This is my favorite scene.
Ready?
Hello.
Well, we're starting with Winnie's intro, right?
Oh my gosh.
Now we need to find the little star.
But also, are the momos almost here?
Because it's like here in five minutes.
So we should wait.
Wait for the momos.
Because we're going to be interrupted by the momos.
Five minutes.
I think you can stay out there.
Welcome to Fear of Stairs, Desi Films Decoded,
the podcast where four friends from different backgrounds
unlock the world of Desi cinema.
I'm Winnie, the Desi who's never been to India.
Hey, I'm Killy.
I'm from India.
I'm Nikki, a non-religious Asian.
I'm Adam, a half-religious American, I guess.
We'll get into it.
Killy, you recently came back from India.
Yep.
How was it?
It was good.
It was good food.
So Killy actually brought back mutton biryani from India.
And that was the first time I've ever
had food straight out of India.
So it was a very special moment for me as well.
And that was a bomb biryani.
Even though I feel like you weren't too impressed by it,
Killy, but I was impressed.
Yeah, it was just dry a bit.
But yeah, it's the best biryani.
How did you get it over here?
Just carried it by hand.
You carried it by hand on the airplane?
Yeah.
What?
It's a two-hour flight.
It's not like it's a messenger.
Oh, yeah, I guess.
OK.
Did you buy it from food outside of the airport?
Yeah.
I mean, OK, so the thing is like.
What's the journey of this food?
It cannot be.
No, but I carried it in hand luggage.
I didn't give it to the chicken.
So biryani is a dry food.
It doesn't have any watery part.
So the food that has watery part,
it cannot be carried on a plane.
Dry food can be.
So biryani is dry, so it's easy to carry.
Carry like butter chicken.
Yeah, sure.
So for the listener, Winnie is like Rapunzel,
where you really want to go to India.
But because since we started this podcast,
and we have a tagline, you are not allowed to go at all.
So Killy has to run on trips and then bring food to you
that we feed to you in your man in the iron mask jail cell.
Yeah, exactly.
So I was born in Thailand.
I've never been to India.
Usually I travel solo.
And the one request my mom has made for me
is please don't go to India alone.
So I've respected her wishes these past few years.
But Killy's, I think, is like my closest
into the culture right now.
And honestly, having food from the homeland
was a pretty special moment.
How did it taste?
Tasted like India.
Was it different?
OK, the mutton was different.
I think like the biryani overall taste
was similar to what you'd get in Thailand.
But the mutton was a little bit like, I don't know,
it was just juicier.
It was nicer.
So if that was the biryani that tasted
after hours of traveling from India to Thailand,
I can imagine that like freshly made,
it would have blown my mind.
What about the Indian food in Thailand, though?
There's a lot of Indian restaurants in Thailand.
First of all, it's highly overpriced.
I think the quality is good.
I don't know, Killy can probably compare it to Indian food
from India a little bit more.
But I grew up eating my grandma's food.
So I would say that that was the golden standard.
And she made really good chicken curry and roti, chapati.
And I think no restaurant I've had from Thailand
has really matched that quality that she made.
But that might just be a bias for grandma's food.
Yeah.
Most of us have that.
I think from my experience, I feel like everywhere I go,
there are several good places to eat.
Not the one from W District.
I think that one is the butter chicken was a lot to be desired.
Butter chicken is a British food.
Oh, don't say that, Killy.
Do not say that.
Shots fired.
So Witty, if you go to India, if, by the way, if, OK,
that's a hard if because we have to change our entire podcast
premise.
So we'll see about that.
But if you go, what do you want to try?
Food wise?
Oh my god, I'm going to be sitting there having
pani puri from morning to night.
So you get pani puri here.
Like you get six for a hundred.
I don't know.
It's like four or five bucks.
It's like five bucks.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think you probably get like 10 for five bucks.
It's crap.
Yeah.
In Nepal, I don't remember how much it is in India.
Five bucks is in five US dollars.
Yeah.
OK, how much is one pani puri actually in India?
No, it's like 10 cents.
Yeah, something like that.
It's like nothing.
It's literally nothing.
So you could stand there and eat like 100.
I was doing that in Nepal.
I was literally just standing at a cart just eating it.
It's like unlimited.
You just stand there and they just keep feeding it to you.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
But I've heard pani puri is also kind of the main reason
a lot of people get diarrhea or like the belly belly, I guess.
Because they just use their hands to make some of it.
You have to know from where to buy it, where to eat it.
You have to know.
You need someone who lives there and will tell you, OK,
go there and buy it.
Eat from that vendor.
Otherwise, it's difficult.
So you went back to see family.
Yeah, family.
I spent time with them, my parents' house,
my sister's house.
Do you want to give out their addresses here?
Yeah.
Where are you from in India, Kiwi?
I'm from West Bengal.
Yeah.
So what's the main city in there?
Kolkata is the nearest city.
So what, did you do anything?
Is there any?
Did you do anything while you were there?
Anything to bring up on this podcast on Indian?
Anything.
I was just unwinding myself.
I had a pretty busy month, back to back events,
back to back a lot of work and stuff.
I thought of doing so many things.
I thought of doing some other projects and here and there.
But I just went there.
I used to wake up, talk to people, and then just chill,
do nothing.
That's fair.
That's called a vacation.
Yeah, it was a really vacation in my hometown.
That's it.
Did you watch any Bollywood movies with your family
while you were there?
No, just watched something, all the films.
I think you gave your nephew a little hand-held.
Yeah, hand-held PSP knockoffs.
Hey, so you told people you were making a podcast on Indian
films, right?
What did they say?
They said the podcast.
OK, that's nice.
Yeah, so big hit.
But we have a fan from there, right?
A new fan.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, big shout out to my niece.
Yeah, thanks for believing in us.
She said it's really cool.
OK, that's nice.
So while Kili was gone, we chose a movie to watch.
And actually, I did find this interesting
because eventually we'll all be choosing movies at some point.
And I think it's going to speak a lot to our personalities.
And I think, Winnie, this one was
very indicative of your personality
and what you want to talk about.
So in the group chat, you wanted to go with PK.
Right.
Why?
OK, so for the listeners out there who don't know PK,
it was released in 2014.
And it was directed by Rajkumar Hirani.
I hope I said that correctly.
And I watched it a few years ago.
So I stopped watching Bollywood from when I was real young.
And this was just one of the films
that I watched recently because it was also on Netflix.
And the religious commentary it had behind it.
So I'm a person who likes social issues, political issues.
And I just like discussing things about that.
And this was the first Bollywood film
I watched where all of those usual Bollywood tropes
were just not really prominent.
And it was just more of a social commentary
about the state of India, the religious followings and such.
And I was so impressed by it.
It made me question so much about human behavior.
It doesn't just go into religious behaviors.
It also talks about how men are not allowed to wear skirts
or just very human things that we do.
And we don't really question because it's so normalized.
But because this movie comes from a perspective of an alien
who lands on Earth and doesn't know
anything about human society.
And so he kind of sees this from a third party point of view.
And it does that very well in a very humorous way as well.
So I really appreciated that.
So yeah, that was why I chose it.
It was also a big hit in India.
So it was the highest grossing film
when it was first released in theater.
Yeah, exactly.
That's huge.
Right, right, especially for not being like a very Bollywoody
film in essence.
Yeah, correct.
Right.
So I think it also goes to show that a lot of people
wanted to speak about these things.
And maybe they didn't have the platform to.
And this movie kind of provided that platform
for them to bring up these issues that were boiling
under the covers for a long time.
So now I think it stands at the 10th highest grossing film,
which is still a pretty big thing.
But it was also highly controversial.
So there was a whole hashtag boycott PK
that came out when the movie was newly released.
But in opposition to that, there was also
a hashtag for We Support PK.
So you kind of really saw two sects of Indian society
butting heads to some degree.
But I think this movie also made its way out of India
a little bit into Western audiences, in my opinion.
And yeah, I was very impressed by it.
I feel like when you guys are watching it,
you're a little bit like, what did we get ourselves into?
I mean, it certainly opened my eyes
with how there's a lot of religions in the movie
and how I think the central theme, one
of the central themes anyway of the movie,
is that you did mention it, Winnie.
You said that religion divides us all, basically.
I absolutely went in not knowing anything
about how religion is like in India.
But I do see some parallels with Thailand here and there.
I do think it's a, like you said,
the movie is essentially a religious satire.
And yeah, it's like a movie that shows you,
it questions what idolatry is like.
It's like blind devotion and believing
in whatever this religious figure does.
I think Healy has touched upon that, a lot of gurus
and everything.
I think there is one particular religious leader
that I can think of right now that is coming to Thailand
later this month at the time of recording.
Shall we say his name?
It's Sadguru.
He's like this guy.
Who sends feed pics now, right now?
He has feed pics in all his fans.
Oh my gosh.
Wait, what?
Yeah, he has feed pics.
He sends feed pics to who?
To his devotees.
To his devotees, yes.
He has a massive following.
And he has like,
No, no, for money.
