ENTERTAINMENT / Movies
Bollywood movie still hot after 12 years
(AP)
Updated: 2007-06-29 08:55
MUMBAI - If you want to understand the hold that Bollywood has over
India, go to Manoj Desai's old movie palace, in the crowded neighborhood
known simply as Mumbai Central. Go to the early show, at 11:30 a.m., when
the line for tickets occasionally spills off the sidewalk and into the
parking lot.
The cheap seats then are just 35 cents, and the audience is mostly from
the city's vast slums. Everyone seems to know the dialogue by heart.
They've been lining up, every day, for 12 years.
For the same movie.
"Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge," which translates from Hindi as "The One
with a Heart Will Take the Bride," but known across India simply as
"DDLJ," has been a daily fixture at the Maratha Mandir theater since
October 1995.
"Every year or so, we think sales will go down," said Desai, the theater
owner, a massive, fleshy man in a shiny polyester shirt, sitting behind a
marble-topped desk the size of a small car. "But it never does."
His explanation is simple: "We are crazy about movies."
He's right about that. Movies are so big here that riots break out after
the deaths of major stars; so big that when the country's most famous
actor, Amitabh Bachchan, fell badly ill, two fans killed themselves
hoping it would help his recovery.
But Bollywood, the Mumbai-based Hindi-language movie industry that churns
out 200 films a year �� most of them musicals following a strict happily
ever-after formula �� is about more than cinematic madness.
Bollywood is about poverty and aspirations. It's about middle-class
dreams for the poor, and upper-class dreams for the middle class.
Particularly in Mumbai, one of the most crowded cities on Earth, the
movies are an escape, and a solace.
Their influence is everywhere. Bollywood has helped foster the
hyper-extravagent weddings that have become a hallmark of India's new
rich, and helped turn Hindi into the country's true national language.
Movies have spawned generations of actors-turned-politician.
In a country with more than 2,000 ethnic groups, all the world's major
religions and hundreds of languages (more than a dozen have their own,
smaller movie industries), Bollywood is one of the few threads that
actually knits India together.
"Here is our national language," the Indian-American writer Suketu Mehta
once wrote of Bollywood. "Here is our common song."
Standing by the snack counter during DDLJ's brief intermission, Prakash
Prasad put it far less poetically: "The story is good. The songs are very
good," said the stringy 24-year-old with greasy hair and worn blue jeans.
Prasad came to Mumbai six years ago, leaving his family's
poverty-battered central Indian village. Outwardly he found little: life
in a slum, a factory job that barely paid and, eventually, unemployment.
But he also has a circle of close friends, and a city that he now
considers his home.
Since losing his job a month ago, he's come to DDLJ every day. It's one
of the few things he can still afford.
"I love Bombay," he said, using the city's former name. "I love this
city."
Mumbai is full of such people, desperately poor villagers who arrive
looking for a little money, a little excitement, a little hope.
The have filled the city almost beyond belief.
New York City has 8,159 people per square mile. Dharavi, the biggest of
Mumbai's many slums, has an estimated 7,200 people per acre.
For many of these people, a cheap seat at the Maratha Mandir, a
gracefully aging palace with curving wooden walls, elaborate chandeliers
and 1,102 red leather seats, is one of the few places where they can
carve out their own place.
There's the Parsi housewife who has come every day for a decade, and the
guy who runs the milk stall at the city's nearby central train station
and who �� at last count �� was on his 32nd showing. There are thousands
of people like Prasad who come from crowded shantytowns.
During the summer, when the heat climbs well past 100 and the city is
awash in a soul-sucking humidity, the theater's frigid air conditioning
is enough to draw them.
On most days, at least a few hundred people show up for DDLJ. On
weekends, the theater occasionally sells out.
But why this movie? There are plenty of theories.
Some possible explanations: It features Shah Rukh Khan, today one of
India's biggest stars, and a miraculously beautiful woman known by one
name, Kajol; Its music is very catchy; The plot is heavy on traditional
family values (obey your parents, don't have premarital sex) but misses
few chances to fill the screen with lush shots of cleavage.
But for the most part, it's your basic Bollywood boy-meets-girl songfest,
with 3 hours of stilted dialogue, five song-and-dance numbers, and a
happy ending that's obvious from the start.
In India, that's cinematic comfort food.
And it's cheap comfort food. Desai charges half what he does for
first-run movies, and still turns a profit.
For the crowds that flock for DDLJ, that counts for a lot.
Tyeb Bhai, 52, has been manning the theater's snack bar for 28 years,
dispensing 10-cent cups of tea and homemade potato chips.
He can tell what movie is playing by what is purchased. At DDLJ, the
audience is mostly poor, and mostly they buy nothing.
"If they have a day off, or they're skipping work, or whatever, they can
come here for a show," he said. "You can't find something like this
anywhere else in the city, not that people like this can afford."
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