Perspective - Kanniks

The Banquet Scene

The film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was banned in India. This film is probably the best in the Indiana Jones Trilogy. Laced with an underlying current of a great sense of humor, the movie adventures through what it calls ‘India’.

Indiana Jones always gets caught in adventures in the most exotic of places. And there are always the slimy, creepy crawly creatures.

There are enough references to the thuggee cult and the movie’s version of it, where an institutionalized operation offers unwitting capturees as an offering to Mother Kali, in the most bizzare of ways imaginable.

Villain Om Puri has the ability to pluck out the victim’s heart from his rib cage - a skill that any surgeon would envy. How on earth did they come up with this idea? It is hilarious.

The most famous of the scenes in this film is the banquet scene, where INdiana jOnes, his girl friend partner throughout the adventure - a whiny blonde, and a boy from the Far East sit down with the Royal Entourage for a feast.

Guess what is served in the feast? Snakes, eyeball soup and the like. And here is the cake. The dessert is chilled monkey brains, scooped out fresh from the cracked skull of tiny monkeys.

The whole banquet scene is only incidental in the film; yet it causes a riot of laughter. Everytime I see it, it never ceases to amuse me.

So, how does it insult India as many have made it out? Everyone knows that it is very highly far fetched. And if anyone thinks that people eat monkey brains in India, it is their problem.