In search of a new face
ZIYA US SALAM
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`Goodbye villages, hello global village' is the new mantra, as serious filmmakers target urban audiences.
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The angst of real India: Stills from Govind Nihalani's "Deham".
SERIOUS Hindi cinema, entrenched in real India, has died. Unsung, uncared for. Parallel cinema directors, who once took on Bollywood's moguls — "Ardh Satya" and "Coolie" were released at the same time — to express the angst of real India, have today fallen silent. In some cases, they have started catering to the microscopic elite of urban India, a section with two cars in the garage and a son studying in the U.S. This is their midway point: they neither depict Shah Rukh Khan alighting from a helicopter at his home as in "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham", nor do they talk of a village subedar as in "Mirch Masala" many summers ago.
Away from issues
The caste system with its inequities no longer bothers them like it did when Ketan Mehta put together "Bhavnai Bhavai" or K. Viswanath came up with "Sur Sangam". Nor does rural poverty rankle them any more. Gone are the days of "Mrigyaa", "Khandar" or "Paar". Images of poverty, deprivation and dispossession do not sell any more. Little wonder filmmaker Goutam Ghose rues, "Rural India is alienated with mainstream cinema."
And our serious filmmakers head to the emerging India, an urban India where one man can spend in an evening what a majority of his countrymen do not earn in a month. Goodbye villages, hello global village. That is often their new mantra. Our heroes are all well heeled, the heroines often wear clothes they could exchange with their counterparts from the West. And the language is no longer Hindi or Urdu but Hinglish, principally English with a smattering of Hindi or some vernacular words thrown in. So, if it is a Sikh character in "American Chai", he speaks a bit of Punjabi just as a South Indian one dabbles in Tamil.
Ketan Mehta's "Mirch Masala".
Little wonder that noted director Jahnu Barua, with nine National Awards under his belt, concedes, "We are all confused. Most of the mainstream films are urban-oriented and usually based on the themes of the middle class. All the filmmakers, including me, are confused. No one knows which way to go... filmmaking has become very expensive. It is four-five times more expensive than say 10-15 years ago. It is difficult to hold on to one's convictions. Hindi cinema makers do not have any conviction. Real India is missing in films."
Mithun Chakraborty reiterates the point. At the dawn of his career, Mithun acted in Mrinal Sen's "Mrigyaa", which talked of a tribal boy denied education. More recently on a comeback to mainstream cinema, he starred in films like "Elaan" and "Guru". "Our filmmakers have gone too far away from real India. Everybody is catering to NRIs; actual India is missing. Everything is corporatised. Now it is all about packaging, there is no soul. The whole concentration is on the Cineplex crowd, the ultra-modern section because they have the purchasing power today. Else, they want to target the global market, which is a euphemism for Indians abroad. But the filmmakers don't realise that even Indians staying abroad want to see the real India, not some fantasy. There are hardly any real values left. It is like `Lal dhari wala Colgate, safed dhari wala Pepsodent'."
Focus on urban culture
It does not help that a filmmaker like Ghose, who depicted rural poverty in a touching manner in "Paar", today talks of an urban writer with a multiplex-frequenting family in the to-be-released "Yaatra". "Actually all media of expression are being used to depict the urban market. This is true with a new market economy, shopping mall culture. Even media focuses on urban middle class. All the filmmakers who are targeting the urban crowd are talking in terms of a maximum 21 per cent of population as the target. In numbers it is a huge market. You see the advertisements in electronic and print media they have completely shifted to urban elite. The urban man is the buyer. Entertainment industry relies primarily on urban population." He, however, adds, "Cinema must reach the majority. Films made in Hindi don't reflect the ethos of the region."
In this greed to cater to the urban market, the film industry is guilty of stereotypes. No, not just of a Sikh always speaking in Punjabi or a South Indian being invariably a Tamil, never a Telugu or a Kannada. The stereotype comes in the form of homogeneity. Everybody talks alike, dresses alike. Says Ghose, "India is not a homogenous country. That is the great strength of our country. We are heterogeneous. Unless we accept it, we are heading for a civil uprising. Just as there is an urban market, there is a semi-urban and rural market."
Jahnu Barua's "Pokhi".
He admits, "I grew up with idealism but one has to accept change." So his hero in "Yaatra" is a writer who lives in an Age of Avarice and talks of video games, even if he calls them weapons of our own destruction.
Dreams and fantasies
If Ghose forgets "Paar", Mehta moves away from "Mirch Masala" and Barua struggles to get his "Butterfly Chase" (a film without stars based in the strife-torn Jammu and Kashmir) released, where are we headed? Even as serious filmmakers look for direction, the dream merchants with their mega budgets continue to inundate our cinema halls with their fantasies. Their fantasies are all urban too, just as the reality of serious films has become. So "Rang De Basanti", "Krrish", "Lage Raho Munnabhai", "Dhoom 2" and the more recent "Guru" and "Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd." all talk of an India which knows no hunger, where caste is not an issue, where law and order is but a sidelight, and guys go zoom-zoom with girls in tank-tops riding pillion.
So even as Barua believes that it is a passing phase and Ghose-Mehta come up with their unique solutions, one tends to agree when Chakraborty muses, "Everybody is wondering where are we headed." Jabbar Patel, who recently revived "Ambedkar", has the answer, "We have to find our identity afresh. The look of our films has to change. Poverty is there still in our country but it has to be explained in a different context." Anybody ready to take the plunge?
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