric patients don’t run in high risk circles. Despite my questionable choices in friends, migrant laborers and Russian prison inmates have unfortunately heretofore not been a part of my immediate social network.

But I have sat on a bus so crowded that people clung to the sides, and children laid over rows of seats like plywood. I suppose in that circumstance, an uncovered cough could be problematic. As my skin reaction continued to swell, I thought about all the famous noteworthies who succumbed to TB. Emily Bronte, King Tut, Nicole Kidman’s character from Moulin Rouge, and Doc Holliday, the famous gunslinger from OK Corral. A sanitarium would be the perfect setting for a Gothic romance novel, I fantasized! They called it consumption at the time, which sounds a lot… wetter.

My X-ray, sputum test, and blood work all came back negative. I have the TB bacteria inside of me, but no active infection. I AM NOT CONTAGIOUS.

But, as the reality and scope of the disease sank home, my nonchalance over a potential 9 month round of antibiotics sickened me. I was ashamed. I was treating a potential TB infection as a joke, a ploy for attention and some well-placed references to Florence Nightingale.

But it’s not. It’s not a joke. It was only a joke to me because I’m a lucky one. Put simply, I’m healthy, I’m young, I’m well-fed, I am part of one of the most developed biomedical systems in the world. I’m rich, comparatively. I have health insurance. I’m the neatly pieced and presented Exhibit A of Market-based Medicine’s display at the science fair. I have no reason to be scared.

It’s a matter of access, haves and have nots. Consumption, as it was known in the olden days, did not discriminate back then. Egyptian mummies are buried with ancient curses and some bling, but their skeletons spell TB.  Emily Bronte, a high-born Victorian (although perhaps constitutionally delicate, as she would, no doubt want us to imagine her) died of it. 

So where are the posh patients now? All I see are poor patients. Because in 1,323 B.C. or in 1848 A.D. water was dirty, travel was hard, and black, graveyard themed 40^th birthday parties were swiftly followed by an actual funeral. Doctors were quacks and antibiotics a thing of the future. Modern medicine hadn’t made its grand debut, with scrub-clad high kicks and latex-gloved jazz hands, a show performed only for those who can pay the price of admission.

But now, the 1.3 million people who die each year are concentrated in the poorest countries in the world, where all those hardships of the past are present realities—Nepal, Haiti, Malawi house the burden of disease. Treatable diseases, such as TB, HIV, and malaria, doggedly follow the poor, and if they don’t run fast enough, will snatch them by the ankle and bear them to the ground.  For many, TB is a death-sentence, or at least, another giant setback for those already fighting the long defeat of poverty and malnutrition.

So tell me, in a world where Twitter can start a revolution, a man can play putt-putt on the moon, you can take a satellite photo of your own garage, and medicine can reattach limbs, why can’t we prevent poor people from diseases we’ve had cures for since before that inaugural lunar golf game? Does this showcase the progress of humankind? I think not.

What it shows, in stark, dark relief, is that we haven’t gotten our priorities straight. It can’t be scientifically impossible to ensure that neither rich nor poor die from these diseases, we just… can’t be bothered with it. The rich aren't dying from it, so why are the poor? We must ask ourselves this question, and not be afraid to stare at the ugliness of the answer.   

But I’m lucky. I can take the possibility of a disease that kills 1.3 million people each year as a God-given gag gift. A trivial anecdote to pull out at during that summer camp ice-breaker. 

There, my friends, penned into every syllable of this text, is packaged privilege. 

Into the field: Some things never change in Piyarjung.

For this blogpost, I've decided to give you a little blast from the past, for two reasons.

1) Sapana and I revisited the same village we were in EXACTLY one year ago, with much the same barriers, relationships, and annoyances. Indeed, this place hasn't changed at ALL, except their village development committee did install waste-baskets every 100 yards.

2) I'm not feeling very original and sometimes, you just gotta recycle old material. I mean, "I Dream of Genie" ran for several decades. 

