Taliban Exits, ‘Bollywood’ Returns
Wed May 29, 1:01 PM ET
By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer
The influence of “Bollywood” films — which the Taliban feared — is spreading through Afghan society.
Posters of sultry Indian starlets decorate tea shop walls and, judging by purchases from tailors and textile shops, women are wearing body-hugging outfits just like the ones in the movies — while Muslim clerics complain about the on-screen romance.
There’s a resurgence of films once banned during the Taliban’s rule, especially those from the Indian film capital of Bombay, or Bollywood, the world’s biggest film production center with more than 800 titles churned out each year.
As the Indian action film “Burning Heat” played on a television in his cramped video club, Nissar Ahmed explained that the Bombay formulas of romance, comedy, action and song-and-dance — sometimes all in the same film — attract fans across the range of society.
“Older people like to watch some of the Indian movies that they remember. Young people prefer action movies,” Ahmed said.
His shop in Kandahar’s Topkhana district is one of nearly 400 video rental stores in this southwestern city near Pakistan. These shops also do a brisk business in Indian music tapes, which blare from loudspeakers in the city’s markets.
Kamaluddin Ulfat, director of Kandahar television, said Afghans always liked Indian films, partly because the similar languages spoken in India and Afghanistan (news - web sites) make them easily understood.
“People used to watch them even during the time of the king” in the 1950s and '60s, he said.
Now with the Taliban ousted, Bombay movies and songs have again become a prime source of entertainment for many of Kandahar’s 450,000 residents. They help fill a big void since Kandahar television airs only two hours each afternoon — in black and white — and radio broadcasts for just three hours daily.
There are no theaters in Kandahar, and those who can’t afford the $170 or so for a small television set and disc player gather at tea shops or the homes of better-off relatives to watch films.
“I love Indian movies,” said Mohammed Kabiv, an 18-year-old policeman who manages to watch movies every three or four days at a cousin’s house and can rattle off the names of popular Indian stars.
About 2,000 satellite dishes, costing $250 to $300, also have been installed in homes around the city.
“At first we pointed them at European satellites with more than 200 channels, but then the people came in and asked us to point it the other way so they could watch Indian channels,” said Mohsin Tahiri, 30, who sells satellite dishes.
At the Horasan Hotel, dozens of people crowd into a sitting room to watch the single Indian channel available. When a commercial for a weight-loss program comes on, the men seem more fascinated by the woman in skintight leotards than in the product.
In the films, the actresses’ tight costumes not surprisingly attract young male viewers. But the costumes also have influenced Afghan women’s fashions — though for at-home clothes only since most women in this deeply tribal region still wear the all-encompassing burqa in public.
“They are watching the films and then coming with pictures of the Indian women and asking me to make the same clothes,” said tailor Akhter Mohammed. “Before I would make full sleeves, now they want half sleeves and see-through cloth.”
Most people consider the Bollywood movies mindless entertainment, but some consider them a negative influence on the young.
“Indian movies are very, very bad because in our religion and culture there is the arranged marriage system, but Indian movies show love-affair marriages,” said Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Akhund, imam of the Babaji Mosque in central Kandahar.
Mullah Akhtar, who also runs a textile store, complained the newer films have lower moral values than the old Indian movies he watched — in secret — as a student. He noted young women are ordering less cloth at his shop and, like the tailor, said film was inspiring fashion.
“They are naked in these movies, you can see nearly 70 percent of a girl’s body. You can see very well their figures, the shape of their breast, their hips, which create sexual urges,” he observed.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020529/ap_en_mo/wkd_afghanistan_bollywood_1