My name is Bollywood-I

Oh!What a sad name I have!I am the biggest film industry in this world, yet my name is a rip-off, I am named after the much more popular Hollywood!Its way better than being called Lollywood,Kollywood or Tollywood. Poor Tollywood is both Telugu and Bengali cinema. And to top it all the Kannada movie industry is called Sandalwood!

But what's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet!

For the first few decades I had been rather proud of the reception my movies got at various film festivals.Raj Kapoor took me to Russia and China. Have you met Bulgarians who still sing 'Awara Hoon'? Good old days they say...some other day for them. I will talk about the Formula-Mummy that I so badly miss..

May be because of the governmental thrust to create a 'scientific temper' among Indians, movies began to become formulaic, or may be life on the celluloid needed to be predictable. Probably this predictability gave some comfort to my poor audience who sat cramped in those dingy movie halls. Oh those halls! How untidy they were! The air was a mix of popcorn,burnt-plastic,coconut oil,jasmines and tobacco. The A/C hardly functioned...and there was a nice 'separation of the classes'.

Oh this reminds me of one of my favoritest loan characters King Julian in Madagascar, of course a Holywood character(u expected me to like characters from here?)! How nicely he says, 'Whatever happened to the separation of classes?","you in-flight slave, ..nuts-on-a-silver-platter'

Back to my Formalaic-mommys...

There were formulas that I loved..those middle-aged yesteryear dream girls playing virtuous contemporary Virgin~Marys!It made me doubt if some women could indeed reproduce asexually.But sometimes these mothers 'totally-did-it' when deeply in love with handsome Rajesh Khannas who had the sad knack to die/disappear(Aradhana) leaving these impregnanted ladies(gasp!) without husbands. Wish all of them were as brainy as Sharmila in Aradhana to raise the baby in an orphanage and become an ayah. Most such women chose to suffer the wrath of the society or planted stories of parthenogenesis!

Among other things,they had predictable grey streaks in their otherwise well kept hair. Their dialogues stretched into pages and they had great power to invoke Gods when in extreme distress. I really loved the way Sai Baba granted Nirupa Roy the gift of sight in Amar Akbar Anthony.Filmistan studio, if my memory doesn't desert me!I took pride at the way Gods resided in me, how they did miraculous things, Ah! How they made Sridevi wear skin-tight-snake-dress!

Today, most Formula-mummys are bitter women who don't wear sarees, they are usually divorced and super-rich. They have this compelling artificiality about them, they are no longer comfortable 'mothering' their children. I don't understand, most of these women do not expect miracles to happen in life! They are widows-by-choice, they don't like grey streaks in their hairs, they have almost no dialogues and sometimes shake-a-leg to songs(yew!I hated Jaya Bacchan in Kal Ho Na Ho!). These women are so boring, and to top it all they fail to invoke the Gods!When was the last time an on-screen mother invoked God?The closest was Kirron Kher in OSO.

But, I know I can blame one man for all this. They call him KJ. Initially,he did bring in a whiff of fresh air but what followed wasn't the least promising. What is this obsession with stylizing my actors? Does every hero have to be super-humanly-Apollo-like-handsome?And those Stick insects that parade as heroines!What in the world happened to acting?And why does Abhay Deol think he can act?

I am Bollywood asking you, can you imagine how embarrassed I am amongst my kin? I am a name, I am an idea, I know I don't have a reputation, but, aren't you tired?

Wish I had a Formula-Mummy who could just invoke those Gods to bring some originality!