Not for fun.
So the followers pay him for feed pics?
No, no, it's so, so touching the feed as a reverence
is a thing for Indians, right?
So like Hindus.
And so, yeah, he's just selling feed pics.
Well, the way you say it, it doesn't sound like an OnlyFans thing.
Is he selling, so he's selling pictures of his feed
so like people can kiss it or what?
No, like do the salute thing.
To the photo.
To the photo, yeah.
Yeah, OK.
Yeah.
That's nice.
Have you heard of Sadguru?
No, I haven't.
Oh, yeah.
He's like this guy.
Tell me about it.
Well, nobody knows what you're pointing at when you say this guy, Killy.
They can't see that we're watching the movie.
The film that we're going to talk about, the villain in that film.
Yeah.
How is that?
No, I want to ask how the film was received in India.
Because, yeah.
So it was really appreciated.
It was really a super duper hit.
So what I would say is India is known for its religious,
like, you know, spirituality and the religious point of views,
different religions and then everything, right?
But also, it has a very strong history of atheism, agnostism,
and religious commentary.
Jainism.
So the Jainism is a religion.
Yeah.
Also, Buddhism is from India, right?
Buddhism is like agnostic religion.
It doesn't say whether there is a god or not.
It doesn't matter, right?
So yeah, so and then there have been artists
and there have been films, there have been books
that has been commenting on the religious business,
like the business aspect of religion
and the whole these spiritual guru, babaji's kind of thing,
their scams and everything.
They have been talking for a long time.
There have been many films, many literature and stuff like that.
And it was well accepted.
There used to be a lot of comedy involving gods,
like the Hindu gods.
Like I remember one film where like this guy is,
it's a Bengali film, Jamalai Jeevanta Manus,
where a guy just like the Yamaraji is the like the lord
of the afterlife and then he decides like where you are going
to the hell or heaven, right?
So his worker, like his minions just brings in a live guy
by mistake and then he just creates chaos.
Like he's commenting on every aspect
in the like how they are treating the system,
like their system is rotten and everything.
They're like, oh, I'll go back to the art
and tell all the newspapers and then like to like reveal all
your scams, you all up here doing scams and stuff like that.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, don't go.
It's our fault. It's our fault.
It's a huge commentary.
Like there used to be a lot of things.
But then with the rise of right-wing Hindutva politics
in India, there has been like a, you know,
prohibition of saying, like commenting on religion.
So PK came out at the peak of when these religious extremist
people are getting into the power.
OK, so that point of time, PK was released.
So the environment, the whole situation was getting dire.
The society was getting pretty polarized.
You cannot criticize things.
If you criticize one thing, you are like whole anti,
like, you know, you're given a stamp of like anti India,
anti Hindu and all this kind of thing.
So that's why.
And they always bring up this analogy that, oh,
you can talk about Hindu gods because we are quiet.
You cannot say anything about Muslims and that.
While Bollywood has been making films forever
where the terrorists are Muslim and then like,
you know, Muslim villains say every time,
like they're doing jihad or whatever or whatnot.
Shit.
They have been doing films forever with that.
And then one film criticizing Hindu religious business models.
And then like people go cray cray that, oh,
you're doing this, that, that, that, that.
I mean, this kind of these fringe groups
were active for a long time, but they were fringe groups.
Now they have like, you know, they are under one umbrella.
Like, you know, they are more like how do you call it?
Like more organized.
And yeah, so it created a huge ruckus, this film,
because it does a commentary on how the fraud star scams
people in the name of religion.
It's not anti-god.
I don't see any, any, any like criticism of God itself
or any criticism on the religion itself.
It's like, OK, the religion is true, but you are doing it wrong.
You are scamming people.
That's what this film is kind of saying.
So before we get into the movie a bit, though,
I think we should take the time to explain like our backgrounds
a bit about where we come from religiously so people know
where we're coming from.
Because we all come from different angles, I think.
Yeah.
And just so, yeah, to give background,
like the movie does tackle like, yeah, it's
like when he said like an alien comes and kind of observes
social norms and religion and pokes holes in it
and, you know, has, you know, questions about it.
And before we continue, I think we should just
say where we're coming from, too.
Yeah, actually, I didn't realize,
but we actually do come from all different religious
backgrounds.
There's four of us and four different religions here.
Nikki, what's yours?
That's true.
Well, I come from a very Buddhist family.
I mean, my parents used to, you know, let me make,
I wouldn't say force, but let me do like Buddhist traditions
where like, you know, we make alms to monks,
give them food.
So I guess I'll want to get into it.
Like, you know, Thai people usually
follow the Theravada Buddhism, which
is like the main religion.
It focuses more on rituals, people going to temples,
making merits on religious holidays.
And like I said, the thing that I used to do a lot
was offering alms to monks in the morning, early morning.
I didn't want to be there.
But you know, it's that we make merits
so you can get close to what we call nirvana.
And you know, reaching perfection, I would say.
Building up credit, accumulating purity,
that is a thing that people believe in.
Did you go to temple a lot?
I did go to temple when I was a child a lot.
My parents would, again, I don't want to say force,
but they just want to like lead me to a path of purity.
You know, you're buying, I don't want to say it like that,
but like you're just, you know, you're
making your way to like heaven, I guess.
So now that you're an adult, do you still do those things?
Or do you consider yourself religious?
Not at all.
I would consider myself, I used to say I was agnostic,
but I feel like I'm leaning more towards like an atheism sort
of way.
My parents don't have a problem with that.
My mom is actually Catholic, but she follows Buddhism
because of my dad, just the way it is.
We don't really do religious traditions like nowadays,
but back then we used to do a lot.
I guess another aspect that I want to touch upon for Thai
people is that it's not just, it's not necessarily Buddhism,
but people like in the movie PK, when I was watching PK,
one of the things that really like stuck out to me
was that people worship idolatry.
Like, you know, people want icons, have icons, something
to worship, just so that they can offer their things,
like offer things, worldly desires,
like just to attain worldly desires,
just so that it could become true.
Like say, for example, like getting promotions,
or like lending, having prosperity in your businesses,
or even more simple things, getting love.
They do that.
I think they do that.
Now, don't quote me on this.
I'm not an expert, but they do that
to just have a sense of reassurance, I would say.
Reassurance or confidence that you're talking
to some sort of higher being, unseen universal power
or something like that, just so that if they can hear you out,
your wish might come true.
And I think there is, in a way, PK kind of shows that.
I think I see some sort of that.
People follow these religious figures.
Like this, I would say, the antagonist of the movie
is like his holiness, right?
People are blindly following him, following him.
And he's giving instructions to all the people on what to do,
just because it's the right thing to do.
Say, for example, he's telling one of our main characters,
one of the main characters in the movie, Jaggu, that, oh,
you can't be with this Pakistani dude.
It just isn't the right thing to do.
And he's like, I know so, because there
is a lot of bad blood historically.
And I guess we'll get into that later.
But yeah, stuff like that.
I think what I like about PK is that I didn't realize
there was a lot of parallels.
You could call me ignorant or whatever.
With Hinduism and Buddhism?
Yeah, just following.
I mean, Buddhism is derived.
No.
That's undebatable.
But that's a very common thread in subcontinental religions
as well.
There are even Muslim sects that do those kind of things.
And they're sometimes looked down upon as an idol worshiper
and things like that.
So it's a very common thread.
Same with Christianity.
We've got prosperity gospel and big icons and stuff.
I think, yeah, that's a very common thread.
But, Nikki, what you said about how
people do all these prayers and giving alms mainly
so that they can get prosperity in business or find love.
I feel like that kind of shows the selfish angle
towards our prayers sometimes.
I think PK also does a good job at dissecting that.
Kind of shows that a lot of people
gain from the selfishness of religion
when it's supposed to be kind of a selfless act.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Yeah.
I'm glad I'm not doing that.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be on this podcast.
You would be in a temple being a monk.
Yeah.
And meditating 10 times.
He would have so much money that he would just
sleep and play games and not need any money.
His dream.
So I'm sorry, Nikki.
You should have done the other thing, then,
because you could have been a lot happier.
I could have been a Tekken champion.
Yeah.
It's play Tekken 24-7, man.
Kaley, what's your background?
OK, yeah.
So I grew up in a very religious and pious Hindu family.
So we have a temple in our top floor
where there is a statue of Radhakrishna, two gods.
So we had puja every day and stuff like that.
So most of my family members are very religious in that sense,
in a god-loving way.
I didn't grow up in a family where the Hindu religion is
so multicultural and the huge spectrum also.
So it's like I grew up mostly towards in a god-loving way,
not much rituals on like strict rituals on regimes,
on food and this and that.
So those things were there.
But then I gradually become agnostic
when I was around 11, 12 years old.
I started questioning.
I think it's just that natural way of growing up.
And then that time, I just started questioning things
of existence of god and da, da, da, da, da.
That's a pretty young age to start questioning things,
I'd say.
And then.
Yeah, what made you question that?
Your family was all super religious, though, right?
