asianaffairs-Feb 2008
                               
                               Bollywood Masala

Unseen Undercurrents

Beneath the glamorous Bollywood surface lie gripping stories of suffering, comments Shyam Bhatia

    Pity the Bollywood icon at the heart of a film industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the Indian exchequer from both the domestic and, increasingly, the export market.
   Bollywood films screened abroad do make money though the plots remain pedestrian, as always. The acting is, more often than not, over-the-top. And the accompanying music is an acquired taste.
   Bollywood films screened abroad do make money though the plots remain pedestrian, as always. The acting is, more often than not, over-the-top. And the accompanying music is an acquired taste.
The reason why films of this genre are now such massive dollar earners is the size and increasing wealth of the Indian diaspora. Poverty-stricken Indian emigrants in search of a better life are now part of a prosperous, 20 million-strong overseas population that fondly remembers the mother country.
   Popular Hindi films, the slushier the better, provide the vital link for overseas Indians to their roots. Hence the popularity of films such as Sholay, Andaaz, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge that were box-office hits both at home and abroad.
   A higher commercial profile for the Bollywood film industry abroad has inevitably meant a higher public profile for the actors. Those who are used to being mobbed at home now find they are just as likely to be surrounded by adoring fans in New York or London.
The increased adulation — and inevitably higher earnings — however, exact a heavy price, particularly among the new generation of actors. A recently published book, Darlingji, offers some shocking insights into the lives of some of Bollywood’s frontline stalwarts.
   Darlingji, written by Kishwar Desai and assisted by her famous economist husband Lord Meghnad Desai, is about one of Bollywood’s better known film dynasties, Nargis and Sunil Dutt and their son Sanjay. Nargis and Sunil have both passed on, but the violent, drug-induced antics of their only son still make the headlines of the Indian media.
In that respect at least some of today’s Bollywood stars are no different from many of their counterparts in the West.
Recently sentenced to six years imprisonment for illegally possessing weapons (of the Kalashnikov variety), Sanjay’s much-commented-upon junkie lifestyle is the stuff of which nightmares are made. Desai tells how, when Nargis was stricken with cancer, Sanjay was so high on drugs that he could not donate blood for his dying mother.
   ' I remember that when she was in New York and Dad asked me to come, and when I was in so much of drugs that when I think about it, I can’t believe it’, he is quoted as saying in the book. ‘I carried something like 30 grams of heroin in my shoes, and my sisters were with me, all the way to New York City.’
   Sanjay’s defenders say he was an only son and his mother’s favourite. Desai says of Nargis after the boy was born, ‘Her life was for Sanjay, she ate Sanjay, drank Sanjay. It was Sanjay, Sanjay, Sanjay.’
To be fair to this particular repre-sentative of Bollywood, he was also a product of an extraordinary and volatile mix. Father Sunil (real name Balraj) was a son of a landowning family traumatised by the partition in 1947.
   Mother Nargis came from an even more troubled background. Her grandmother Dilipa was widowed at a very young age. She converted to Islam, seeking support, solace and compa-nionship from a wandering musician called Sheikh Miajan.
   Their daughter and Nargis’s mother, Jaddanbai, had an equally precarious existence, as a singer performing in the homes of wealthy Indians. Jaddanbai also became one of India’s prominent early film stars, passing on her singing and acting talents to Nargis and her siblings.
   As an actress Nargis came across her future husband. She was on the rebound from a failed relationship with actor Raj Kapoor, when she met and subsequently married Dutt. Notwithstanding their stormy relationship, when they used to address each other as Marilyn and Elvis, they came to epitomise an ideal Indian couple, lionised and still revered in death by their legions of admirers.
   An established film industry like Bollywood can only grow from strength to strength and its practitioners will inevitably become ever more rich. But the lesson of the Dutt family is that everything has a price. And beneath the surface lie gripping stories about   human suffering that belie the  glamorous existence of the most famous film stars.

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