The Bollywood fan club on blogosphere just got firangi—with voices from as far as Fiji and South Korea, Austria and the US
When she is not working at the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Beth Watkins plans to film an instructional video called “The Kapoor System of Driving”. She thinks it is far simpler and just involves gesturing with one hand, sometimes two, wheel be damned, and singing while looking at the scenery and not at the road. “And when Shammi Kapoor substitute-teaches, you also get to do gymnastics in the car while it’s moving,” writes Watkins in her blog Beth Loves Bollywood, a window to some of Hindi cinema’s most brilliant, most hilarious and most logic-defying films. And while you are at her blog, scroll down a wee bit to see the ever-increasing list of other bloggers from across the world, who are logging in day and night, to write about the unbelievable stunts in Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, compare the fashion statements of Saalakhen in the ’70s with the newer Om Shanti Om, subtitles that misrepresent themselves and more. While Watkins, 34, is in America, Barbara Skoda is from Vienna, Austria, Angela Ambroz is in Fiji and Taryn is in Seoul, South Korea.

Over a decade ago, in far away Vienna, Skoda was flipping channels when she suddenly stumbled upon Sholay being screened on A.R.T.E, a German-French TV station. She stuck with it because it seemed close to the Sergio Leone westerns she loved as a kid. But it wasn’t before 2004, when Skoda, 37, watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. “It was the right movie at the right time. It took a while to get used to, the hysterical antics of Johnny Lever and even Kajol, but I loved it and I wanted more. So I raided websites, found online stores, spent tons of money. And never looked back,” says Skoda, who works as a manager of a private Media Technology College and is a sound engineer as well. Blogging was the next step and Skoda began her rambles in Baba aur Bollywood. Initially, it was just a way for Skoda to improve her written English, but with a subject matter like Bollywood, it was rather impossible not to get involved.

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