Swades

Swades (until I heard it pronounced on TV, I read it as "suedes" and was wondering what the movie was about) was the first movie V* and I saw after we moved to India.

Now, Swades (meaning "home country") is about an Indian living in the US (and working at NASA, no less) who, on a short visit to India, discovers that he does not want to go back to the US for various reasons: romantic, patriotic, nostalgic, etc., etc.

We enjoyed the movie. Shah Rukh Khan was remarkably and aptly subdued, Gayathri Joshi was a sight for sore eyes, and the movie had some nice music by A.R. Rehman (love Yoon hi chala chal rahi, Yeh tara woh tara, and Sanwariya, sanwariya).

But for us, the movie turned out to be memorable for an entirely different reason. Mohan Bhargav, Shah Rukh's character happens to live and work in the DC area. Most of the first half of the movie was devoted to his life in the US, so we saw many scenes of DC, which, until very recently, had been our home.

So, there we were, expats in our own home country, sitting in a theater in Bangalore, watching a movie about an NRI wanting to move back to India for good, and missing home.