Maharashtra - Ten Bollywood Movies

I'm a big fan of Bollywood movies, so blogging about Maharashtra has given me the perfect opportunity to spend some time watching Bollywood classics, as well as researching the origins of Indian cinema.  To help with my research, I read a really good introduction by Kush Varia called Bollywood: Gods, Glamour and Gossip (2013).  This book is part of Columbia University Press's 'Short Cuts' series (published by Wallflower Press), which is intended to introduce the main themes of film studies.  I have a feeling this won't be the last book I read in the Short Cuts series!

I find it interesting that, despite the fact many of the 'big' movies are in Hindi or Urdu, Bollywood is located in Mumbai, Maharashtra, far from Delhi and centres of Hindi and Urdu culture.  Varia is quick to point out that Indian cinema isn't all about Bollywood/Hindi productions and that there are also thriving film industries in Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and other language centres.

Traditionally, the Marathi film industry was based in Pune, Maharashtra's cultural capital, but many Marathi films are now also made in Bollywood.  It's interesting that there has been a lot of resistance, on an official/government level, to the growth of the Bollywood film industry and it's only been in recent years that the Indian government has seen the importance of Bollywood as an expression of Indian culture.

For the purposes of this blog, I have taken a wider angle on Indian cinema and not restricted myself to Bollywood/Hindi/Urdu cinema.  Here are the ten movies that I watched, in the order that I watched them:

1. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham - dir. Karan Johar (2001), Hindi/Urdu/English

I fell in love with Bollywood because of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham - I heard the soundtrack during my first visit to India in 2002 - it was everywhere, ads on the TV, blaring from shops in Paharganj - I bought a copy of the soundtrack CD and listened to it again and again!  Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham is a BIG Bollywood movie - the most expensive Indian movie ever made, at the time of its release, it was a hit, not just in India, but around the world.  Filming locations included Egypt, London and (rather bizarrely) Bicester!

Critics of modern Bollywood movies will say that they lack the gravitas of early Indian cinema and that the songs and dances aren't as good as they used to be.  I defy anyone to listen to/watch the following video of Say 'Shava Shava' and tell me that this isn't just fantastic!


2. Pyaasa - dir. Guru Dutt (1957), Hindi

Scene from Pyaasa (1957)

Armed with a list of great Indian movies, mentioned by Kush Varia, I set off on my exploration of Bollywood by watching the 1950's classic Pyaasa.  It's a poignant movie, which tells the story of an unrecognised poet and how badly he is treated by the society he lives in.  He struggles to make a living and only becomes famous when he is (mistakenly) declared to be dead.  It's a heart-rending watch and very different to the lighter, more colourful movies of the modern age.

Indian cinema of the 1950's was often quite political, as the newly-independent country wrestled with its own identity and tried to find equality in a caste-based post-colonial society.  There is an important scene at the end of Pyaasa where the poet rejects the accolades that society has suddenly decided to bestow upon him.  Guru Dutt starred in and directed the movie, a dual role that is less common these days.

3. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - dir. Karan Johar (1998), Hindi/Urdu/English

The third movie I watched, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is another big hit by Karan Johar and, like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, also stars Shah Rukh Khan, the Mumbai-born actress Kajol and the Bengali star Rani Mukerji.  These modern Bollywood movies are most definitely shot in a world of 'beautiful people' and stars like the three mentioned above are well-known celebrities in India and around the world.  I must admit, I've got a soft spot for Shah Rukh Khan - he's quite cute, cheeky and good at playing the clown, as he often does in Johar's movies.

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is sad, funny, entertaining - a good introduction to the modern Bollywood genre.  I didn't think the music was as good as in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, but I found it interesting the way the main characters seemed to embrace a US college-student lifestyle. 

4. Seeta aur Geeta - dir. Ramesh Sippy (1972), Hindi

Going from the Americanised 90's, right back to the 70's was a bit of a culture shock and Seeta aur Geeta is a brilliant movie that you should definitely watch if you are interested in Bollywood cinema.  It covers some of the main themes of Indian cinema - separation of siblings, mistaken identity, differences of caste.  It's also a very funny, interesting and psychedelic movie - although I'm sure the story could be retold in a modern context, the movie is very much of its time. 

