"it's just a desire to get Shahrukh Khan shirtless and wet as often as possible"

Wenn man darauf wartet, bis youtube sich mal bereit erklärt einen Clip fertig zu bearbeiten (siehe folgendes Posting ;) ), hat man immer ausreichend Zeit, mal wieder ausführlich in schicken Websites zu stöbern. Auch in solchen, die man sträflicherweise ganz furchtbar vernachlässigt hat.

Deswegen habe ich auch gerade eben erst einen ganz fantastischen Artikel bei Teleport City gefunden, der schon seit ein paar Wochen online ist. Er ist nicht ganz kurz - aber fasst perfekt zusammen, wie ich über Asoka denke. Und über Bollywood. Und den Stellenwert indischer Geschichte im Geschichtsunterricht.

My point is this: you (and I) may not have learned a particular something (or many somethings, for that matter) back when were in high school. But that's not really an excuse. A little spark from something as disreputable as pop culture can end up with you actually learning a lot about a country and a culture. My journey to Bollywood was a procession of tiny crumbs scattered here and there in a vast forest, but every time I stumbled across a new one, it made learning more all the more enticing. I'm doing my best not to let this breadcrumb trail analogy end up with me being lured into Shahrukh Khan's gingerbread house (though I know many people who would be willingly lead into such a place). And this is how pop culture works at its best. It piques your interest, and from there, with any luck, you launch a greater exploration and come to a better understanding of other people. In other words -- I can learn the history of Japan, but it's Sonny Chiba and Bunta Sugawara that helps me strike up conversations with actual Japanese people. So it is too with India. I learn Amitabh and Shahrukh, and my interest in them becomes an interest in the actual history of both India and the Indian film industry. And from the jumpingoff point of analytical scholarly and historical surveys of Indian cinema, I learn the framework of discussing the films, and then can launch into the glorious backwaters of the weird and wonderful that so delights me from all the cinemas of the world.

Asoka, Bollywood, Epics