Desi Galaxy

There is this wonderful article on the Telegraph UK, ‘My Big Bollywood Break‘.

The dress is red, tight and very short. It has a plunging neckline and is held up by a cheap brass chain. It is hideous.

“Take, take,” says the costume director, flapping it impatiently. I stare at him. He stares back. It dawns on me that he actually wants me to wear this. I’m about to achieve the ultimate dream of millions of women across Asia and dance in a Bollywood movie. And this man wants me to do it dressed as a prostitute.

Last night I was watching ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, It is one of my most favorite movies. There are some really stupid scenes in the movie. Like the one, when it starts raining in the Simla Camp, and Shahrukh Khan takes Kajol with him to a place. There Shahrukh asks her to dance and Kajol gestures that there is no music. Shahrukh khan plays his fingers in the air and some one starts playing piano in the background. No matter how impossible it seems but in the movie it looks magically wonderful. And the regular Hindi film viewers would assume that the music is coming from either the hearts of the two lovers or the magic box director had hidden somewhere on the location.

In the same movie, during the song ‘Koi Mil Gaya’ Shahrukh Khan and Kajol (Rahul and Anjali) suddenly start singing a song started by Rani Mukherji (Tina) without rehearsing. Bollywood Heroes do not need any training in singing and dancing, they dont need to rehearse and the viewer automatically assumes that they know everything already. They could jump from high rise buildings, fight with a gang of twenty hard muscled gundas with bare hands, sing and dance at any time and make the lead female actress fall in love with them with no difficulty at all.

Francisca Kellett is right Bollywood is world’s largest dream factory.