I watched this movie with my sister, quite appropriately and I think this was her first time to see a Bollywood movie, so she's got a lasting impression of Indian cinema based on this film! 

5. Bombay - dir. Mani Ratnam (1995), Tamil/Hindi/Telugu

Bombay is a brilliant movie and a must-watch, I absolutely loved it!  It deals with really important political topics and tells the story of a love relationship between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, set against the backdrop of the 1992 religious riots in Mumbai/Bombay.  Mani Ratnam is one of the most famous film directors from Tamil-language cinema, based in Chennai (Madras).  Bombay is a good example of a movie that has crossed the linguistic divide.  It also contains one of my favourite songs from an Indian movie, the Hindi version is called Kehna Hi Kya and you can see a video from YouTube below.

The soundtrack of Bombay was composed by A.R. Rahman, the 'Mozart of Madras', a Tamil composer who is known around the world for his musical scores which include the soundtrack for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008)



6. Pinjar - dir. Chandra Prakash Dwivedi (2003), Hindi/Urdu

Scene from Pinjar (2003)

Pinjar is quite a serious movie, based on the novel of the same name by Punjabi writer, Amrita Pritam.  It deals with the partition of 'Hindustan' and the position of women in Indian society.  Like other Bollywood movies, it's sad, beautiful and entertaining in equal measure.

7. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge - dir. Aditya Chopra (1995), Hindi/Urdu/English/Panjabi

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge is a great movie - one of the first to feature Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol.  The story is interesting, the music is great and it's very typical of a Bollywood movie from the 1990's - glamorous, big-budget and targeting the Indian diaspora as much as the 'home' audience.  Apparently Chopra originally wanted to cast Tom Cruise in the main role, which might have been an interesting development for Bollywood cinema - presuming he'd accepted of course!

It's shot in England, India and Switzerland and, as I was watching the movie, I realised that I'd seen it before, on a train from Samarkand to Tashkent in 2002!  I say 'seen' and not watched, as I had no real idea of what the movie was about and couldn't understand the Russian-language dubbing due to the general noise on the train. 

I was surprised to learn that Indian cinema is quite popular in Russia and many of the big Indian movies of the 60's and 70's will be familiar to Russians of a certain age-group.  Whilst the glitzy, commercialised 90's Bollywood movies might not appeal to a Russian audience, movies like Dilwale are popular across Central Asia, including countries like Uzbekistan.

The clip below shows a very famous scene from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge where Kajol is dancing around in her towel!



8. My Brother Nikhil - dir. Onir (2005), Hindi/English

My Brother Nikhil is a very important movie and deals with the issue of HIV/AIDs.  It's set in Goa and follows the story of a Goan state swimmer who is gay and is diagnosed with HIV.  The movie is a long way from the glitz and glamour of Johar or Chopra, but I think it's in keeping with the older Bollywood tradition of raising important social issues.  the director, Onir, was born in Bhutan and is one of the few openly gay film directors in Bollywood.

With their traditional themes of male/female love and family values, Bollywood movies don't often deal with LGBT issues and I wonder if this will change, as India gets used to the 21st century?

9. Mughal-e-Azam - dir. K. Asif (1960), Urdu

Scene from Mughal-e-Azam (1960)

Mughal-e-Azam is an iconic movie of Indian cinema.  It took more than ten years to make and has an epic quality - for example, battle scenes with 8,000 movie extras - that reminds me of the Hollywood movie Ben-Hur (1959).  Urdu was the language of choice for literature and the arts in colonial India and I can see why - the booming narrative voice of Mughal-e-Azam sounds beautiful in Urdu and is poetic, as well as frightening.

Mughal-e-Azam is not like any movie I've ever seen before - it's incredibly beautiful, dreamy and transcendental.  It's not an easy movie to watch and, at 197 minutes, is even longer than the other 3-hour movies that I watched. 

10. Pakeezah - dir. Kamal Amrohi (1972), Urdu

Pakeezah is another movie that took more than ten years to film.  By all accounts, the director, Kamal Amrohi was somewhat of a perfectionist and didn't want to finish a scene until it was exactly right.  The production is exquisite and it's an incredibly beautiful movie.  It follows the life of a prostitute who has aspirations for real love, as opposed to the 'paid-for' love she gives to rich men in the brothel where she works.  The final scene (last minute or so of the clip below) where Sahibjaan dances barefoot on broken glass is one of the most amazing cinematic climaxes I've ever seen.  A fitting finale to almost 30 hours of movie watching!