Yeah, where are they?
Where are the gods?
Like I'm learning science.
Where are the gods?
Where are they?
How are they controlling things?
But these are historical characters, right?
Not history, what I'm saying.
These are like mythological characters.
So they are like incarnation of things.
And they are the representation of things
according to the religion and stuff like that.
So then I was learning that.
And then I was like, OK, so is there maybe a higher power?
So I don't necessarily need to worship it in this form.
I can do whatever.
I can just, if there is one god or multiple gods.
So these kind of questions.
So I kind of became agnostic.
I kind of stopped believing in the ritual, like puja rituals,
like fasting before you do the puja.
Family know?
That I was growing agnostic.
I would say things that I think they would understand
that I'm questioning things.
But they're like, OK, he's just growing up.
He'll just be whatever.
They're not super forceful about things.
And then there was a phase.
I kind of became like affinate.
I kind of became theist again.
I started believing in God and believing
that the religious has its position,
and it's an identity, and this, this, and that.
This does good things in life.
And da, da, da, da.
There's a tradition.
There's a reason for tradition.
All these traditionalists.
So there was a phase, like a small phase.
And right after that, I became, from right then, atheist.
And then I was still an atheist.
Wait, what?
That's a big job.
Why?
Because that rabbit hole kind of took me
to the people who are ultra Hindu to a gang.
So it's just that from there, it opens up
my eyes towards this culture and then this.
And then I was like, OK, then I kind of
traveled through a different spectrum
and then kind of became atheist at the end.
So we have two atheists in the room now.
Yeah.
Two out of four.
I wonder if that's a recurring thing.
Weird journey, and we all end up in the same place.
How we ended up as atheists.
Let's see if you're going to be at 100%
atheist right at the end of this.
Way to Europe.
So I grew up Sikh and Punjabi, which
I think is the largest diaspora of Indians outside of India.
And Sikhism, I don't want to get into the history of it,
but I would say to really simplify it,
was founded by Guru Nanak.
And it was almost during a time when
there was a lot of tension between Islam and Hinduism.
And it was kind of like this middle ground.
So it really derived from philosophical roots
of trying to understand both religions
and maybe picking and choosing what they wanted out of these.
And then forming its own belief.
So now we have one god.
There's no idol worshiping like there is in Hinduism.
And we just have 10 gurus who kind of pass
on the teachings of this one god who is never named.
So I grew up in a semi-religious family, I'd say.
We did grow up saying prayers every morning and night.
And I would cite this phrase, the Ardas, in Punjabi.
And I had no idea what it means, because I don't speak Punjabi.
So I would just say it.
I knew how to say that phrase, but not
knowing anything about it.
And we'd go to the temple maybe like every Sunday
or every other Sunday.
But one stark reminder I have of religion growing up
was this emphasis on cutting hair.
So in Sikhism, you're not supposed
to cut your hair at all.
There's like five rules.
And one of them is that you can't cut your hair.
And that was so shoved down our throats.
And we're not growing up in India.
So the men had turbans.
Girls had really long hair.
The guys would get bullied a lot in school
because they looked so different.
They'd be called like Salapao, which is like dumpling.
Yeah.
I get that in my school with my Sikh friends.
They always get teased with Salapao,
because they're the little turban thing.
Yeah, exactly.
They look like a dumpling, basically.
So I feel like that was really emphasized upon.
And that made me turn my head against it a little bit,
where I was like, why is this?
But I came from a very liberal family
in the sense that my mom let me cut my hair when
I was rather young.
So I didn't have to wait till much older, which
is usually the case.
And I didn't really understand it.
When I was 15 or 16, I think I decided I was agnostic.
I used to go to the temple not understanding what
the prayers were saying, nothing.
But I still wanted to believe in this higher power or something.
And at some point, I just was like, yeah, I actually
don't know if anything exists.
So I'll just consider myself agnostic.
And I went to the States, and I decided that I was an atheist.
So all of a sudden, I was like, I have no,
none of this exists.
Why?
Maybe just kind of also being in an environment
where atheism was more prevalent.
I was in a very liberal university,
and people were not very traditional or cultural.
So there was just this kind of like, yeah,
I can't really pinpoint why.
But at some point, you just start believing
that this doesn't exist.
And there's also that rebellious kind of attitude
that you have, I guess, when you are growing up,
this adult, young youth to becoming adult kind of phase
where you start questioning a lot of things,
and you realize, yeah, you didn't really
have to uphold these beliefs.
These were just forced upon you, for lack of better word.
So I turned into atheism for a few years.
And I think later on, into my young adulthood years,
I became more spiritual.
I went to meditation retreats and Buddhist temples.
I got into yoga and all these hippie things,
for lack of better word.
I was going to ask you, with growing up in Thailand,
how did you intermingle with Buddhist people,
and how did that influence anything?
I would not say it was a big deal,
because Sikhism by itself is not a very harsh religion.
And I'll talk about this later also.
But I think a lot of its beliefs are rather
very based upon equality and justice, equality of sexes.
It tried to do away with a lot of the cultural practices
that were being done under Hinduism practices,
like Sati, where the woman has to jump to the fire
and burn herself along with her husband.
Yes, there's a practice called Sati in India,
rooted in Hindu practices, where when the husband dies,
the wife has to also burn, throw herself into the flames
and die along with him, because there was no more point
of her living if her husband died.
But if she dies, he gets another wife?
Yeah, he can get another wife.
That's cool.
So Sikhism really did away with all this.
They really tried to emphasize equality between sexes,
equality between classes.
We have this concept of langar, where
you go to the gurdwara, which is our temple,
and everyone sits on the floor and eat food.
The food is free, and it doesn't matter
if you're rich or you're poor.
You're just going to sit next to each other on the floor.
So there's this very strong emphasis on equality
in that perspective, which I didn't realize when I was young,
because all I knew about Sikhism when I was young
was, don't cut your hair.
Don't cut your hair.
And I had learned that much.
You were really fixated on the hair thing.
It was the only thing that was emphasized.
She wanted to cut her hair.
Why?
Why was that the thing your family cared so much about?
That was Italian society.
It was just very much focused on that.
I don't know why.
So I have a question about that, though.
Can you trim?
You're not supposed to.
Men are not supposed to shave their beards.
Ever.
You cannot trim anything.
No, we're not supposed to.
OK, so again, this is interesting,
because this practice actually came about when, I think,
Guru Gobind Singh was a guru.
He's the last guru, and there was a war going on.
So he kind of told Sikhs to do this,
so that they would be identifiable during war,
that people would know that you're Sikh, you're Hindu,
you're Hindu.
But I shouldn't say this, because I
don't know enough about it.
But I don't know what was meant to carry on like this.
But it was.
So I mean, does everyone have gigantic 80s bush and stuff?
Well, you see the men with turbans,
which is another annoying thing, because most Westerners
see men with turbans and think that they're Muslims.
But it's actually a Sikh practice.
I have a friend.
He has a turban.
And in high school, when we're going on field trips,
when we're staying over during the night drinking,
sometimes he would just take off his turban
and then unfurl his long ass hair.
And then he would spin it around and say, helicopter.
We call it the helicopter in my brother's incident.
Everyone does that.
But I always think it's funny.
It's like an act of defiance or something.
I think it's so hilarious.
So my uncles would be bald pretty much.
They have a huge balding spot.
And they take off their turbans, and there
would be nothing under there.
The weather in Thailand is like 30, 40 degrees Celsius.
It's really hot.
Wait, so there's people with fake turbans
with nothing in there and stuff?
It's a real turban, but they have no hair.
It's all falling out.
But they still got to cover their heads.
It's like a thing.
Are you not allowed to trim body hair or eyebrows?
I don't know about body hair, to be honest.
I'm guessing not.
I don't know.
I'm just asking, do they have huge 80s bush and stuff?
Is that frowned upon?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
OK, OK.
But I think for the most part, Indian women
do have to thread our eyebrows and stuff,
or else we'd have uni brows.
So I think that is OK.
But men do not shave their beards,
and we do not cut the hair on our heads.
Do men have uni brows?
Yes, a lot of them do.
We are very, very hairy creatures.
Yeah, so coming back to Sikhism from like,
so most of the religious movement
that happened from Hinduism, they
were addressing the caste issue a lot.
So like, if in the ancient times, Buddhism was
like challenging caste system, then Sikhism,
when you say like, all people are equal, right?
They all men are equal.
So it's also kind of like it was challenging the caste system.
And yeah, caste is like a definitive reality
of Indian subcontinental society.
It kind of seeps in to other religion as well in social way.
But yeah, Sikhism was defying the caste system a lot
at its inception.
Yeah, I really think I understood
the essence of Sikhism maybe just two or three years ago.
And as I was reading about it, I was like, oh, this actually
does align with my beliefs.
It was not like the beliefs was formed by the religion
in any way.
It's just my natural beliefs.
And somehow, I think I gained more respect
for it later on.
I think a lot of practices have been
influenced by culture in India.
So I don't know how it's truly practiced in India.
