Indians (that is us) love movies and our love for Bollywood movies (however absurd the plot might be) is immense. From inane to ludicrous to gut-wrenching, all emotions can be felt while watching a Hindi movie. Some say our cinema has gone up a notch, others say it has lost its sheen. In the middle of all this, we find an absurd way to learn words, one where we explore title, themes, songs, clips etc. of Bollywood movies to learn words. Do not feel offended or bemused, this is an attempt in jest to make learning word an easier task.

Our first three presentations, from three movie titles:

Ek thi Daayan = Ek thi Hag!

What a simple translation.
Hag means ‘an ugly evil-looking old lady, like a witch’. This word comes to us from the Middle English hagge, meaning witch. For us, we simply relate to the movie and the Hindi word ‘Daayan’. Now it should be really easy to recall this word.

Aashiqui 2 = Amour

Well, what can we say about this movie title? Aashiqui 2, with a double a. On a general non-vocabulary note, what does ‘Aashiqui-2’ translate too? ‘Romance 2.0’, the second innings of romance, or the second part of love, or love in modern times, or love digested for the 2nd time? Anyways, keeping the ‘2’ aside, ‘Aashiqui’ for us translates to ‘Amour’. What does amour means? Amour refers to a usually secretive or illicit sexual relationship. This is what this movie is about? The word aashiqui, when used in North India, most of the times refers to illicit relationships, with parents often complaining that their wards are busy in ‘aashiqui’ rather than more fruitful pursuits. Next time someone objects to you being involved in something like this, simply say: you were not whiling away your time, you were in the state of amour.

Lucky di unlucky story = Lucky di wretched story

Simply can’t, just cannot do it! Just cannot leave out a Punjabi movie from this list. If I had done so, I would have betrayed my own ilk. Keeping this feeling of kinship in mind, I pick the movie: Lucky di unlucky story, or, I should say: Lucky di wretched story. Wretched, as we can infer, means ‘full of misery’.

Well, I hope you had fun reading this. And more importantly, hope you can relate to these words better now.