Rained Down Senses

How many times have we appreciated a particular rain sequence from a movie? In certain movies rain forms the essential back drop and also plays a role in intensely depicting the feelings of the protagonist or any character from the movie.  Not to forget that rain has also been used as a proxy for a ‘head to toe’ drenched heroine, that titillates audience’ senses and ensures ringing cash registers. I am sure some or most of us have enjoyed and appreciated such rain sequences in movies.

Today, we stay in times that are about scarcity of resources, that are about struggle to be at the right place at the right time to get just about sufficient resources and consider ourselves to be lucky. What were once considered to be abundant and birth right of every human have now become scarce or are available at a premium. Water has become one such resource. Life without water is unimaginable. Foreseeing tremendous stress on availability of potable/drinkable water, various forms of water conservation methodologies have been proposed in the past two decades. Mindless and unplanned expansion of population is only going to put further stress on the available water resources. Such has been the fear over availability of water that China has occupied Tibet to safe guard its water requirements and they say if there ever is a WW III, it is would  be to safe guard water requirements.

With such a stress on this resource, almost unnoticed and unquestioned our Movie industry continues to use artificial means to depict rain, flood and drench heroines with water. Have we ever wondered how many liters of water would have literally gone down the drain which could probably have been sufficient to fulfill the water needs of many of our water starving cities? Just sample the extent of water wasted by some of the movies:

Titanic – 60 million Gallons

My Name is Khan – 2,400,000 liters 

Tum Mile – 3,600,000 Liters 

Dabangg – 180,000 liters

Godzilla – No data

Jurassic Park - No data

Even the much loved movie in Bollywood, 3 idiots had an elaborate rain cum flood sequence, though I was not able to locate exact number of liters used for filming those scenes, but nonetheless, a wastage anyway (Wonder what Aamir Khan has to say about this – Satyamav Jayate?). Imagine, many such movies were made over the years, across world. How much millions of liters or gallons of water that possibly could have been used for more noble purpose, have been wasted just to entertain us!

Can the film industry think of a better way of filming these sequences? Or can the audience stop expecting such rain sequences in movies and choose, sanity over pleasure or titillation?