Bollywood serenade

I just about fainted from nostalgia when I watched this video of Bindi Girl's rickshaw ride through the streets of Varanasi. It wasn't just because the sights and sounds of metropolitan India made me long for the subcontinent, but because the rickshaw driver is playing my very own Bollywood theme song!

On Christmas Day last year, "Ghajini" opened in theaters throughout India and quickly broke all box-office records. The highest grossing Indian film in history, "Ghajini" is the Hindi version of the American film "Memento." The original story is about a man who goes on a revenge spree after thugs beat him severely and murder his true love. The beating left him with no memory, so he tattoos clues on his body and re-reads his killing mission in the bathroom mirror every morning. It's dark, friends.

"Ghajini" keeps the same plot, but adds a fair amount of Bollywood-style singing and dancing, a charming "mistaken identity" romance, and a rescued train full of orphans. That might sound like a narrative mess, but it is awesome.

One of the hit songs from this film is called "Bekha" - which means something like "temptation" and is pronounced exactly like my name. The movie was so popular that the song was constantly on the radio and my friends often sang it to me.

See the whole "Bekha" dance number from the film right here, complete with sports cars, chorus girls, and Mumbai's Gateway to India.