After another grueling bus ride, Sapana and I arrived in Piyarjung on February 27. The dynamics of public transportation never cease to amaze me. In addition to the colorful decor, sharing seat space with live chickens, and surrendering all control of whether you reach your destination in one piece or careen off a cliff, a tendency towards motion sickness among rural Nepali women adds to the excitement.  Many passengers do not have a lot of experience on motorized vehicles, and although their stomachs can stand up to the rigors of dirty water and serious spice, they are no match for the buckwild bus ride. For this reason, each bus is fully stocked with plastic bags in a Kleenex box near the driver. If one was not sitting beside a motion-sick village woman, one might hardly notice this phenomenon, as rural women toss their cookies with class. When feeling green, they ask the conductor to pass them a plastic baggy as nonchalantly as if they were ordering a round of beer. The main event is often composed and understated, with none of the loud, dramatic theatrics that I like to incorporate when I'm feeling seasick. When finished, they toss the bag out the window (advice: if forced to walk beside a bus, always watch for incoming vom bombs), and order another round.

Piyarjung is a village of about 100 houses, about 80 of which are Gurung. As I mentioned in a previous email Gurungs are an ethnic group closely related to Tibetans. They have their own language and are native to the highlands. Thus, these people have calves the size of your head.  We stayed at the house of Takur and Dhane Kumari Gurung, paying them per diem for room and board. Before striking the deal, we visually confirmed that Takur and Dhane Kumari owned a water buffalo, as y’all already are aware of my penchant for buffalo milk tea and yogurt. After striking the deal, we were informed that the buffalo was pregnant, which, for those of you not well versed in issues of livestock husbandry, simply means no milk. Balls.

Note: This visit, the buffalo had died. So again. No milk. 

Our host family lives in a small house and share a courtyard with their relatives, who have a young son named Safal, the apple of my eye. Safal is about 2 years old, and is the only son of aging parents. His mother is 40, and suffered 4 miscarriages, as well as bore 3 children who died in infancy. He woke us up every morning during his breakfast, knocking on our door and yelling “Didi! Didi! Uthna!” which means “Older sisters! older sisters! Wake up!” as his mother followed after him with a spoonful of porridge. Baby mealtime, rather than strapping the tot into a high chair and playing airplane, involves mothers simply chasing after their children as they toodle around the yard, kicking chickens and throwing rocks and attempting to consume any and everything other than the pursuing porridge. I am still seriously considering a covert operation to steal Safal.  

Check out this little piece of work! Safal! 

One of our main tasks in this research phase was/is to build rapport and relationships with village teenagers, and then lure them into an interview. To do this, we visited the school nearly every day, sometimes to watch class, sometimes to socialize during recess. The second day after our arrival, we went to the school to introduce ourselves. While sitting in the office, the headmaster mentioned that the intermediate English teacher (Takur) would be absent for several days. “But you can teach the class,” he said with a grin. Naturally, Sapana and I thought he was joking, so I giggled and said “Well, I do speak English very well.” I realized in immediate retrospect, as I was herded across the school yard and into the classroom, with nothing more than, “here’s your chalk and eraser,” that joke was, indeed, misunderstood. Yes, people, they still use chalk. Sapana and I walk into the room to find 35 seventh graders staring, whispering, and giggling. To my great chagrin, these kids can barely read English and can’t understand the difference between “What is your name?” and “Where are you from?” After some failed attempts at encouraging class participation, I sang a song (Madonna’s “Like A Prayer”) and told some slightly inappropriate jokes (with complete confidence that they wouldn’t understand a word, much less a punchline). My performances were received with blank stares and open mouths, but apparently were a hit. The kids requested that we visit their class on a daily basis.  

The village of Piyarjung is nestled into a hillside (if a hillside can have an altitude of 8500 feet) and is quite spread out, requiring extensive climbing and descending to merely go to the nearest tea shop. Because the entirety of the data we collected would put you in danger of falling asleep on your laptop or mobile device, I will brief you with some descriptions of the people we encountered. Vast, sweeping generalizations are discouraged for anthropologists, but I’m gonna make them anyways. However, true to ethnographic form, I will include anecdotal data to support my points.

