‘I think I’m able to fulfill each latent desire of a woman in whatever role she comes in front of. I’m able to make a mother feel nice, I’m able to make a sister feel nice, I’m able to make a sexy girl feel nice, I’m able to make a girl who doesn’t love me—and tells me—feel nice. I think I’m able to make a daughter feel nice. I think I, somehow, stand for every emotion a woman can’t express in this world, they can express
it to me and I will understand it.’
—Shah Rukh Khan
CHAPTER ONE
Every day, fourteen to fifteen million Indians go to the movies. India produces between 1,500 and 2,000 films a year—more than any country in the world, and in over twenty languages. The number of cinema tickets sold is the highest national total on the planet; in 2012, India sold 2.6 billion tickets compared to Hollywood’s 1.36 billion. Bollywood boasts the highest growth rate in the movie industry, barrelling ahead at 11.5 percent a year. By 2020, Indian cinema, exported to over seventy countries, is expected to bring in close to $4 billion in terms of gross box office realizations. India loses the battle of revenues to Hollywood, but with average multiplex tickets costing $4 and many of India’s cinemas divided into classes like airplanes, you can see a movie for under a dollar if you don’t mind sitting uncomfortably right in front of the screen.
India’s cinematic origins are deeply entrenched in the history and fabric of Indian life. Bollywood was born in the plays performed in the Mughal court. Though the artisanal skills came from the Muslim community, the elaborate narratives were taken from Hindu holy books and mythology. Padmaavat, the 2018 film that caused a violent furore in India with right-wing mobs calling for the lead actress to be beheaded and the Supreme Court intervening to roll back state censorship of the film, comes from this culturally syncretic legacy—Padmaavat, the story of an Indian queen, was written by a Muslim Sufi poet. Bollywood is a meeting point of this prism, a communion of Islam and Hinduism.
In 1914, Hollywood released Cecil B. DeMille’s directorial
debut, The Squaw Man, which some consider to be the first
feature film ever made.* However, the first fully Indian feature
film, Raja Harishchandra, based on stories of Hindu gods from
the Mahabharata, was released a full year before DeMille’s
film. The Jazz Singer, Hollywood’s first talkie, was a musical,
and though India released its first non-silent film, Alam Ara,
four years later, they would never let go of the song and dance
formula.† “We don’t make talkies,” the writer, director and actor
Girish Karnad has said, “we make singies.” Ashis Nandy, the
psychologist and social theorist, similarly recalls seeing films
advertised as “dancicals” and “fighticals.”
Though the films of the 1930s and 40s would have as many as
forty songs—the world record for most songs in a movie belongs
to Indra Sahba (1932), which had seventy-one—mercifully,
today the standard is only five or six. The songs are accompanied
by choreographed dance routines which can have as many as a
hundred backup dancers. Though much is made of Bollywood’s
devotion to endless musical numbers, its genesis is culture,
not kitsch. In Hinduism, when a priest addresses the gods,
he seldom talks. He sings. Ragas, bhajans, even Bharatnatyam
were originally performed in temples as devotional offerings to
beloved deities. In the Muslim or Christian tradition, supplicants
address God via his prophet, his son, his clergy, or else his books
and prayer is performed internally, in silence. In Hinduism,
while there are intermediaries such as the pandit, or priest,
devotees address their gods through the spectacular—song,dance, ceremony and sacrifice.
Although the term “Bollywood” a portmanteau word
blending “Bombay” and “Hollywood” was first seen in print in
1976 when a British crime fiction writer, H. R. F. Keating, who
had never set foot in India, used the term in his detective novel
Filmi, Filmi, Inspector Ghote, the rules were established right
from the start. Bollywood films are epic extravaganzas, often
lasting as much as three hours long. They are lush, unadulterated
fantasy. Cinema, no matter its provenance, is built on the abiding
principle of dreams. Most of us go to the movies to get away
from the banality and disappointment of real life, not to be
reminded of it. Hollywood, of course, is no more realistic than
Bollywood and is also loyal to its own particular fantasies—
wherein humankind is forever fighting off monsters and aliens,
American wars are never lost, members of U.S. intelligence
services are valiant, noble servants of mankind, and it is easy,
if not effortless, to fall quickly and meaningfully in love.* It
is an industry built on a “dictatorship of good intentions,” as
Joan Didion said, with a fierce attachment to happy endings.
Bollywood’s tropes are no more absurd than Hollywood’s.
Rather, they connect to a repository of longings and sorrows
for millions of people around the world.
Bollywood plot lines introduced in the first half-hour can be
abandoned midway through the film with no explanation. No
matter the level of violence, there is only ever mild profanity,
no sex, and, only very recently, some kissing.† In the films ofthe 1980s and 90s, in lieu of snogging, there was a lot of deep
exhaling, chest throbbing, and moaning. Without fail, regardless
of the season, a monsoon shower would break out, and the
frustrated couple would splash about in the rain wearing their
tightest, most see-through clothing. When sex was to be implied,
the camera would leave the amorous couple and turn instead
to roses blooming, birds nuzzling (swans, parrots), and things
exploding (pillows, light bulbs).
There is always a villain who never sings, and a vamp who
performs what is known as an “item number,” a sexy song and
dance that, once upon a time, the love interest, a pure and
chaste woman, would never do. (In the early days of Bollywood,
mainly Anglo-Indians performed item numbers.) The hero’s
characteristics change through the decades, evolving as a mirror
of contemporary politics, but even if he’s just a college student
or chartered accountant, the hero can singlehandedly beat up
a gang of armed thugs. Audiences understand this as normal;
he simply has better karma. The nation is beloved and beyond
question. If there is snow, preferably situated in Switzerland or
Kashmir, it will be danced upon by the heroine wearing as little
clothing as possible, while the hero is snug in a down parka.
And love, no matter how passionate and honorable, is always
secondary to duty, family, and country.
From its inception, Bollywood’s political sensibilities
mirrored India’s. Emerging from centuries of British colonial
rule and the bloodiest partition in modern history, India’s vision
of its newly independent future as constructed by its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of social justice, liberty and fraternity. This romantic Nehruvian nationalism found its cultural expression in the idealistic films of the 1950s in which
nation-building is emphasized and utopian social realism is the
dominant aesthetic. The stars of the day, Raj Kapoor, Dilip
Kumar, and Dev Anand, were all inspired by Nehru’s ideals.