I think there's still a lot of misogyny and patriarchy
that goes into Sikh families.
But in essence, it really has all things to say.
It also is rooted in pantheism.
So this idea of like, God is universal.
There's God in everyone.
So you should not disrespect anyone or else.
You're disrespecting a part of yourself,
a part of a holy being.
So I appreciate the religion.
I don't know if I'd call myself a Sikh,
but I would definitely say I'm more spiritual now.
I believe in something.
I don't know what it is.
I don't like religions at all.
I think it's just a way to divide people.
But yeah, I believe in higher power, karma, things like that,
but from a very spiritual perspective.
Do you dabble in Buddhism too?
Buddhism, I have read a few books.
I went to a meditation retreat in Buddhist temple.
So I appreciate that it's very focused on your inner self.
I don't like when religions try to control other people
or try to say you got to do x, y, z in order
to qualify in being religious and going to heaven.
I think Buddhism really takes a different stance in the sense
that it's more from a philosophical,
psychological perspective.
It's kind of like you need to work on yourself.
You meditate.
You let go of attachments.
Arunoy of Nirvana is very achievable.
I wouldn't do a monkhood lifestyle,
but I really admire that it has this perspective
on self-improvement rather than trying to improve other people.
I'm all about self-improvement, but I'm so rooted in materialism.
Which is very anti-Buddhist.
Well, there you go.
Three out of four atheists.
Adam?
Adam, you're the last one.
I'm a Janus.
So guys, I'm not no.
So I grew up, yes, I'm American.
And I grew up in a very religious family,
but non-denominational.
So it's not like any of the interesting, weird Catholic
quirks or anything.
So it's like a non-denominational church growing up, Christian.
But it was super, super Christian.
I went to church camp.
I went to a private Lutheran school growing up.
Honestly, for real, I literally didn't
know that non-Christians existed until I was like 13 or 14
when I went to public high school.
I literally just didn't know there
were people that didn't believe the exact same thing as me,
because I just never met them.
So my whole world was like that.
I also wasn't allowed to watch TV growing up and stuff.
So we only had religious VHS tapes and stuff.
I was very sheltered.
You guys are not taught about the other religions in schools?
I went to a private Lutheran school.
I went to church camp, Lutheran school, church friends.
I did not know anyone that wasn't Christian.
But getting to watch only Christian shows
sounds a bit cultish.
In history?
Yeah.
History?
Well, I mean, what do you mean?
Oh, OK, no, my first lesson of religion was from history.
It's all through the lens of Christianity, though.
The guy was a non-believer, whatever.
OK.
Yeah, no matter what, there is a through line of,
now Christianity exists in this time period.
And so everyone else was just not believing.
I had books that I read growing up
on the bookshelf of Adam and Eve riding dinosaurs
in the Garden of Eden.
Because it was hardcore, the world is not over 5,000 years
old and stuff.
So it's like Adam on a dinosaur and stuff.
That's what I grew up with and stuff.
And yeah, it wasn't cultish, but I just
wasn't exposed to a lot of outside things.
So movies and entertainment and stuff,
no, it was Christian music for the most part
and Christian movies and stuff.
So I just didn't have much exposure to anything else
until I went to public school.
And then I met someone that wasn't religious,
and it completely shattered my entire world.
It completely broke everything.
And when I knew that it could be an option,
and not just the default thing, everything unraveled.
But I will say this.
I did read the Bible a ton growing up as a kid.
And it made me, I think, very leftist.
I would say I agree with everything Jesus says.
I think what he was saying was very good.
And that put me on the outs with the church for the most part.
When I was growing up, Bush was president and stuff.
It was very conservative, right, neoconchristian stuff.
And just because I had read the Bible a lot growing up,
I just already kind of disagreed with them.
I didn't believe that you should not help poor people
or not give them health care.
I just literally went against what
I was reading in the Bible.
So yeah, I was just like this.
So I was already distanced from the church a bit.
But then when I realized it was a choice, I don't know.
Then I read about the history of the church
and the history of the Bible.
And I just started getting very into the history of it.
And I was like, the Bible is kind of made by committee.
And I don't really agree with that.
I will say the one big flaw of Christianity,
I think, is that Jesus didn't write his own thing.
Yeah.
I mean, for real, if you're going to have a religion,
I think you should write the text, I feel,
about what you believe in.
Otherwise, guess what happens?
A bunch of other people could just misinterpret it.
People has written, but it gets misinterpreted anyway.
Sure.
No, I get it.
But I will say the one thing for Islam
is that at least there's a primary source material,
right?
I do think Christianity lacks a bit.
But anyways, I thought Jesus was fine.
But yeah, I did take those political beliefs.
But I just drift away from the church.
And then, yeah, I'm atheist now.
Yeah, I'm not spiritual.
I wouldn't say I'm spiritual.
But I don't have, but I am not against it at all.
I have no hard feelings or anything.
The church wasn't wrong to me or anything.
So I don't have a chip on my shoulder.
I think there's some very good Christians.
I think there's some very, very bad ones as well.
But yeah, I know the purpose of religion.
I think it can be very good for some people.
And I think the community is very nice.
But if it turns nasty or it turns into a thing
where people hate themselves because of it,
I don't really agree with that.
Yeah, but otherwise, yeah.
So look, here we go.
4 out of 4.
4 out of 4 atheists.
What up?
This is amazing.
Wow, incredible.
Weird that we get along.
And just like a Bollywood movie, that was our flashback.
And now we're just about to get into the podcast.
Yeah, so we're like an hour into the podcast.
Yeah, and then now we are starting the real story.
So PK.
PK, like many Hindi films, it's not in English
and requires subtitles for the average viewer.
Yeah.
So what happens?
How does it start?
Sorry, yeah.
So it begins with like, I don't think I'd see Amir Khan again.
I've seen him as he was in Three Idiots, which is something
that most people have seen.
But I feel like in this movie, he plays an alien.
I feel like he plays an alien.
He is an alien.
He is an alien, but he looks like an Indian.
So I will say this.
So I've never seen this actor before.
And at least in this movie, guys,
he looks like Tom Hanks doing a Mr. Bean impersonation.
Like a Forrest Gump or Rain Man, like the eccentric character
that people play.
Later he ends up doing a Forrest Gump remake.
Yeah, but that's it?
Oh my fucking God, I don't realize that.
He looks like Tom Hanks.
And in this movie, it was like Tom Hanks
is trying to be Mr. Bean.
Like that makes so much sense if he's in the Forrest Gump.
He looks like Tom Hanks.
Yeah.
All right.
But yeah, he's like this alien.
And I don't remember why he landed on Rajasthan.
Just a research project.
Particularly Rajasthan.
Looking all jacked up.
Traveler.
Oh yeah, this is the one thing.
So how old is this actor?
50-something?
Yeah, I think so.
He is ripped.
It makes no sense.
It might be a CGI body.
We're looking into it.
So yeah, he looks very jacked up.
One thing I want to add is he doesn't blink.
I would say, OK, did you notice that or did you read that later?
No, I noticed that.
Me too.
He just doesn't blink.
I just noticed that.
I feel like, don't you get bloodshot eyes while filming?
And his eyes are always open wide.
Wide.
I feel like his eyes would be watering right there.
I picked that up.
It's incredible.
Haley Joel Osmond does that when he filmed AI,
the movie where he's like the little robot.
And he didn't blink.
And that was incredible too.
But this is like super long takes.
Yeah, and his eyes are super wide.
And he doesn't blink.
I don't know how he does that.
That's incredible.
That's crazy.
He was so highly praised for his acting in this film.
But Killy didn't like his acting in this film.
No, I liked his acting.
When I was a kid, he was my favorite actor.
And then so what happens is he started
doing some goofy characters.
And I felt like he was just doing the same character again
and again.
So that's why I kind of felt like, oh, yet another Amir Khan
being goofy.
So that was my take that point, being snobbish a bit.
But when I rewatched this film, I really
liked this film more than when I first time watched it.
It's a very kid-friendly film, I would say.
It's a very, the what?
I mean, it just totally questions
the complete concept of religion.
But I guess it's a kid-friendly film.
But it does it in a very humorous, simple way.
Yeah, it's a very simplistic take on the nuances.
It's very straightened up, down.
It is like if Teletubbies question the pope.
And they're all freaking out.
This is hurting us.
It's like a basic child question.
If you can't answer this, your whole thing's broken.
I'm sorry.
So you said humorous, Winnie.
And I think one of the things that stayed with me
from the movies, that damn theme song that goes,
do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,
is like it plays like every five minutes,
like just to show, oh, look, wacky character.
And like, yeah, so it's this alien.
He lands.
He has this raid.
He's buck naked, jacked up.
He-
Terminator style, but he looks again like Mr. Bean.
Yeah.
And like he has this like Dragon Ball-esque radar
around his neck.
Remote control.
Remote control, as we would call it.
And like some dude steals his remote,
like some random traveler.
A Sikh, right?
A Sikh.
No, no, no, no.
He's Rajasthani.