Image credits:

The images of stills from the movies are from photos taken by me. These stills are being used to illustrate this blog post and promote Indian cinema. By publishing these photos, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of these images on the Internet or anywhere else. These photos are not meant to bring the actors into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blog post, but are meant to promote the amazing performances of the actors in these movies.

Maharashtra - What ever happened to Bombay?

When I was born, in 1975, the map of the world looked a little bit different than it does today.  European colonialism was on its deathbed and most parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas had managed to gain independence and establish their own colours on a world map that had previously been British Empire pink.

I was born into a world where Zaire, Malagasy, Kampuchea, Upper Volta and Rhodesia were countries.  I grew up with the names Leningrad, Bombay and Peking firmly planted in my mental geography!

But the map of the world is continually changing - whether it's the addition of new countries, like South Sudan, or the renaming of cities, from Saigon, in the year of my birth to the more recent changes, such as St Petersburg, Mumbai and Beijing.  I guess the older one gets, the more confusing the map of the world becomes and some habits (like calling St Petersburg, Leningrad or Mumbai, Bombay) are hard to break!

Map of Hindoostan from 1831

So why do countries decide to change their names, or the names of their major cities?  Well, I guess it's a natural process of redefining your national identity.  For many ex-colonies, like India, name-changing is an opportunity to reclaim cultural identity.  India seems to have gone through a wave of name-changes in the last 20 years - some of the main ones being Bombay to Mumbai (1995), Madras to Chennai (1996), Calcutta to Kolkata (2001) and Bangalore to Bengaluru (2007).

I wonder how much the growth of nationalism, especially Hindu nationalist parties like the Marathi Shiv Sena party, have influenced this recent tendency to change the names of Indian cities.   Whilst Kolkata and Bengaluru seem to be more accurate spellings of the names of these cities, I was surprised to find out that Mumbai is not simply a 're-spelling' of Bombay, but is a name with its own significance, from the Koli goddess Mumba and the Marathi word Aai, which means 'mother'.

In other countries, like China and Korea, redefining the way their languages are romanised (ie. written in the Latin alphabet) has resulted in name changes that sometimes seem quite different to speakers of European languages.  Particularly in China, where many of the romanised names were originally based on Cantonese rather than Mandarin, the resulting changes meant that Peking became Beijing and Canton became Guangzhou.  It's interesting to note that the names haven't actually changed in Chinese, but are a result of the adoption of the pinyin system of writing Chinese by other, predominantly European languages. 

Map of France in Hindi

Countries in the ex-Soviet world have seen many name changes in the past century.  After the Russian revolution, many cities such as Petrograd, Yekaterinburg and Tver - were renamed after heroes of the revolution, Leningrad, Sverdlovsk and Kalinin - only to regain their former names after the death of Stalin or the collapse of communism.  Likewise, Tsaritsyn named in honour of the Tsars was renamed Stalingrad (1925) and then Volgograd (1961).  Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan was once called Frunze, Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe spent more than 30 years with the official name Stalinabad.

So is all this name-changing really worth it, especially if the purpose is to establish political supremacy or nationalism?  Perhaps the most controversial name where I come from is Derry or Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second biggest city.  I grew up calling it Derry and I still find it hard to think of Londonderry as a place that exists anywhere outside my adult experience of geopolitics.  It's a contentious name and, like Bombay, Calcutta or Madras, symbolises British rule for a population that is dissenting or independent.

Free Derry corner by Paolo Trabattoni

It's interesting to think about who has the right to decide a city's name.  Logic would say that it should be the people who live in the city who decide what it's called - in which case, I'd imagine Derry/Londonderry would end up being just 'Derry' - but what about others who have a relationship with the city?  The administrators in Belfast, Beijing or New Delhi?  As with the adoption of pinyin by European mapmakers, people in other countries/places also somehow have a right to decide what they will call the cities in other parts of the world and how they will spell these names in their own languages. 

