Suketu Mehta scribes in the magazine of another maximum city<\/A> about the film industry of the Mumbai (via Amardeep<\/A>). He describes it as a love affair with an international beauty:<\/P>\n The initial flush of romance, often consummated in what used to be a porn theater, the Eagle in Jackson Heights:<\/P>\n The unreality of the affair:<\/P>\n Falling out of love:<\/P>\n Getting back together again:<\/P>\n Dealing with 9\/11 fallout:<\/P>\n The cycle of cross-continental sampling:<\/P>\n This is especially obvious in the music industry. E.g. you can trace the original ‘Kaliyon Ka Chaman’ to Truth Hurts’ ‘So Addictive,’ back to the ‘Kaliyon Ka Chaman (2004)’ video.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Suketu Mehta scribes in the magazine of another maximum city about the film industry of the Mumbai (via Amardeep). He describes it as a love affair with an international beauty: The Soviets gave us arms; we gave them our kitsch movies … Continue reading The Soviets gave us arms; we gave them our kitsch movies in return. Israelis watch them. Palestinians watch them… Dominicans and Haitians watch them. Iraqis watch them. Iranians watch them. In a building full of immigrants in Queens, an Uzbek man once cornered me in a dark stairwell… As he towered over me, he started singing, “Ichak dana, bichak dana…”<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
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.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
My aunt’s family emigrated to Uganda from India a century ago; she now lives in England and has never been to India… none of the children under 5 in her extended family spoke English… The children, two or three generations removed from India, were living in this simulated Indiaworld. <\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
It was not until graduate school that I became cynical about Bollywood movies. I too began to think that the plots were weak, melodramatic. At the University of Iowa’s student-run movie theater, the Bijou, I could see two movies for five dollars, most of them European. I was introduced to Renoir, Fellini, Fassbinder, De Sica… the Indian movies seemed pointless and absurd to me…<\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n\n
I was valued in Bollywood because I had stories. I would roam among the gangsters and the bar girls and bring their stories back to the moviemakers. The gangsters and bar girls would give me their stories because I would tell them how the movie people lived, what they wore, what they ate, whom they slept with…<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
A couple of weeks after 9\/11, 16 of India’s biggest stars got on an American airliner; 4 other passengers got off in fear. Anil Kapoor was reading a copy of Time with Osama bin Laden’s picture on the cover; his manager advised him to fold the magazine so that the portrait wouldn’t be visible. Aamir Khan reached for an orange and a passenger flinched. <\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
When he was in New York and missed Bombay, he sang “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai” — which is loosely based on Archie Comics — on the sidewalks of the Big Apple. An Indian boy in America, singing a Hindi song from an Indian movie imitation of an American comic book: the Ping-Pong game of kitsch. Along with the Bhagavad-Gita and Thoreau, this, too, has wings.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n