So Tarban is not only by Sikh.
Tarban is like a headgear.
It's very prevalent in Western, North, Western India.
Yeah.
So he steals his remote.
And then like he ends up with that like boombox.
And then like because that man stole his remote,
we get the premise of the film.
Like that was his way back home to call the ship.
Yeah, he's ET without his phone.
It's literally the plot of ET.
That's literally it.
And then I guess throughout the movie,
we learn that he's just stuck in India out of all places.
He's stuck in India, learns their ways,
and essentially is like this alien is
trying to find his way back home.
And I think like he meets people and they say,
like you should essentially you should contact God
if you want to find your way back home.
God will know.
Like pray to God, like they would know how to find it.
Like how to help you.
That's where we get the satire from,
where he's like looking to God for answers,
but then he cannot find those answers.
And he turns to every sort of religion.
You get to see this montage where
he goes through Christianity, Sikhism, Hinduism.
I don't know what else.
Muslims.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
And we're introduced to this central antagonist,
I would say.
I don't remember his name, but it's his holiness.
We call him his holiness.
And that is the man that has the.
The religious guru.
Religious guru.
Running a fake cult or money outfit.
And he has that remote control.
Yeah.
That's basically the gist of it.
Yeah, and don't forget though, it's
bookended by a very weird romance.
There is a romance film.
We have like this woman.
I guess you guys, I mean, Keely would know, right?
Anushka Sharma as Jagu.
Jagu.
So she's like this journalist.
And we get like this subplot where she was in,
I think it was.
London.
Belgium.
In Bruges.
In Bruges, right.
She falls in love with a Pakistani boy.
But I don't think he's Pakistani.
I don't think the actor's Pakistani.
No, no, no.
The actor's not Pakistani.
The actor is.
Pakistani.
And I think we get one of the most hilarious fast forward-esque
moments where like, oh, you're Pakistani.
Oh, I don't want to mess with you.
And then we get a musical cue.
And then they fall in love.
Just to accelerate the plot.
But when Jagu tells her parents that I'm in love with this
Pakistani man.
Yeah.
Firstly, he's Muslim.
And then Pakistani.
Like double negative for her.
Double trouble for the family.
Family.
And that's where the religious thing comes in, where she's
kind of like the parents were not OK with it.
And they were like, we don't like this.
Let's turn to his holiness.
And then we're introduced to this antagonist.
And he's saying, oh, Pakistanis are like traitorous people.
They'll backstab you.
They're only in it for carnal desires or something.
That's what he said.
Carnal desires.
He's like, he's going to leave you at the altar.
And to prove him wrong, Jagu's telling the Pakistani boy,
let's get married tomorrow.
Let's do it.
And then they just tried doing it.
And she gets this letter from a boy that's like, our
cultures divide us.
We're not meant to be.
Families are not happy.
And then it's like, the audience is led to believe
that his prophecy, his holiness prophecy has come through.
So she goes back.
And she meets PK.
But I just want to get into it.
She's a journalist.
She goes into a journalism job.
And her news agency, they don't want to touch religion.
They don't cover religion.
That was it.
But I just want to get into it.
Is that a thing?
Do Indians and Pakistanis don't get together?
Yeah.
So building one of the identities in Pakistan and
India after the independence was Pakistanis were taught
you were like, we are anti-Indian.
Indians were trained as Pakistanis, our enemy.
Yeah, so.
If they got along, I would probably not be in Thailand
right now.
But I know someone that's like, he's Indian.
He's married to a Pakistani.
But that happens a lot.
Yeah.
And he's in San Francisco, though.
Yeah.
And most of these happen when people go outside.
Because most of the time, they are the same people.
They speak the same language.
Even Muslims marry cross-border.
Hindus even marry cross-border.
But it's very rare to happen cross-religion,
cross-border together.
That's the scope of the film.
That happens really rarely.
I haven't seen in my, there are most obviously many examples
definitely there.
But I haven't seen.
But I have seen same religion marriage happening.
Because they're the same people most of the time.
Speak same language, Hindi and Urdu, in North India.
I think it caused a lot of tension.
Parents will threaten to commit suicide.
Yeah.
And also, there are a lot of visa issues happen
between India and Pakistan.
Like from a bureaucratic point of view,
a lot of visa issues happen.
Do Pakistanis have to get a visa to go to India?
Yeah, both sides.
I think it's very difficult for Indians to get a visa to Pakistan
as well.
Yeah, both ways.
And even, yeah, it's a whole mess.
It's like it will go, different rabbit holes.
So put it for some other film where we have Pakistani villains.
But the movie is also brave for touching upon this
and then going to question religion as a whole.
Yeah, I did notice that.
They were touching upon people we can get along.
Love goes no bounds.
The Pakistani guy, they don't look down on him.
No, they did not.
There's nothing about it that's patronizing or anything.
Like, that's nice.
So yeah, circling back to this, His Holiness,
you can see where his stance comes from.
He's talking all superstitious-like and everything.
And I think one thing that we get to learn early on in the movie
is like, Jaggu's family is very religious.
And one thing you could tell is they have his picture up
everywhere in the house.
It's very tongue-in-cheek.
They have the guru's photo up everywhere.
They have the guru's photo up.
It's not tongue-in-cheek.
I have seen families like that.
OK, all right.
But why I'm saying tongue-in-cheek is like,
they were talking about how you can donate money
through his website or something.
I thought that was pretty funny.
That happens as well.
That is true.
So the tone is tongue-in-cheek, but it's not,
they didn't take a creative license
to blow it out of proportion and magnify it.
But no, that's very reality.
I have dealt with this kind of people,
this kind of families I've seen growing up.
We'll have their guruji's photos everywhere on the wall.
And it's very touchy subject for them.
Yeah, but eight out of ten are frauds.
Yeah, it's wild.
Yeah, so Jaggu meets PK.
And PK was giving up.
And it's like, God is missing.
And just to fast-forward things, it's like,
we can see that PK is not of this world.
Because his ears are slightly longer.
His ears are slightly longer.
He goes from being ignorant, and then he
starts learning India's societal norms,
learning about having higher power beings to follow.
And there's a lot of intricacies we
notice about his character.
One thing that I think we all notice
is that when he goes into the temple,
he tries to get the money back because, oh, god,
he lied to me.
I didn't get my answers.
Yeah, I mean, his whole premise is
he takes everything very literally.
So if you put the money in, then you should get something out.
And if he doesn't, he wants a refund.
He wants to take it out.
Which, when you apply literal things
to religious interpretation, of course, it's going to clash.
I will say, early on in the film,
I think it's actually the same scene,
when he's taking the money out, and they're coming towards him,
he slaps the religious figure stickers on his cheek
with his genus.
So he has these religious figures on his cheeks,
so people can't hit him because he's
so used to people hitting him in the temple at this point
from doing this that he's learned that you can just
do that, which is brilliant.
Like, you should, I mean, honestly,
draw Muhammad on your forehead and run around.
And so they can't show your face on CCTV or on the news
or anything, lest they get Muslim fury.
So that's brilliant.
I'm going to adopt those practices.
Yeah.
There are other things that we know as to how,
if he doesn't have a place to stay,
he would just piss on a wall so that the police would come
catch him, and then he ends up in jail,
and there he can have a place to stay.
Or he locks up his sandals at the temple, like a bicycle.
Yeah, I've been there too.
So hilarious.
Or later on in the movie, we learn
that there's a central thing where he learns that maybe God
is scamming people.
Maybe he's pranking.
Something about prank calls.
Wrong number.
It's like everything is-
No, no, God is not pranking.
It's like there is an agent who is supposed
to connect the wishes to God.
That agent is like dialing wrong number,
and he's scamming, the agent is scamming all the money
so the things are not going to God.
So he's actually learned, when he learns about God in the film,
like he stays a theist.
Like he believes in God.
All along the film, he believes that there
is a God who is a benevolent God.
But these people are like someone,
somewhere is scamming because this is obviously not working.
The prayers are not working.
Nothing is working.
People are killing each other in the name of religion
and all these things.
So what's there?
He questions the differences in religion as well, right?
Like how do you know who is who?
Like-
Who is the real God.
No, no, who is, yeah, which God is the real God,
or who is who?
Like whether is it by birth you get
to know that this kid is Hindu, this kid is Muslim.
Like does God give sense to them?
Yeah, doesn't he try to make everyone take off
their clothes and stuff so you can see if you have a marking
on you?
Yeah, yeah.
There's a scene, he goes to a hospital
and he checks a newborn baby to see
if they have a label on them.
And then when he realizes that they don't,
he kind of goes to the temple with a guru in it.
And then he makes different people of different religions
swap clothes and dress up in different religious attires.
And he's like, can you guess where these people are from?
And so of course the guru just guesses
based on their religious attire.
And he's like, huh, you know you're punked.
Like I just-
Owned you, I owned you.
I tricked you.
So also going to show that, yeah, this is all concepts.
Yeah, I mean, he goes through like a lot of,
so I guess the movie got a lot of heat
because it looks at social norms or like cultural traditions,
right?