11)     Gurung teenage girls are extremely shy, i.e.) resemble a flock of pigeons when you approach them to simply compliment them on their plastic hair clips, dispersing in a quiet panic, not completely fleeing, but keeping a distance where you can’t really start a conversation while eyeing you from the side of their head. But they can’t be coaxed in with food. We tried.

22)     Gurung teenage boys have great legs. I’m sure the girls do too, but due to point #1, I wouldn’t know for certain. We often found ourselves at the community soccer field, watching their games, in order to “build rapport” with the youth.

33)     Gossip is rampant. Gurung women’s primary pastime (other than running a household and chasing their children around with a spoon and a bowl of mash) must be gossiping and fingerwagging. I noticed that the older women don’t really treat you as an adult until you are married. As I am not hitched up with a man, I know nothing of the world, am wild and irresponsible and in need of a good chastisement. Furthermore, perhaps because they have nothing better to do, they like to talk about you behind your back about things you did that they never actually witnessed, resulting in increased finger wagging and condescension.  For example, Sapana and I, at the beginning of our field work, attended a wedding at which we drank 4 glasses of raksi over the course of 5 hours. We asked Dhane Kumari if it was OK to drink raksi, and she assured us “Yes, but not too much. Have fun,” as she ordered us 2 glasses. We also danced, which, obviously, meant we were, thoroughly and irreparably and shockingly, schwasted. Apparently, our definitions of “too much” and “have fun” don’t quite match up. So by the end of our stay, according to the popular belief, we were getting drunk every day and stumbling around the village, conducting our fieldwork in yeast-induced stupor. Oops.

44)     Gurung women also wanted me to marry their sons, not because of my impenetrable honor and striking good-looks, but because of my U.S. passport. When I replied that I already have a boyfriend, and he’s American, they would merely wave their hand, as if shooing away a fly, and casually counter, “No matter. Marry both.” Although I disapprove of their gossip, I can’t say that I wholly disapprove of these women’s ideas.

55)     Gurung men are quite forceful. If they want you to drink raski, or take tea, or eat rice, or teach a middle school English class, good luck getting out of it.  But at least attempt a pretense of refusal. In the end, it will get you nowhere, but it makes you look a little more reputable. For example, at the wedding, Sapana and I were literally dragged onto the dance floor despite our objections and multiple attempted escapes. And don’t even try to refuse raksi, your efforts will be futile and the women will talk about you anyway. In the end, I have strong suspicions that the men and women conspire in this matter; the men provide the material, and the women finish off the spectacle with all the backbiting they can muster. Endless entertainment!

66)     Gurung babies are the cutest in the world!

To be honest, our time in Piyarjung wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had in the field. There were undoubtedly some really kind, funny people and we encountered far more hospitable situations than not, but to be truthful, the aforementioned generalizations were some of the biggest challenges of our fieldwork—I mean, those soccer shorts nearly drove me to distraction!  We did, however, learn some important lessons, as noted below.

11)     Don’t drink raksi, ever.

22)     Get married, or at least say you have.

33)     Stalk the school girls, like a cat in the tall grass, in order to gain an audience with them; look for a dead end to chase them into. It's not stalking; it's ethnography. 

The Lamjung Mahoutsav Part 1: The Funny Boat

This week, Sapana and I took an afternoon off from chasing pimply teenagers around for interviews and headed, along with the rest of the town, to the Lamjung Mahoutsav. A mahoutsav, as best I can tell, resembles a county fair, but lacks the same caliber of people-watching and deep-fried delicacies.  But all the important components are there: food vendors, local craft stalls, mechanical rides that conveniently double as death traps (in the likely event of a breakdown), children running amok, and karaoke contests.

Nepali carnival food!

Sapana and I showing enthusiasm.

The Funny Boat

But rather than sporting cut-off denim jackets and airbrushed tees, a mahoutsav is an occasion for Nepalis to don their traditional dress and walk through mud wearing high heels. Women pull out all the stops during the festival days, dressed in brightly colored saris, midriff tops of woven fabric, long flowing skirts, gold plaited headdresses, and nose rings so big they would solicit gasps from the pick-up line at any suburban elementary school. Sidenote: In Nepal, it’s the grandmothers who have the septum piercings and the facial tattoos, just to give all you haters some perspective.

