Being Bollywood: Filmi Perspectives on Indianness

When I showed up at the ticket window yesterday, money in hand, nervous that Parineeta would be sold out, something happened that doesn't surprise me any more. The ticket-seller looked at me, mildly surprised but pleased, and asked if I really understood Hindi. To my reply that I understood very little, he beamed and pointed out that there will be subtitles. As I thanked him and went in, I could feel a few stares from the other patrons. It's a good thing I am not in the least shy, because whenever I come to the theater by myself, I feel like a mild sort of an oddity, at least if the stares are anything to go by.

I stick out. I really do. After all, not many freckled redheads show up at the local Bollywood theater, eager for their latest emotional extravaganza. Unlike the safe anonymity of a local multiplex, where no one pays the least heed to what I am or who I am, I am very often the only non-Indian at the Bollywood theater and am stared at like a Britney Spears look-a-like. Britney Spears look-a-like at a classical concert, that is. This actually results in a lot of conversations, usually going in this fashion:

Other person: Hi! Are you Indian? (despite the freckles and the red hair)
Me: No. *smile*
Other person: Is your husband Indian?
Me: No. I am a Russian and Bollywood movies are popular there.
Other person: Aha. (Optionally, the person can use that moment to ask me out, in which case I point out I am already married).

I am always amazed that the Indians at the theater know about the popularity of Bollywood in Russia. And even more amazed at how nice and pleased everyone who chats with me appears that an outsider really loves their movies. Is it the stoking of a national ego? Amusement at the weirdness of me, watching Parineeta's opening weekend instead of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, like some sort of a cultural malaprop? A delight at sharing something one loves? I don't know. All I know is that people often chat with me, share their food, all the while exhibiting that mixture of surprise and pleasure that I am slowly getting used to.

On to Parineeta. Watching it yesterday (I highly recommend it, by the way), I realized how acclimatized I had gotten to customs and Bollywood shorthands. Two years ago I didn't know Bollywood from Alpine Yodelling, but now when Lolita puts sindoor into her hair before coming out in the beginning, I automatically know that it signifies her married status. Just as I am so used to the Bollywood narrative shortcut of a scene fading into song at the crucial moment of sexual consummation, that when this doesn't happen and we are treated to a song voice-over while we see the love-making, I am shocked.

Cultural expectations become all-pervasive. I automatically switch my brain into Bollywood gear. Seeing a very explicit scene of drug addicts having sex in the British film "Layer Cake" earlier in the week did not discomfort me in the least. Watching the love-scene in "Parineeta," which is tender and loving and completely non-explicit (a major US network would have no problem running it at 4 in the afternoon) shocks me in a way a porn movie couldn't and I fight the desire to peek through my fingers. I have become Bollywoodized.

When I leave the theater, people still stare at me a bit. But I am on a Parineeta high and their friendly or puzzled interest fades into background. For a moment, the nondescript American mall outside is more alien then 1962 Calcutta. I drive home, a cultural malaprop, possibly out of place, definitely not the viewer the filmmakers intended. But I am happy, nonetheless.

All Russians grow up knowing of Bollywood movies.

In fact, when I was growing up in the Soviet Union in the eighties, three kinds of foreign movies were popular in the theaters: Italian, French, and Indian.

French is a natural choice. Russia has always felt a great affinity for France. The pre-Revolution aristocrats used to speak exclusively in French (if you read War and Peace in Russian, you better get used to footnotes, since a lot of the dialogue has to be translated from the French). Italian is also understandable: at least as portrayed in Italian movies, the Italian National Character (that nebulous beast) is very close to Russian.

But Indian? That is a bit harder to explain. In Russia of my childhood, Indian movies were viewed as movies solely for women. They were chick flicks in a country that didn't have any. And it was certainly not the cinema for the women of the intelligencia (unless as a guilty pleasure). It was perceived as populist cinema for the female half of the population. A shopkeeper or a dairy farmer or a secretary were viewed as much more the intended audience than a professor or a doctor. Cinema for the masses, indeed.

Indian movies were known for the interminable songs (Russians dubbed all the movies but not the songs. Without the subtitles to give songs any meaning, they were indeed interminable), weepy melodrama, and the bizarre fact of no kissing. Plenty of people looked down on them. And yet they were insanely popular. Why?

It was more than the fact that India was socialist for quite a long period of time, and as such, quite friendly with the Soviet Union (I recall a children's book where a character ended up in India by accident and returned laden with bananas and cries of "Hindi Russi bhai bhai). It was really because there were no movies like this in the Soviet Union or Europe. Colorful, happy, larger than life experiences were not what European cinema specialized in. The production values weren't any worse, and the women were beautiful (that was of course yet another thing Indian movies were famous for. The beauty of the actresses).

And the Soviet society was quite conservative in many ways. It liked the importance of family (and could sympathize with cramped, inter-generational living conditions), the fact that the woman was supposed to be a virgin till marriage and the fact that the man was the head of the family. The social ethos had more similarities than does the modern American ethos, for example.

Still, all Indian movies were somewhat looked down on. That is all, except for two: Raj Kapoor's classic (and magnificent) Awaara and Mithun's magnificent only in its campiness Disco Dancer. Disco Dancer was a movie Russians were nuts for (and still remember fondly. When Lucky was being filmed in Russia, Bollywood fans on a Russian Bollywood board were excited not about Salman but Mithun). My mom who thought all Bollywood movies were sentimental tripe had, I think, quite a warm spot in her heart for the Disco Dancer. I vaguely remember her talking about it as colorful and really good, when I was a child.

And the other movie that was excepted from "sentimentalism for women" tag was, of course, the magnificent Awaara. It is easy to see why the Soviet authorities liked the movie. It deals with social injustices, the fact that the rich oppress the poor, and the fact that a poor person is intrinsically noble and kicked around. But it wasn't the case of the authorities pushing a movie on the unwilling masses. The Russians quite simply fell in love. Even the songs were translated and sung.

When, a few years ago, I told my father I had discovered the joys of Bollywood, the first thing out of his mouth was the tune and the translated words of "Awaara Hum." Even after all these decades, Awaara is still probably the most identifiable Bollywood movie to a Russian. Discussing my seeing an Indian movie earlier in the week with my grandmother, I was shocked to hear her start to also sing the familiar tune. She told me that she thought Raj Kapoor was an amazing singer (and not a bad looker) and that when the movie came out, people would walk down the boulevards and streets singing the Awaara songs. "We had simply never seen anything like this before," she told me, reminiscing.

I think overall, the duality of the attitude of an average Russian to an Indian movie, the disdain and the attraction is exemplified by my parents. Whenever I visit them, I always bring one or two along. If I offer to show it, they will sit there and poke fun at the lack of realism and the sentimental plot. Yet regardless, they will remain glued to the screen until the bitter end. Awaara Hum, indeed!