I think at one point some guy talks to the guru
and he's like, hey, I need help for my son or whatever,
or my dad, my dying dad or something.
And he's like, go up to the mountain
and go pray to this other person.
And PK is like, why would a god make you do that?
Like this is like a, like.
And so I think people got heat from like these traditions,
like these objects that we fetishize,
or like these social norms that we abide by,
like it's offensive if you make fun of that.
And it is tricky because like, I mean, yes, at some point
you are, sometimes the religious stuff doesn't make sense,
like literally.
And religion just literally most of the time doesn't make sense.
But like it's also if it's just built into your culture,
like this is the habit that we do or the pattern that we do.
It's very hard where it bleeds in between,
where like, are you criticizing just the cultural that's
built into it or the religion itself?
Yeah.
But throughout all these critiques,
I think it's important to note that he kind of always
believes in God, like Kili said.
And I said I find it a bit funny that people were offended
by this movie because he never really questions God at all.
He always kind of holds onto that.
And he's just questioning the way
people have chosen to worship him blindly.
Yeah.
Kili's making a lot of good arguments,
just saying, yeah, I agree with them.
Yes.
No, no, no, it's true.
So I will say, though, like I, you know, growing up Christian,
like I said, like all my VHS tapes,
you know, I watched a lot of Christian movies and TV shows
and stuff.
And watching this, I think that it's very resilient.
Like if you get religious movies for the most part,
at least in America, right, you'll
have like a Christian movie where it's like,
this Christian person goes to the college campus
and argues with the professor.
Or then they have like a debate with facts and logic.
And then the professor's beaten and stuff.
And they can't really have a movie where things
are correctly questioned, right?
Like it's always the Christian questioning other things.
But it's no one really coming up and questioning them.
And like this movie is resilient in that way,
where they are inviting like questions
and they are directly criticizing it.
But I still think it's an overtly religious film.
Like I don't think it's not anti-Hindu in any way.
But it was kind of refreshing to see
that they are able to withstand those types of questions.
Because the Christian ones, I don't know,
maybe because they're just always like playing victim.
But they're always like, they never take any shots.
They never, you know, like try to defend themselves in any way.
It's always just like playing the victim
and kind of trying to poke holes in other people.
And so I did appreciate that at least from this.
I think the reason it was criticized
for being anti-Hindu so much was because it really
did poke at idol worshiping, which
is a big thing in Hinduism, right?
And there's a scene where he goes to the temple
and he buys like a small statue for a cheap price.
And he prays and it doesn't work.
So he goes back to ask for a refund.
And they're like, oh, you can buy a bigger one or something.
So he's like, OK, so if I pay more for this bigger one,
will it work better?
Right?
And that also kind of just like pokes holes
to some degree in this.
And I think that and also the scene
where he follows Lord Shiva, a normal man dressed as Lord Shiva.
And he follows him to the bathroom and corners him.
And this was good.
It was good, but I was pretty uncomfortable at it.
Like, it was just, he just like locked him in the bathroom.
And from his point of view, he finally cornered the god.
Now it's time for koishimi.
He's really like, yeah, he has like,
his back is like next to the wall.
So he doesn't have any other choice apart from questioning
God at that point while he's peeing.
And this man's just like, I want to go home.
I have kids at home.
I'm going to go home.
I'm going to sit in a comfortable seat.
It was in a comfortable seat.
Like, he was like going to rob him or harass him somehow.
He's just going to question him about his remote.
I know the way they present it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Places, you know.
So he meets with the woman, right?
Jagu, right?
Jagu.
At first, she didn't believe him.
But then we get this long flashback
where he starts learning all the cultural norms in India.
At first, he was getting paper, paper of Mahatma Gandhi.
That was good, too.
All right, wait a minute.
I'll back up.
So he was giving money.
He was giving currency when he first shows up.
And it's a picture of Gandhi.
And he's like, oh, people take these pictures of Gandhi
and give me things.
So he runs around ripping pictures of Gandhi off walls
and stuff, and then hands him posters.
And they're like, what do you want me to do with this?
That was pretty funny.
Yeah, he's learning about currency.
Yeah, currency.
Or how he finds clothes.
He'd realize that people wear clothes.
And he finds them through dancing cars.
Yeah.
People having sex in cars.
Yeah.
And this pops up a few times throughout the movie.
It pops up way too many times.
He just steals people's clothes when they're having sex in the car.
So is that really a thing?
People having sex in cars.
Yeah, but I don't think they put the clothes out like that.
I don't think so.
Where'd you put your clothes, Killy,
when you had sex in the car?
I never had.
OK.
For podcast purposes.
Just in the rickshaw.
So yeah, I didn't believe.
I think eventually, Jai Gu believes that this guy is not
of this world.
And then they go on this crusade to prove that his holiness is
a fraud.
Because the holiness has his remote.
It has his remote.
It has the necklace to get back home.
And then his holiness is claiming that this remote control
is a gift from God.
And that's when you know that he's a fucking liar.
Yeah.
I think it's supposed to be like a bead from Lord Shiva's
necklace.
That's what he's claiming it is.
Yeah.
And so yeah, they go on a rant.
They go on this crusade.
And like we mentioned before, PK believes.
So PK, what's the sound of his name, PK?
Why PK?
The name.
OK.
So it says tipsy, right?
It means tipsy.
No, OK.
So PK is not an adjective.
It's an adjective.
Sorry, it's not a noun.
It's an adjective.
In a way, they were asking him, PK ho kya?
PK means like, are you drunk?
PK means actually drunk.
Like drunk.
OK, so PK ho kya?
Are you drunk?
Then he just thought that his name is PK.
And he was telling everyone, yeah, I am PK.
He took that name.
He thought PK is a name.
OK.
And then he assumes that name for him.
Yes.
This is going to be a common theme, I guess,
which is constantly bad mistranslation, where
the title is PK.
But in the movie, they call him tipsy.
They're like, hey, you're drunk.
You're tipsy.
So he has like an elf name.
The whole movie is just called tipsy.
And you, as an English viewer, have no idea why this is called
PK because it's never mentioned once.
Yeah.
They should have called the movie tipsy.
Yeah.
Yep.
Thank you.
That's all I wanted was just.
And then I think one more thing I saw on the subtitle
that he says like he learns Hindi, but he learns Bhojpuri.
It's like a Bihari, like one of the languages
very close to Hindi.
And he learns that from that process,
like the way he was learning.
So he has to hold hand for six hours to learn one language,
right?
Oh, god.
We need to totally touch on that.
So he was, you know, when he came to this world, right,
he was lost.
And he meets like a traveling showman.
Yeah.
It's played by Sanjay Dutt.
Yeah.
It's like a cameo.
Like it has one of my favorite songs in the movie.
I think it's called like Taki Chokro or something.
But anyway, yeah.
So he was trying to like.
So PK's ability is that he holds hands
to absorb the knowledge.
Yeah, memory, knowledge.
And raise and stuff.
And he couldn't keep it because because he's an alien,
we're led to believe he's an alien.
He's not Indian.
This this traveling Sanjay Dutt's character
takes him to this brothel.
And that's where he gets like tries this.
This this prostitute tries to get intimate with him.
But then he just decides to like grab her hand.
So he needed someone to grab a hand for six hours.
And he was trying to grab hands for anyone for six hours.
Yeah.
And let me just back up.
Your favorite song, Nikki, the entire thing
is about how this guy is very handsy and harasses everyone.
Yeah.
And it's a very cute character.
The whole thing is that how he's just
like sexually assaulting everyone
and how it's a very cute affectation
of this weird friend who just cannot stop touching people.
So like he like runs to people getting married
and grabs their hand and just will not
stop harassing people.
And that's the entire constants of the song.
It's like the subtitles hit something like,
here comes my zany guess.
Can't tell guy from girl.
Or like, here comes the lusty lad.
Yeah, I guess with this crazy fad or something.
Everyone runs away from him.
Nobody wants to be around him.
He is assaulting everyone.
And finally, the guy relents.
He's like, all right, I'll just got to take him to a prostitute
because he's so revolting to everyone around him
and won't stop touching everyone.
And somehow like super cute.
Yeah, I know it's like question on lyrics.
But the song is such a banger, man.
Let's say.
It's a banger.
But then he goes to the prostitute
and holds her hand for six hours.
And then he learns Bhojpuri.
Bhojpuri or not Hindi.
Yeah, it's like it's super weird because he's in Rajasthan,
which is like so far like thousands of kilometers
away from Bihar where the Bhojpuri language is.
And like he starts speaking Bhojpuri.
But a Hindi speaker would usually understand Bhojpuri
as well because it's almost a dialect.
So yeah, so and everyone is surprised like, oh my god.
And it was a very point of fun like in India
because like Bollywood film main actor, like alien
comes to glance on India and then he learns Bhojpuri.
That was a very nice take from the filmmakers I felt.
Because it's like a prostitute language?
No, no, no, no.
It's a Rajasthan language.
