(Note: The subject of my Republic Day rant has me so befuddled and confused that I’ve spent the last 23 minutes and 42 seconds of my life trying to work out an intro that makes sense. And I’ve come up with nothing. That’s how disoriented I am by this whole thing. I’ll give it a shot anyway)
I don’t understand and never have completely grasped why Mainstream Hindi Cinema (MHC for short) and its proponents have always been completely at ease with their industry being called “Bollywood”. So much so that for a while, there have been tags like “Kollywood”, “Tollywood” and even urghh... even “Lollywood” being thrown around to describe different industries.
I refuse to go into the etymology or nomenclature of those bastardised phrases, suffice it to say that despite overtaking the American film industry in the 1970s, people were still so in awe of phoren maal, the West (most notably Amreeka) and aping them in every way that they decided that it made perfect sense to take the fact that a city called Hollywood happens to house a set of film studies and turn into “Bollywood” as a catch-all for MHC.
In the 2000s with spiralling film budgets and MHC films/actors being recognised across the world, the “Bollywood” fraternity has decided that it hates the name. It hates the fact that as a result of Hollywood, the MHC’s name is forever going to be known as this shitty portmanteau of Hollywood and Bombay (which is now called Mumbai. There, I said it. Now don’t you dare come and wreck my blog, you shit-for-brains. You know who you are).
And so, the MHC as a whole went on this killing spree of sorts. Let’s take everything nice and pleasant in the world and ruin it. Switzerland was first on their hit-list and courtesy Yash Chopra, they succeeded with aplomb. The Maldives, the Seychelles, Sun City (South Africa), Singapore, New York and London were the next targets. Countries across the world began shaking in fear.
Calls were frantically made from one nation to another. “Listen pal, I know you guys and us guys got issues,” said a Palestinian diplomatic to an Israeli one, “But this is bigger than all that. We need to protect ourselves from a bigger threat.” The Mexicans told their Cuban “ese”s to “Relax meng, cuz joo know we gotta save ourselves and our families, joo know”. Meanwhile over in Far East Asia, “people be tripping” just like “when Godzilla be coming, they be all ‘Gaica! Gaica!’.”
Damn. Meandered off the path again.
Anyway so once all those nations safeguarded themselves, these filthy MHCers set their crosshairs on what was once a sacred institution. A rite of passage. A test that separate the boys from the... bigger boys. The game of cricket. With a saboteur-in-chief on the inside, the MHCers tore apart the institution that once was cricket. Cricket turned to a three-letter acronym shared by a club called the Irish Protestant Ladies. That crushing last attack left most people reeling, bleeding and gasping for air, while all along praying, “Please Lord, let this be the end of their reign of destruction.”
Meanwhile, the good people in Marathi Cinema put out one brilliant movie after another to try and save the world from these MHC-mothertruckers, but the shittiest (there really is no better word) films ever made (so bad that they make Hiroshima Mon Amour look like a great film... I didn’t think it was possible either) by the MHC still drew bigger crowds. By this point one would believe that the MHC had made its point against the world. The whole world wanted to just forget all about that name “Bollywood” that had angered the MHC so.
The MHC was having none of it.
Finally, today, drunk with the power the MHC did the unthinkable. It attacked a major Indian institution that wasn’t a sport. It was a part of all our histories. If you ever watched Doordarshan (in the days when we had only one TV channel... and DD-Metro), you will know what I’m talking about and maybe you like it, perhaps you love it... shit, you may even hate it or find it cheesy. But you respect it.
Combining elements from most parts of India, with some eminent personalities of the time, this six-or-so-minute capsule carried by a song that translates literally to “When your tune meets mine, the tune becomes ours”, was first aired on Independence Day in 1988. Written by ad-man Piyush Pandey, this little segment often played between shows to make up time that hadn’t been bought by advertisers. Or there were no ads about upcoming shows. I don’t know. All I know is that if a certain show got over and there were 7 or 8 minutes left till the next one, BANG! This would play. Watch it for yourself, if you haven’t a clue about what I’m saying.
Seen it? Like it? I like it too. A lot. Especially the part at 5 minutes and a second that sounds like it was written by Europe (of The Final Countdown fame, if you weren’t sure that is).
Which is why I was highly pissed off to see the new version they were playing on some shitty channel. I refuse to put up the videos here so if you are curious to see why I’m so piqued, go here and here. It’s so damn long that it’s divided into two parts. It runs at a whopping 16 minutes, gets boring in no time, has a few flashes of brilliance — Sivamani, Gino/Louis Banks, Anoushka Shankar and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and sons.
The rest of it is the most heinous act ever carried out by the MHCers. EVER. While a sportsperson like Baichung Bhutia — who has given nearly as much time to Indian football as Sachin has to Indian cricket — gets barely a couple of seconds onscreen, these MHC floozies-posing-as-actresses get nearly 30-40 seconds EACH. These flavour-of-the-month idiots who are obviously lip-syncing prance around like idiots and we’re supposed to believe this shit is “the new generation’s Mile Sur Mera Tumhara”?.
Sorry bub, go back to the drawing boards because this shit don’t fly. This is one institution that those — screw it, I don’t care — Bollywood boneheads will not ruin for me. Who’s with me?
1 comment:
im with you myte!
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