Happily eating my gola

Rather unwisely, Sapana and I grabbed a gola—a carnival treat in the style of a snow-cone—and promptly found in place in line for the “Funny Boat” ride. The “Funny Boat” is a Ferris Wheel, but decorated in a nautical theme, blaring the Titanic soundtrack, and retrofitted to revolve at a gut-plunging pace. We shared a carriage with two teenage boys, whose grim, thin mouths clearly conveyed their enthusiasm at being paired up with us.  As the “Funny Boat” started to lift and dip, Sapana and I promptly commenced our hysterics. Me—laughing maniacally like a Jack-in-the-Box—and she—shrieking in tears, desperately clawing at the sleeve of the poor lad beside her—did our utmost to convince these youngsters that we might be a wee bit unhinged.

And then, just like minutes following the plunge of the Titanic, it started to... get quiet. Everyone had become… a little green. In a country plagued by motion-sickness (public buses keep a supply of plastic bags on board at all times), I too am not impervious. In an effort to stay strong and maintain our slightly mad persona (not to mention I had completely forgotten the Nepali translation for “I’m feeling a little queasy”), I began muttering vaguely menacing epithets, such as “My gola comes again” and “I will throw my biscuits.” The comedy didn’t last long. Realizing the impending outcome, I began to consider my best options.

Quickly ruling out my gola cup and my handbag, I spent the next few revolutions trying to remember what I learned in high school physics. Does this ferris wheel generate enough centripetal force to counteract gravity and propel the contents of my stomach a sufficient distance away from myself and other passengers? What would be the equation for that?  I was fretfully uncertain. So I resigned to being publically known as “that white girl who puked all over the carnival ride” for the remainder of my stint in Besisahar, when the operators mercifully slowed the ride. My fellow passengers, my clothes, and my dignity had been saved!

Up next: The Lamjung Mahoutsav Part 2: Pro-Wrestling

Where the hell is my suitcase?!: What ex-pats don't tell you.

When I left the U.S., I packed two bags. In one, I put all the stuff necessary for living abroad—sentimentalities, such as family photos and a stuffed animal; clothing, practical and prim; and must-have hygiene items (what if they don't have Q-tips in Nepal?!).  And after, I put all the things that make me me—my slights of language, my relationships, my hobbies, my consumer fashion—in another suitcase, and flinging myself on top of it, just barely zipped it shut.

But when I arrived in the Kathmandu airport, only one suitcase circled around the carousel. My stomach dipped in frustration. A simple mistake, a hiccup in the system of terminals and timetables, I told myself.

“Sir, my bag didn’t arrive?” I inquired at the lost baggage counter.

He pecked the keyboard in front of him. “It appears your luggage is still in the United States and…it’s not coming here.”

“But, sir,” I spluttered, anxiety ferreting its way under my ribs. “That can’t be right. Everything I am is in that suitcase.” I tried to protest, but the man had dismissed me, already hashing in the tracking number for bad-tempered tourist behind me.

For a while, I didn’t notice the absence of my suitcase.  Similar to realizing your hair will eventually cease to be wet despite a blow-dryer, one can live without their hobbies and friends and self- expressions. The excitement of a new task, a new culture, and new people fueled me.  After all, I’ve got to admit, fieldwork is pretty sexy. But as the gloss of novelty wore away, as the absence of my suitcase became a rabbit hole in my heart, as I spent a lot of quality time with myself, staring—shell-shocked and a little bit peeved—inward, I realized that suitcase was packed full of distractions.

Those descriptions of who I am, my hobbies, my style, the amalgamation of intangibles that are uniquely me, are really just diversions from the self. Stripped of these things, I’ve realized that my 30 second elevator introduction or my OK Cupid profile doesn't exist in its own right. It needs context; it needs other people to say, “I’m pickin’ up what you’re throwin’ down.” Without other people who recognize the meanings behinds my self-definitions, I’m just a mouse, roaring absurdly, trying to convince everyone I’m a lioness.  

