Bollywood madness
We received an urgent call from my sister who was in Turkey on an exchange programme. For a week she had been plagued by locals on news about a Raj Kapoor who was ailing. She figured out he was ‘some’ Hindi actor, but knew little else.
When she called, he had already passed away and DD was running obituaries, thanks to which we were slightly better informed. We furnished her with names of some famous films of his.
For us, knowledge of Hindi films did not extend beyond Lata Mangeshkar and Amitabh Bachchan. My father’s Dravidian ideology and rationalism also meant Hindi-phobia. We were brought up on a diet of Sivaji Ganesan (my father’s favourite), Rajnikanth (thanks to my boy cousins) and Kamal Hassan (simply because my family has a large number of women).
The first Hindi film I went for in a theatre was because my parents could not turn down my brand new brother-in-law from Bangalore. He took us for a late show to the Safire theatre (now a dilapidated and disputed structure) to watch Jackie Shroff romance Meenakshi Seshadri in ‘Hero’.
In college, too, I saw a few more movies but I am not much of a Hindi film-watcher, unless it has Aamir Khan or Kajol.
The reach of Hindi films never ceases to amaze me. Certain things are either inexplicable or have no one explanation. Like why film watching is the premier pastime of Indians. Why we have the largest turnover of films in the world. Why we excel in mediocre film-making and senseless Hollywood rip-offs. And yet why millions in India and abroad are enamoured by it.
My cousin lived in Moscow briefly. On the metro, she would regularly be accosted by middle-aged women who wanted to discuss Hindi films. Her knowledge on the subject was far worse than mine.
A friend living in Tehran had to make urgent calls home to find out how Shah Rukh Khan was doing, because her distraught Iranian maid had heard rumours in the market that he had met with an accident.
One of my professors at the Pune Film Institute recounted an incident from an International Film Festival in Moscow. A large crowd of fans was waiting outside the hotel where the stars were put up. They politely cheered top Hollywood stars as they walked. Some even approached them for autographs.
But it was a green kurta-clad figure that triggered a near stampede. Only after Mithun Chakraborthy (oh, yes, him!) had given his quota of autographs, kisses and hugs did the crowd allow him to proceed.
I witness this Bollywood appeal first-hand here in Doha. Hindi film music from most taxis, even those driven by non-Indians.
An Afghan taxi driver asked me if I was from Dilip Kumar’s city. I told him I was from Madras and he smiled, “Hemamalini.”
Hindi film cassettes are in great demand and at the cinema, the audience is made up of Arabs, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the occasional East Asian and Westerner.
An ex-colleague of mine from Egypt, who spoke only Arabic, had a large repertoire of Hindi songs he could render on request. His mother was a sworn Hindi film fan, and that had rubbed off on him.
I still can’t grasp why Hindi films are so popular. Yes, a ‘Lagaan’ or a ‘Company’ I can understand. But a ‘Devdas’ (and every other Hindi film for that matter), that is neither original nor realistic but only overtly melodramatic?
‘No Man’s Land’, a Bosnian film that beat ‘Lagaan’ at the Oscars, probably had a budget smaller than a Hindi dance director’s fees. In sheer cinematic experience, it was worth a hundred Hindi films.
Why is it that we can’t make a ‘Life is Beautiful’, so free of nonsense and so full of emotions.
Films need not be perfect. They need not even be realistic. But they need to be, at least, entertaining or thought-provoking. Hindi films do neither. They promote anorexia, Swiss tourism, chauvinism and ‘Madrasi’ stereotypes.
Its storylines are not even as deep as Preity Zinta’s dimples. Yet its appeal grows. At a scary rate. And film-makers could well wrongly construe this popularity to be a measure of quality!
Ever heard the movie called ‘Anand’ - It will beat the crap out of ‘Life is beautiful’ any day.