मुन्ना बजरंगी!!

Today I saw my first bhojpuri movie, and it was an amazing experience that I don't think I'll be forgetting anytime soon.
To answer the first question. Why bhojpuri movies?
The very concept of bhojpuri movies has fascinated me. I mean, seeing something that can be actually more in-your-face than bollywood, with all those hoardings and posters of actors dancing away with fat babes in fields having ridiculous titles such as "Kab Hoga Hamaar Biyaah" ( a common enough conundrum in North India apparently) had an irresistable pull for me. Yet, I never really got around to actually dragging myself to one of those bhaiyya-full theatres till I saw the promos of Munna Bajrangi.
Munna written in green, and Bajrangi written in saffron, with munna apparently a Muslim villain, and Bajrangi the saffron hero. I was entranced, and expected a VHP-RSS-Sangh Parivar financed movie (the amount of advertising and publicity the movie had certainly supported the belief) that showed saffron activists ripping muslim foetuses from stomachs and feasting on them and so on, but the movie turned out to be a big surprise.

Shockingly, Munna Bajrangi is about two friends, a (shia?) Muslim named Munna and a true-blue-Bihari Bajrangi. Munna and Bajrangi join forces to defeat 'Babua', the local crime lord who ravages Bihar's fields and womens with equal ferocity. In the promo both Munna and Bajrangi looked very promising, intense, serious expression that promised good performances and nice action scenes, but when I actually watched the movie, Munna outshadowed Bajrangi by a MILE, I mean, the guy is CHARISMATIC!! From the moment he entered the scene, the audience was howling and rooting for him, cheering "Munna! Munna!" (with me and Raoul joining the voices later on) and shrieking with joy during his action scenes.
I was touched. I mean, really, really, touched. We all think that people have these prejudices and communalism is omnipotent, and that the villages and rural areas are the most sensitive, but if the response this movie got was anything to go by, my perception got a serious kick in the ass.

Another shock was bhojpuri. I always imagined it to be some strange language with every word ending with "va", but if you know even decent Hindi, then you will have absolutely no problem understanding bhojpuri.
I came to the conclusion that I'm as much a sucker for patriotic and sentimental stuff as when I was six years old, sobbing my eyes out watching Poorab aur Paschim.