GUILDERLAND — In Guilderland, people from India can stay in touch with their culture by going to the movies at Crossgates Mall — where Regal Cinemas regularly shows Indian movies in their original languages — or by browsing the fashions at an in-home Indian clothing boutique in Westmere.

On a given week, there is likely to be at least one — and possibly two or three — movies from India screened at Crossgates.

At a showing of the the action film “Aadhi” at the end of February, all 20 people in the audience looked to be from India. The movie was shown in the Malayalam language spoken in the southern state of Kerala, with English subtitles.

On his way out of the theater, Amith Kurian was fairly positive in his assessment of the film.

“There’s some plot,” Kurian said. “Not saying it’s the best I’ve ever seen, but a decent plot.”

“Aadhi” is the story of a gentle, guitar-playing songwriter whose dreams of breaking into film — he wants to compose film scores — are interrupted when he is caught up in a violent episode that makes him the target of a mega-rich developer who wants revenge and sends out his goon bodyguards to get it.

Luckily, Aadhi also happens to excel in parkour, the art of running fast through city landscapes while climbing up or leaping off obstacles; this comes in handy when a small band of bad guys chases him through one colorful Indian marketplace after another.

In addition to the running, there is also a lot of crying in “Aadhi,” by the young man’s mother whenever she speaks to him on prepaid cell phones and by various characters, old and young, male and female, who try to help him and wind up in trouble themselves.

Is this much crying normal in Indian action films?

Kurian said of Indian moviemakers, “They try to touch every emotion of the human being.”

The movie reached for noble sentiments, said Kurian’s friend Mayur Menon, when the main character’s mother encouraged him, on the phone, to run away to another country and go into hiding. Even if we never see you or hear from you again, she said, we just want you to be safe, somewhere in the world.

In addition to “Aadhi,” there was also a Hindi movie playing at Crossgates, and another in the Tamil language, which is spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka. The movies cross an array of genres, including comedy and drama.

Regal Crossgates has been showing Indian movies at Regal Crossgates for about eight years, said Richard Grover, Regal Entertainment Group’s vice president of communications. Crossgates Stadium 18 is the anchor location for Bollywood films in the Albany market, he said.

Regal often receives requests for specific titles from India, Grover said, and the company tries to offer as much variety as possible. Depending on a film’s popularity, he said, it might screen in anywhere from two to 150 Regal theaters across the country.

In the United States, the word “Bollywood” is often used to refer to all of Indian cinema, but in fact it means the movie industry that produces movies in Hindi. The word is a portmanteau, combining “Hollywood” and “Bombay,” the older name for Mumbai, where these movies are made.

Various states have their own industries, with names that play off the word “Bollywood.” Kollywood turns out films in Tamil, in the Kodambakkam neighborhood of Chennai. Tollywood is used to refer to Telugu films made in Telangana or to Bengali films made in Tollygunge, in Kolkata. Mollywood films are made in the Malayalam language.

Other filmgoers

Beena Varghese, 53, is a social worker with the New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities. She is from Kerala, and her native language is Malayalam. She and her husband go to Crossgates to see Indian movies once every three months or so, she said.

“It brings a lot of memories back, and it’s more connecting,” she said.

Benny Thottam, 51, works for the New York City Fire Department as an assistant commissioner for technology and comes home to Guilderland on the weekends. His wife is a co-owner of the Indian restaurant Nirvana.

He goes to see Malayalam or Hindi movies about once a month. It helps, he said, that he lives “about three minutes from Crossgates Mall.”

He goes to the mall for a movie but stays to eat or shop, he said.

“I hope they will continue to show movies,” he said. “That’s part of the reason I make an effort to go.”

He was at the same showing of “Aadhi,” and says that Indian filmmakers often put a lot of different kinds of emotions into each movie, “to attract all kinds of people.”

If a movie features only action,  he said, it will draw just one type of viewer. “So they’re trying to appeal to all age groups.

“Sentimentality always works out, especially with the older group,” Thottam said. “They like families, and things that come from the heart.”

Thottam described Indian movies as “total entertainment,” adding that, in years past, in particular, families in India didn’t have money to take vacations, so movies were the main means of escape.

“People didn’t go on vacation ... like here, every year the family goes to summer vacation. There, there wasn’t something like that. Movies were basically the entertainment for people,” he said.

His own taste in movies runs to “real-life stories about humans,” he said, listing a few of his favorite American movies as “Rain Man,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Wall Street,” “Beautiful Mind,” and “The Godfather.”

Born abroad

According to data from the 2017 American Community Survey, compiled by TownCharts, people from India account for the highest percentage of Guilderland residents who were born in other countries, at 26.2 percent.

The part of Guilderland with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents is Westmere. Fourteen percent of Westmere’s residents were born in other countries, as compared to 9 percent of town residents overall.

The next-highest group of foreign-born people living in Guilderland is from China, excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan; Chinese people account for 12.5 percent of foreign-born residents of Guilderland, or less than half the number that comes from India.

The next three are Korea, Pakistan, and the Philippines, with about 8, 7, and 4 percent.

Clothing from home

Jaya Avvaru has a room just off the entrance to her Westmere home with three walls of tall clothing racks, all filled with brilliantly colored silk gowns and other ethnic wear from India.

During the day, Avvaru works as a project manager in information technology with CMA Consulting. Her store, Aakarshana Boutique, at 12 Hanes St., is open in the evening by appointment.

She sells lehenga outfits from the northern part of the country, which feature a skirt, a croptop, and a shawl, all in the same color or sometimes with a complementary shawl; the salwal suit, also from the north, featuring a tunic over leggings, with a shawl; and, of course, the sari, worn in Southern India, a six-meter-long piece of cloth worn over a cropped blouse and a petticoat and draped and pleated and wrapped around the body.

People want to wear Indian clothing at parties and on special occasions like the Diwali Festival of Lights in the fall or the Indian New Year, in early spring, she said. People like to wear clothing that is on trend in India, and they like to wear it just once, she said.

She started her shop in 2013 with a small collection, and it grew, she said. She goes to India twice to year to meet with new designers and select all of the clothing.

She also offers handmade silk-thread jewelry in a variety of bright jewel tones that can be bought ready-made or custom made to match an outfit. The jewelry is made by impoverished people in southern India, she said, and can be made and sent quickly by FedEx.

Avvaru likes being able to express her sense for fashion and design and enjoys meeting people. “Often, I meet about 10 people a day,” she said. “I learn a lot from them.”

She is also still learning about India. “In India, there are a lot of cultures, and I learn a lot about those,” she said.

In addition to selling items from her boutique, she also travels and sets up stalls at Indian fairs in New Jersey, New York City, Boston, Virginia, and Connecticut, she said. Since sizes of Indian clothing are quite standardized — she carries from small to 2X — she also can sell and ship to customers around the country.

“I have customers even in California,” she said.

Avvaru is thinking about starting to advertise some of her gowns as prom wear that could be worn by anyone, she said, pulling out a princess-style gown in deep burgundy, tipped with a foot-tall band of gold around the hem. The prices — most are $125, and none are more than $175, she said — are less than for a typical prom gown.

Each item is hand-picked and unique, she says. She carries each outfit in only one size, and, when customers come in, they look at the choices in their size. “A lot of the people go to the same parties, so I don’t want them to all be wearing a uniform,” she said.

A native of Hyderabad, in southern India, Avvaru speaks Telugu. She goes to see films at Crossgates in Telugu or Hindi once every few months.