The day of the latest entry in the Delhi blast journal, my nephew and I had made plans to see Mumbai Meri Jaan (trailer). It’s a movie about the Bombay train bombings of ‘06. We kicked about a darkened Fremont parking lot in front of a pet store where the Indian multiplex used to be. Several frantic phone calls later, we alighted anew. Naz’s marquee lay unlit. On a Saturday night there seemed to be less than ten people in the entire spot, a handful of strip mall spaces converted into listless little screens. Oh, Naz. How you’ve fallen from sold-out K.Jo midnights. Come back, K3G, all is forgiven.

We slunk into Jaan; we’d been fooled by the heft of the credits. Kay Kay, Irrfan, Soha Ali are a D.O. mark for Bollycheese. You know that sinking moment of realizing you’ve just consigned your next two hours to a very bad film? Jaan’s sledgehammer-subtle Greek drama told us we were once again in crapland, delivered there on the Dombivli fast by the Evano Oruvan director. Damn you, Nishikant Kamat!

This movie comes too soon after the bombings. It’s glib, showing Soha Ali Khan doing rambling interviews at blown-up Bombay train stations. Starlets like Diya Mirza actually did this at the time, I watched them on the Bombay news. In Jaan she re-enacts being a Rakhi Sawant at a time of ball bearings and attaché bombs. It’s oblivious and disrespectful. It’s gory: Ekta Kapoor-style 360-degree shots and a jumped-up horror movie score with liters of blood over charred bodies. And it’s beyond obvious, telegraphing, underlining and going over with a sparkly pink highlighter. (It is, however, beautifully shot, making Bombay look better than Bombay.)

We slide sideways into A Wednesday (trailer) next door. More bombings. That very morning we’d made phone calls to Delhi. My gut couldn’t take it. Outside again, we bought cold samosas and neon-green chutney and fled to Shiney Ajuha’s Hijack (trailer) and its reassuring stupidity. To wit, a movie about the Indian Airlines hijack to Kandahar still makes time for songs, grope sessions and moral crises right in the middle of a commando raid. Only this time, we don’t give up the terrorist who later planned the Parliament attack and was involved in 9/11.

Gawk at Ahuja’s beak, slapdash chest shave and plunging muscle tee. Praise his mawkish adherence to Bollywood rules (’Tell my daughter I love her!’) while batshit-loco terrorists blow people away in frame. Admire how Indians rectify on screen what they can’t be arsed to do in real life.

Ah, that’s the stuff. India is a soft target.