In the absence of these comfortable trappings of the ego, I feel a little cold and exposed and lonely, angrily demanding “Who is this person?” and after, more clinically, “And do I like her or not?” That, there, is a very unsettling place to be. 

Jai Ho: My first film review

The other night, I accompanied my coworker Sapana to this week’s big box office debut, Jai Ho, starring Bollywood heartthrob Salman Khan. I’ve endured several Hindi films with Sapana, to varied outcomes. Usually, I can’t understand anything being said, and since there are no subtitles in the theatre, I’m just along for the visuals. Which, in one way or another, rarely disappoint. (See photo below). 

Ram Lila 's Ranveer Singh: Yummy!

In spite of the language barrier, Jai Ho was particularly savory, exclusively for reasons outlined below.  

Don't read any more before you watch the trailer!

A movie buff myself, I can say that I am shamelessly ethnocentric about the primacy of western cinema. For me, a movie should not be easy-to-swallow entertainment, but a piece of humanity—not always neatly packaged between two rolls of credits. But Jai Ho is not a film; it’s a moving mass of memes, muscles, mindlessness, and motorcycles. It’s a cartoon. Actually, I take that back. I wouldn’t insult Seth McFarland, Mary Poppins, and all the imaginary friends of my childhood like that. The Fantasia Broomstick is far more dynamic actor than our hero, Jai. Plus, in a cartoon, you can’t reasonably criticize the lack of character development or its total disjunction from reality. But when the hero’s mother is plowed by an ice-cream truck and the only “serious complication” (the doctor reports gravely) is a bum kidney, you quickly swivel your head around the theatre to confirm you’re watching this movie with other grown-ups.

It got nuttier. In fact, every time I’d made up my mind to leave, the plot would toss some bizarre scene out of left field, and I've never been able to turn my back on absurdity. The plot line popcorned around from a girl with no arms attempting to use her teeth to complete an exam, to an apparent villain wetting his pants in terror, to an anachronistic flashback of trench warfare featuring what I believe to be a Tarantino cameo (apropos, I believe, for a film this self-indulgently horrible), to baleful ballads of love. 

In keeping with the Bollywood standard, the movie included the staple “romance” song, in which an entire courtship occurs within three minutes of jarringly unprofessional voice-overs. Here, the initial stuttering, self-conscious chapters of a romance are summarily reduced to hero and heroine playing “tag” in an orchard, the soft chiffon of her jasmine-scented sari tantalizingly out of his grasp as she coyly dashes behind a tree. The fact that a relationship can blossom despite such cheesy lyrics and old hat gender stereotypes is only fully realized at the conclusion of the song, when the heroine proudly displays the consummate stamp of her wincingly eternal devotion—Jai, in cursive, tattooed above her heart.  

Khan, as our hero Jai, is a cinematic monolith, both in his boorish delivery and his steroid-wittled physique. Endowed with such talents, he is perfectly poised for some splendidly dreadful fight scenes. The movie’s apparent moral (I was later informed) is to help others before oneself; but, as a viewer, I’m concerned this message was lost somewhere within the ubiquitous scenes of a fair-complected Jai dispatching hordes of faceless, dark-skinned underlings with nothing but his fountain pen—a regrettably tasteless, if unintentional, allegory for the current state of South Asian affairs.

The movie climaxes in a fist-fight to the death; the producers left no viewer hungry for another helping Salman Khan. After being shot and stabbed in vital places by a random evil-doer, Jai rips his blood-stained shirt with a growl of unadulterated rage, making his intention clear. He is going to f*** this unidentified villain up. The villain, not to be outdone, also tears his own shirt open and for the next 30 seconds, the camera cuts back and forth between gratuitous shirt ripping and well-oiled pectorals. Our villain is finally dispatched when Jai takes a bite out of his jugular.  

This movie was so brazenly bad that even Nicholas Cage and Kristen Stewart would have known better. So there it is, folks. A recap of perhaps the worst (or best, it’s a matter of perspective) Bollywood movie to ever hit and flop off the silver screen.