Withdrawal Symptoms

Five weeks without Hindi films, and I’m in sad shape

Life without Hindi cinema is dull, devoid of colour, flamboyance and its unique, cheerful non-cynical cheesiness.  I know because I’ve led it  for the last month.  There were no significant Hindi movies released  through the month of March.  The powers that be in the industry  decided that the entire movie-going population of the country was  either taking exams or watching cricket.  So after Tanu Weds Manu on  25 February, all we got was seriously C-grade fare like Happy Husbands or Hollywood.

I enjoy Hollywood.  I’m in awe of their story-telling prowess, their  staggeringly good actors, their incredible budgets and ruthless  marketing muscle.  But a month without a Hindi film is like a month  without home-cooked food. Even if your mother is a shabby cook, something about her dal-chawal just hits the spot.  Hindi films do the same for me.  A bad Hindi film is so much more fun than a bad Hollywood film. I wondered why this is as I watched director  Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, which was essentially Twilight transposed to some Bavarian Neverland.  It was a superbly silly re- working of the fairy tale with Amanda Seyfried sauntering around in a  red cloak and lots of bargain basement CGI, including a gigantic, snarling werewolf. But it wasn’t fun in the manner of a bad Hindi  film because all the actors, except a hammy Gary Oldman, were playing it deathly serious. There was simply no charm in the foolishness.

The truth is that I’m a Hindi-movie junkie.  I can watch the worst  Hindi films without flinching—in fact, I get great pleasure from the so-bad-they-are-good ones like Dunno Y…Na Jaane Kyon or Jimmy—but  strangely, have zero tolerance for bad television.  The longest I’ve  gone without watching a Hindi film in a theatre is five weeks during one summer that we spent in a suburb of Detroit called Bloomfield  Hills.  In week five,

I cracked and forced my sister-in-law to take me to the nearest theatre showing Bollywood. We drove a good 45 minutes to see Kambakkht Ishq.  I still remember the withering look she gave me when the watch inside Akshay Kumar’s stomach started shrieking: “Om Mangalam, Om Mangalam”.  Our relationship is yet to heal.

But I take solace in the fact that many in this country are in far  worse shape than I am.  The fanatical devotion that stars inspire suggests that Indians suffer from a particularly virulent case of  movie madness.  I still recall the near-meltdown in the country when  Amitabh Bachchan fell ill in November 2005. Two stories stayed with me: of two men who walked hundreds of miles to Mumbai from Haryana,  carrying urns of gangajal for the seriously sick star, and a railway mechanic who could no longer afford to watch Bachchan movies because the ticket prices were too steep, spending Rs 100 of his Rs 4,000-a-month salary to offers prayers for the superstar at a Mahim  mosque.  When Bachchan went home, The Times of India presented him  with a 24-page broadsheet containing 10, 634 mobile text messages wishing him a speedy recovery and a CD containing 12, 888 voice-mail messages.

Why do we love Hindi films with such deep and passionate abandon?  Why, despite their too-many-to-count faults, do they touch something essential and elementary within us?  I think writer Suketu Mehta put it best. In a 2004 essay titled Bollywood Confidential, he wrote: ‘Why do I love Bollywood movies?  To an Indian, that’s like asking why  we love our mothers; we don’t have a choice.  We were born of them.’ 

Exactly.

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