Ajooba

As a child, Sunday mornings were occupied by three kids earnestly watching an outdated Bollywood movie with the utmost concentration and diligence.

A movie that was recorded on a VHS tape, but was watched repeatedly enough to damage the quality so that intermittently it was covered with lines, scratches and snowy effects. The irony was, that none of these kids could even understand Hindi and relied heavily on the inaccurate and poorly translated subtitles.

I won't even bother elaborating on the storyline. It includes an evil advisor who coincidently happens to be a satanist. There is a dapper prince who must save the day, a princess needing saving, and of course flying carpets and lots and lots of songs replacing any potential love scenes.

My 4 year old brother pretended to be Ajooba, a cheap Zoro type masked hero who had the dance moves of Justin Bieber.

My sister chose the fair, straight haired delicate princess.

I chose Rukshana, the unruly haired fiery puppeteer, from the city of Hind, in search of her father who was a magician and falsely accused of murdering the royal family.

We watched the movie till it was so damaged that it eventually went into the pile of VHS tapes, that were half recorded with episodes of Pound Puppies and Mrs Pepperpot, all now obsolete.

Over the weekend, my brother on route to get a chicken tikka at the local Pakistaani chicken stand, sees Ajooba's masked face peek behind the latest Bollywood hits. He had to get a copy.

He had passed it onto me after he had watched it. I had to watch it in batches over the space of three evenings.

It's five hours long, but the memory of Ajooba will linger in my mind, forever.

Ajooba Zindabaad*!

* long live Ajooba