It's a language of one state.
And like you think prostitutes have a whole language
for themselves.
It's very close to Hindi.
It's like the girl was from that state who was working in a far
away state.
Right, it's like Isan.
But is Amir Khan from there or did he actually
have to learn Bhojpuri for the film?
Did he actually have to learn Bhojpuri for the film
or is he just from there and he knows the language?
No, no, no.
I think he had learned, of course.
I mean, it's easier.
It's like someone Thai learning Isan like Adam mentioned.
Very good analogy, Adam.
Thanks.
I don't know how I know that.
So anyways, he's super handsy, but he finally
learns the language and he's able to speak to everyone.
He speaks to everyone.
I think Sanjay Das character said something like, wow,
he's amazed.
Get laid, get well.
Or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like he suddenly get laid and he finally starts talking.
He starts talking.
And he stopped trying to touch everyone.
And that's also how he learns.
That's how Jaggu believes that he's an alien, right?
Because at first she was not believing him.
She just thought that he was batshit crazy and then he touches her and then
learns everything about her history and everything,
which will come into importance near the end of the movie.
But yeah, so she believes him, right?
And they go on this campaign to convince the public
that there are false prophets around the country.
He starts questioning things.
Well, yeah, because he's after the necklace, right?
The necklace.
And the guru is talking shit.
Yeah.
So PK was trying to say people should stop
doing these meaningless rituals that would give you the answer.
Because to him, he's jaded.
He can't get an answer from God anywhere, right?
And then I think, OK, we later find out that Sanjay Dutt's character
finds the traveling salesman.
And that's when we learn that this guy sold the remote control
to his holiness.
So it's all lies.
It's all lies, basically.
And yeah, so with that information, right?
We get this weird scene where Sanjay Dutt's character dies.
He gets assassinated through bomb attack.
I love that you're laughing at this, Nicky.
It's so random.
It's shocking.
It got so dark so fast.
I forgot.
What happens again?
It's like they're like.
He was bringing the guy who actually
snatched the necklace from him and sold it in some marketplace.
So he didn't directly sell it to the villain, Tapas Viji guy.
And then, but he just sold it for a few money, very little money.
And then he gets a hold of him.
And so he tries to bring him to Delhi or wherever they are at,
so to prove to people that, OK, this is the story.
And then there is just an explosion in the tree.
There was an explosion.
Like a terror attack.
A terrorist attack, just to silence that vital information.
So the first time I watched it, I thought this was right.
It's unclear, actually.
It's not disclosed.
It's not disclosed that who made the.
Because I think it was also a commentary on one of the terror
attacks that happened that was kind of framed on someone,
some people, some terrorist organization.
But it was said to be done by some other group,
like conflicting religious groups.
And there was a thing which never came out,
never had proper investigation to know who actually
caused the terror attack.
There are accused party, but it's like kind of went up in smoke.
So yeah, so I think that's why the filmmaker kept it.
He not mentioned that why that terror,
like who did that terror attack.
So it's like for him, I think it's a commentary.
Like at the end of the day, it's a terror attack.
Doesn't matter who is doing it.
Like it's the innocent people dying.
It doesn't matter who is doing it.
It's just the poor traveling, circus people dying.
Yeah.
It doesn't matter who is doing it.
From all the movies that we've seen,
we always have these plot twists where someone just dies.
I'm not going to get into it.
PK, the alien with big ears, is in a big bloody scene
for no reason.
It's a signature fear of stairs moment.
Yeah.
It's the hard turn.
Someone has to needlessly die for the character
to learn something about themselves.
Right.
And then all this campaign against false holy men,
it culminates into this talk show that they would have.
He challenges them to a debate, like a facts and logic debate.
A debate where PK says everyone out there
should follow the real God and not these holy men.
And then his holiness is arguing back
that I have a direct connection to God.
I can prove that this is true because I told Jagu
that you can't end up with Pakistani men.
And then we learned that PK absorbed Jagu's memories.
And he said that, but you see, the letter
that she received about how Safraz, the Pakistani dude,
he was basically telling her, oh, we can't get married.
It wasn't actually a letter directed to her.
There was no address.
There was no phone.
There was no address.
But the way we find out, it's so convoluted in a way.
Earlier in the movie, she gets to this wedding scene.
And then another bride goes up to her and says, here,
hold my dog.
Hold my basket.
And that's when we find out that this kid that
goes into the church giving the letter of rejection,
it wasn't directed to her.
It was directed to the bride.
But we would never see that on first watch.
I think it's so funny how everything falls into place.
And that's when PK was able to prove to his holiness
that that wasn't directed to Jagu.
It was directed to another bride.
And then that bride was stood up.
That bride was stood up.
And then Jagu realized, oh, my god, maybe PK's right.
And then I should call the embassy of Belgium
just to see where the Pakistani embassy in Belgium is.
Just to prove that right.
And I don't know why she didn't think
about doing that at first.
I don't know why.
But it ultimately proved his holiness prophecy
was just false.
Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
She calls the embassy.
And they're like, oh, hey, it's you.
This guy's been calling every single day for years,
asking, waiting for you to call.
And he's going to be so happy.
So this guy is, by the way, the ultimate cut,
because we'll get to the end.
He is, dude, because like, so they fall in love, whatever.
She leaves the wedding place where
he's supposed to meet here.
And then he is just sat and calls his embassy
every single day for years.
Anyways, they connect again at the end of the movie.
And they're like, oh, my god, yeah,
it was just a big miscommunication.
Let's get back together.
That's fine.
I'll get to my main point after this.
Anyways, continue.
It took them six months to realize that, oh, it
was all a miscommunication.
I have loved you all this time.
I wanted to marry you.
And I guess that's it.
It ultimately proves that his holiness prophecy
was just false.
Yeah.
It's literally the point.
That's literally the whole point.
Yeah.
The end scene, the monologue that PK has,
and I think that also went viral a little bit.
And this exact line where he was like,
there are two gods, the one who created us
and the one you have created.
And we have to believe them in the ones who have created us
and abolish yours.
So I feel like there was specific lines in that monologue
he had at the end that really kind of hit the nail
on the head about his view on religion as well, which is
really like, god exists, but it's just not the god
that you have created, that you believe in,
that you're using to exploit people.
Yeah.
I really like his end monologue.
I don't know if it hit you guys in the same way.
No, it's good.
I mean, I think what they're trying to establish
is that you don't need intermediaries or gurus
for your direct connection, which I agree with.
But anyways, really quick though.
My question is, doesn't PK create a new god by saying that?
Well, also, he's like an alien.
I mean, that would alter any religion, I think.
If an alien showed up, I'd be like, wait, wait.
This wasn't what I grew up in.
But I just want to say the romance.
So she calls and gets back with the Pakistani guy,
and they get married and stuff.
But PK reveals that he's actually in love with her.
And she writes a whole book about PK
and goes on book tours and stuff because she loves him.
Because the problem with the movie, I think,
is because they need to have a love story.
But the Pakistani guy is in the very beginning and the very end.
So they don't have a chance to develop.
So the only people that can develop are
Jagu and the alien PK.
And that's who we're invested in.
But they can't have her fall in love with an alien.
It has to be even worse.
It has to be a Pakistani man, not some guy from outer space.
But the problem is, so he just shows up again at the end.
But she's all invested in PK at this point.
He clearly is in love with her too.
So this Pakistani guy, he seems sweet.
But he is completely sidelined.
And even though he's married to her, she's still in love with him.
But that's in the scope of story, the scope of the film.
But it shows that PK learns by holding her hands
that she's still in love with the guy.
That's why he stops.
But she writes a book about him.
But he stops it.
I wouldn't say that she's in love with him, though.
I don't think that showed in any part.
There was a point where he was in love with her.
He even writes on the card, I love you.
But he doesn't give it because when he holds the hand,
that he finds out that she's actually still in love
with the surfer-ass guy.
And then that's why he makes it a point
that these guys also get together.
Yeah.
And he never really disclosed his love for her as well.
He just had a bunch of tapes before he
was going to go back to his planet.
And then Jagu kind of listens to some of the tapes
and realizes that it's all records of her speaking.
And that's when she realizes that, oh, PK's in love with me.
But she doesn't stop him or anything.
He's an alien after all.
I think just the fundamentals of that relationship
would be questionable.
The years wouldn't fit.
I just think that it was nice that it ended that way.
I didn't want it to be like, oh, my true love
was an alien all along because he's the main character.
It's very rooted with loving someone
from a different culture.
It goes back to that.
I think I like that.
I like that approach.
I didn't want her to fall in love with Amir Khan.
Yeah, and I think PK's whole premise
is be selfless, right?
And he kind of exhibits that with his actions as well.
He doesn't try to win her over or convince her or anything.
He just realizes that she's in love with somebody else,
makes sure that she gets back with him,
and then goes back to his planet.
So everything that he's going on about God
and what religion should be, I think
he also exhibits that in his personality and his actions.
I mean, yeah, for an alien, he's very humanist.
Yeah.