Personally I think it's important for names to change - although I grew up with Bombay, Peking and Leningrad, I recognise the symbolic nature of city name-changing and see this as an important process in countries that are going through political and cultural change.  How the rest of the world reacts is another matter.  I'd imagine most of us have a very personal mental map of the world which captures our understanding of geography in a way that no paper or digital map ever could. 

It'll be interesting to see how the world continues to change as this blog ages (there have already been some small changes to the world map since I started in 2009).  Perhaps I'm blogging about places that will cease to exist - what will the countries and cities of the future be called?  I can't wait to find out!

Image credits:

The first two images are from Wikimedia commons and are in the public domain.

The image of Free Derry corner was taken by Italian photographer Paolo Trabattoni who is a graphic designer.  You can see more of Paolo's work on his Flickr photostream or on his website.  Thanks Paolo for sharing this image with us using the Creative commons license. 

Maharashtra - Another India

For my next learning journey, I've decided to learn about Maharashtra, India's second most-populated state.  If Maharashtra was an independent country, it would be 12th largest in the world, in terms of population.  With 112 million people, it's just behind Mexico and Japan.  In terms of land area, Maharashtra is a bit smaller than Poland and a bit bigger than Arizona.  Maharashtra came into existence on the 1st of May 1960 and is a successor of the Bombay Presidency (which also included the state of Gujarat).

It isn't my first time to blog about India.  Back in May-July 2010, I did a series of blog posts on Rajasthan.  Unlike Rajasthan, which I still haven't managed to visit - I have actually been to Maharashtra, having spent Christmas there in 2002.  Spending Christmas in India was quite an experience and I still remember eating cold slices of turkey with cranberry sauce, as I sat sweating in an Irish bar in the Colaba district of Mumbai.

As well as spending a few days in Mumbai, I also visited Pune, as my travelling companion was interested to find out more about the Osho ashram (which turned out to be a great disappointment).  I had the best cup of tea ever in Pune - I can almost still taste it - very milky and full of ginger.

Gateway to India by Swami Stream

After Pune, I travelled alone to Kolhapur, Maharashtra's sixth largest city, as I wanted to experience a slice of everyday Indian life - this time I wasn't disappointed.  I met my first ever Hindu fundamentalist in Kolhapur, who poked me in the chest and asked me what I was doing there (at least I figured that was what he was saying, as I don't speak Marathi!).

I also remember an incredibly attentive waiter in Kolhapur, who insisted on standing beside me through the entire meal, so he could chop up my bits of food.  I was half-expecting him to start feeding me, or eat the meal himself!

As I've started researching and reading about India's history, I can't help thinking about Maharashtra as another India. It's probably the biggest Indian regional culture which is outside the dominant Hindi mainstream.  Mumbai is the largest city in India and held an important role during the time of the British Raj - yet Maharashtra doesn't dominate the history of India.  It would seem that India's history happened in the northern states - Delhi, Punjab and, after the British arrived, Kolkata. 

I find it ironic that, despite the fact that only 12% of the state's population speaks Hindi (69% speak the state language, Marathi) - Maharashtra is the home of Bollywood, the factory for Hindi culture and dreams.  It'll be interesting to get to the heart of this cultural divide and learn about Maharashtra and Marathi people, culture and language.

Shri Ganesha by Swami Stream

I've always been attracted to the Hindu god Ganesha or Ganapati and he's particularly popular in Maharashtra.  As well as being the mid-winter solstice, today is also the beginning of Pancha Ganapati, a five-day festival in honour of Ganesha - surely an auspicious day to start blogging about Maharashtra?

The festival seems to be most popular with people of Indian descent who live in other parts of the world, especially in nominally Christian countries, like the United States, where Christmas is almost universally celebrated.  I guess Pancha Ganapati gives ex-pat Hindus a chance to celebrate family, harmony and devotion at the same time as their Christian neighbours? 

I found the following video on YouTube which explains the tradition of Pancha Ganapati - enjoy! 




Image credits:

The picture of the Gateway to India - one of Mumbai's most iconic buildings - was taken by Flickr member Swami Stream a.k.a. Swaminathan, who is from Pune in Maharashtra, as was the picture of Shri Ganesha.  You can see more of Swaminathan's photos on his photo stream, or on his website.