INDIA ABROAD
Bollywood storms Dallas
MURLI DAS MELWANI
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Not only are more and more theatres showing Hindi movies, but Dallas is home to two radio stations devoted mainly to Bollywood fare.
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Photo: H. Satish
Time to play… with so many options at the press of a button.
No, I’m not taking about the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” being nominated the Best Motion Picture (Drama) at the Golden Globe awards this year or the increasing number of Indian movies shown in Dallas theatres.
The invasion has occurred in the homes and on the roads of Dallas with the help of two infiltrators: radio stations, FM 700 and Radio Salaam Namaste (KZMP-FM 104.9). These two stations cater to the South Asian diaspora: Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankans, collectively called desis.
The broadcasts of both the stations consist mainly of Bollywood movie songs. Both the Dallas radio stations have neatly pigeon-holed their audience. On the drive to work in the morning, you hear new songs; goldies — or oldies, as they also called — fill the air from late morning till lunch for the stay-at-home population; a medley of the old and new take over in the afternoon; and preppy, fast tunes keep you company on the drive home.
Weighty stuff
The staple of the RJ interaction with the audience consists of weighty topics such as: name the movie from which the number we are now playing is taken? Who sang it? What was the year? What was the heroine’s outfit as she warbled a lovelorn song?
And if you are caller no. 5 or 7 and you get the answer right, you win a coupon to an entrée offered by a sponsoring restaurant. When a new movie hits town, it is hyped by giving away tickets to listeners who can identify a song in it.
Audiences are aware of the reality that the voices behind the lip-synced duets of the hero and heroine are those of seasoned professionals — charmingly called “background singers”.
The callers dial while they are driving, while in the kitchen, while shopping, and even, sotto voce, from work.
In short, everything revolves around the lives, the gossip, the past and the present of the stars and tid bits from formulaic Bollywood plots.
I’m not saying that these two radio stations don’t offer anything else. Sure they do: doctors giving stock answers to medical questions, immigration or tax attorneys pushing their practice by taking listeners’ questions, an astrologer reading your horoscope on the air. There is just one programme devoted to a discussion of political and social issues — R.J. Sadr’s Forum.
I thought radio stations were supposed to broadcast a variety of programs: lively interviews, book discussions, political debates, sports commentary, plays, newscasts (FM 700 manages to squeeze in these), community calendars, and the like. But I guess the Bollywood takeover is so complete that it leaves little room for the mind to move out of the box.
The surprising part is that both the stations have the resources, human and other, to become community radios in the broadest sense of the term.
Professional RJs
They have top notch RJs. FM 700’s Shabnam Modgil has a charming BBC-ish manner, while Karishma establishes rapport with her audience easily. Salaam Namaste’s Sangeeta Bachani has an easy interactive style, while Monicca Sharmaa is friendly without being familiar and lively without being boisterous. All the RJs broadcast in English and Hindi, are totally bi-lingual, and switch between the two languages with ease and flair.
Since Bollywood has made sure that the desi population thinks, speaks, dreams the stuff churned out on its assembly line, the radio stations give what the public needs. Bollywood’s tentacles seem to be tightening rather than loosening.
Most other regions in the United States with heavy concentrations of South Asians boast of, at best, a solitary desi radio station. Because everything is bigger in Texas, we tell our friends, with a casual shrug of our shoulders, that we have two.
Texas welcomes all comers and the Bollywood invasion is just another colourful feather in its cap, sorry, Stetson.
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