But yeah, so actually, he was not
able to lie throughout the film, right?
That's his human behavior that he never understood.
Humans can lie.
Where he's from and his planet, people cannot lie.
And at the very end, there's a scene where-
Because they communicate through holding hands.
Right, right.
They get all the information.
All the thoughts, right?
So they know what is going on in your head
and what's the memory of it.
But at the very end, before he gets on his spaceship
to go back to his planet, he tells a lie.
And that's when Jagu and both him, I think,
realize that, oh, he's actually become a little bit human
during his time on Earth.
How sweet.
He's become a little evil.
A little bit of a liar.
He's deceptive.
He's just like us now.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
Takeaways.
Yeah, I mean, that was the whole movie.
I enjoyed this movie.
I mean, I know when he was saying,
it looked like I was kind of offended by it.
I just think it was just kind of iffy.
It was like I was amazed at how bold the movie was
at questioning religious beliefs, considering
in Indian society, it's deeply rooted in religion.
I can understand the controversy that it caused.
And I think with all the themes that they presented
and the things that they questioned,
it was quite bold, really bold of them to do that.
Yeah, I also think that Amir Khan, from what I've seen,
I think this was his best role.
From what I've seen in 3 Idiots, I
thought that was a really cool movie that he was in.
But this was a really well-acted movie.
It's very Forrest Gump-esque, Rain Man-esque character,
the eccentric character that the character plays,
a breakout role of some sort.
Yeah, so that was pretty cool.
For me, the anecdotal humor, there
are some humor that was pretty fun for me.
Like just pulling out, sorry, just selecting some things
that euphemism and different integracies of human languages,
he points out as, oh, don't get confused.
Like last, when he brings his other alien mates to Earth,
again, he says, OK, when humans say they love chicken or fish,
that doesn't mean actually they love them.
They just love to eat them.
And if they say, love you, that doesn't
mean they're going to eat you.
So this kind of euphemism.
And then this kind of hints towards the religion question
as well.
Like I feel a parallel between that,
OK, like the how linear and straightforward question
you ask about God, as a kid would ask,
can be answered in a twisted way.
Always there is euphemism.
There is metaphor, allegory involved
in things when it comes to society, culture,
and religion and language.
So straightforward, it will not make sense.
But if you know the culture, it might make sense.
So which was kind of antithesis to the film, I felt.
So that was a little takeaway for me.
But I really love the quirkiness of the film,
like how lightly and how innocently
it talked about the problems in society a little bit,
the religious problems and the Guruji's problem.
By the way, I can't remember any film where a Guruji,
this kind of Guruji was a good character from Bollywood.
Never.
They're always villains.
Were who?
This kind of Babaji, Guruji's.
Guru, the spiritual guru figure.
The spiritual guru figure.
They're always villains.
So would you say Sadguru?
So this is like a normal movie plot then.
This is like a normal plot then.
No, no, no.
Him as a villain is a normal plot.
He was directly questioning the idol in the temple,
making fun of God in the Shiva scene.
So these were what people also got quirked about.
And he was straightforward questioning the religious
practices as well.
So that was controversial.
Because usually in those films, these gurus
are shown as fringe element in the religion,
not the actual religion.
So that's how you say, oh, this guy is the villain.
It's not the system of belief that is the villain.
Yeah, I do got to say, it's easy to just point your finger
at a guru or two and be like, everything else is great
except these guys contaminating it.
Yeah, exactly.
That's not true.
That's the take of most of the films.
But in this film, he threw him, the director kind of
questioned, the writer kind of questioned the whole practice,
how we see it.
So that's why it was controversial.
Yeah, that's true.
Take away winning.
Would you say Satguru is the villain?
Yeah, of course.
Do you think he's brat?
You think PK is brat?
Brat?
I'm kidding.
Go on, Winnie.
I mean, I chose the film.
So obviously, it holds a very special place in my heart.
I don't really want to give too much of my interpretation.
I really just want to urge all the listeners,
if you haven't watched it, go watch it.
And put your ego, put your beliefs aside.
Just be open to experiencing new things
and questioning normalized beliefs.
Because I think this movie does a very good job
at questioning even beyond religion,
just how we operate as humans, how we interact with each other,
all the little divisions we've made between religions,
but also between men and women, for instance.
So it really paints how religion has been commercialized
and commodified in many ways.
And I think that's a very big topic in India.
So I thought that this movie was very bold in the way
that it depicted it.
But I think upon talking with Keeley,
it seems to be a normal thing.
There's been many movies about this,
about how gurus are corrupt.
But it still seems like a lot of people worship gurus.
So even in his end monologue, he talks about how God is hope.
And I think in India, there's always this need for hope.
And people really exploit that.
And I think if this movie helps even one person opens
their eyes, it's already achieved something
that many other films don't.
And you see that throughout the film also,
where you have nuns on the screen being like,
why would God tell me not to send my young girls to school?
Of course, God would want education for everyone.
Or like, if you have a direct line to God,
why can't you just end India's poverty?
So these are very basic questions
that we should be asking before we donate a ton of money
to a figure who can never live up to their promises.
So yeah, I love this movie.
I think it's the type of movie that
makes you think about things.
I think it's also very philosophical.
So I remember when he goes to the temple
and he starts donating money and asking people about God,
it reminded me of Nietzsche in that book, The Gay Science.
You have this madman running into the market
and going, where is God?
Where is God?
And that's also where his famous quote of God is dead
comes from.
So it kind of had that.
And PK looks like a madman in himself.
That's why he got the nickname PK.
So yeah, I think this movie does a great job.
It's questioning blind faith, religious divides,
social norms, and blind faith, as I said.
So yeah, I would definitely rate it in my top three Bollywood
movies.
Really?
Yes, because I am not a fan of tropes and romance
and unbelievable things, fantasies that
underline so many Bollywood plots.
I really like realism, political commentary,
social commentary.
And this movie delivers in all of that aspects.
And the fact that it became so popular despite that,
hey, yeah, I think it really speaks
to the diversity of Bollywood as well.
All the films that we've talked about earlier,
I think, kind of have that Bollywood trope roped into it.
But this is a very unique film to some degree for me.
But it still has that kind of fanatical aspect
of an alien landing on Earth.
And yeah.
Would you watch it for fun?
Absolutely.
This is my definition of fun.
Yeah, I remember watching the film.
And you and Nikki were just kind of so serious.
And I was like, why are you all laughing?
We were so worried you were going to get canceled.
Like, he's chasing Lord Shiva in the bathroom.
Why is this not funny?
Because we're like, we have to talk about this eventually.
I remember Adam's initial reaction.
Oh my god, it's religion.
We need to talk.
We need to talk about it.
So this is the first film that I've picked for the podcast.
And I have a feeling it might be my last.
No, no, no.
I like it.
That's not happening.
It's going to make sense.
I think once again, we all reveal our picks over time.
It's going to be so clear where all of us
are coming from in this.
But no, no, I think it's all right.
I think it's good.
Like I said, I think it's a lot better
than a lot of the American stuff, where
if it does talk about religion, they usually
aren't very good at poking holes too much.
Or if it is a religious film itself,
it is just incredibly victimized and defensive right away,
instead of willing to be a little introspective
and examine its practices and stuff.
So I think it was good.
I think the main actor is super ripped.
I think that was nice, especially at his age.
And it was pretty funny.
So I enjoyed it.
It totally makes sense as a Winnie film to pick.
Would you guys agree that if all aliens are ripped like that,
they should just invade Earth?
They should invade Earth.
I think we have a lot to learn about how they do that.
We should juxtapose with the first statement Winnie did.
What?
If all aliens are this ripped, they should invade Earth.
I was going to say really quick, with this and Jawan,
we're getting a little pattern of pointing out problems,
but not giving any answers really, which is cool.
But we'll see if this keeps popping up.
Yeah, that's what artists do.
They put out questions.
The answers are from philosophers.
There is no objective answers to these questions.
You have to form the answers yourself.
I think there's some objective answers sometimes.
I think we could find that.
But people are less likely to believe objective answers.
They have to arrive at the conclusion themselves.
Then that would be a real controversial.
That would be a real controversial.
This movie comes out as like, I'm God.
But you plant enough seeds of question into people's brains,
and they will arrive at the conclusion
that you intended them to arrive at, which I think
this movie does very well.
Which is what?
Which is form your own beliefs.
Don't blindly follow people.
If you're going to believe in God, believe in God for what
God is.
Don't believe in humans that talk to God.
You can talk to God.
You don't need intermediaries.
Like you said, you don't need humans.
You don't need you.
Yeah, also listen to small aliens.
That's the most important.
And also aliens are hot, this movie has told us.
And they're not necessarily green.
Yeah, big surprise for me on that one, actually.
Interesting.
Well, that closes out.
Where did those huge grapes come from, behind me?
Oh, I went to buy it.
Oh, OK.
Well, we're going to go eat our momos and grapes.
We're going to go eat momos and grapes
and watch the next movie.
Talk to you guys soon.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Bye!