Bollywood, for the longest time, was an ever present thread running through my family tapestry. It'd always been there, in numerous stories...
Right from the good ol' days of the grandparental units. Tata cycling home from work on the dusty streets of Hyderabad of lore, and paying by the
anna to catch a movie--
Dosti,
Taj Mahal,
Anpadh...And on the weekends, taking lil' Daddy and lil' Daddy's older bro to ride the tide of the Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Rajendra Kumar wave. Later on, to please Pati at home, taking her to the non-Bollywood
Shankarabharanam when it did come out, and religiously singing the melodious tunes after the Sunday morning castor-oil bath, right before she dished out steamy dosas.
Or the days of Daddy in 5th class, being sent home from school for wearing a shirt on 'color-dress' day that said Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Pradeep Kumar in deep black on bright yellow. The story of him walking all the way back to Domulguda is retold over and over again. And the faded picture of him, with his unruly hair in the famed shirt still sits, today in a rusty Godrej almirah, with the scent of moth balls and Pati's perfume lingering on her silk sarees.
Moving on to Daddy as the messy haired, thick glasses-ed Vijay Anand clone of
Kora Kaagaz fame. Daddy in those days thought he was the
Don, for sure, and so did all his college cronies. Sitting on the University terrace and whistling
'Mere Sapnon ki Rani' to the tops of trees...and ducking when any unsuspecting co-eds chanced to look up. Good thing he decided to wait for Amma...
And all those years, there was Amma blooming into her long braids and shapely bell bottoms. Youngest daughter, darling of older brothers, playing a la Jaya Bhaduri of
Guddi and
Mili fame...skipping, singing through life in general.
Then, luckily for us, our parents got married. And on their wedding day the story of them singing the
'Tere Mere Milan ki Yeh Raina' duet from
Abhimaan. The crowning filmi touch, to this day the charm of that story doesn't fade...
Enter the Orissa years on the faithful red Suzuki bike. Taking the six-month old me to triweekly movie outings...apparently there was barely anything else to do back then in Orissa, not that its changed much. Baby with head full of hair falls asleep, mosquitoes are swatted and movie is enjoyed. And then, my most important Bollywood moment--my first memory of a movie--
Dance Dance! I became a Mandakini clone with her
Zubi Zubi Zubi number in my repertoire by the time I was five. Mithun Chakravorthy became my favorite star, and how many Gods do I thank to this day, for improving my taste since then!
An equally crowning moment in baby sister's life, watching
Masoom in Cubbon Park with the whole cousin menagerie for her fifth birthday. Obviously none of us got the storyline back then, but the songs were great fun, and we got to watch our parents shed silent tears, which we talked about all night laying on bamboo mats on the terrace...what more could we have wanted?! Those days the cities were less polluted, we could actually see and count the stars above us.
Let me not forget the first day first show tickets of
Roop ki Rani, Choron ka Raja being wasted on the hospital drama of the ten-yr old me. Laying there in a squeaky-clean, white sheeted bed with some tubes running from my arms, dreaming of how I lost the opportunity of picking up another Sridevi dance number. I'd overused the
Naagin piece at family gatherings and my chances of showing off a new one were dashed...
Bangalore years when a History exam on Monday means catching the Sunday night show of some Madhuri flick,
Prem Granth, Raja, or any other such mindless rendition. Another event with the menagerie of cousins involved waiting in line over and over again for tickets to
Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, so much so that the rickshaw drivers waiting outside who took us home started recognizing us.
That younger days craze has, over the ensuing years, died out in me--the movies I so used to love began to lack a storyline, and the songs started getting repetitive. Simultaneously also were dashed my hopes of becoming a film ishtar...I would never, ever, I told myself wear some of the clothes those women started wearing. Of course, clothing would be the most important reason I wouldnt get a chance to act in movies, ;). With this moral judgement being duly passed, decisions to buck up and get an education became more pronounced. And this temporary continental migration has really put me out of the loop with Bollywood movies.
But the moment my feet land on home ground, the scents of my former self waft over. I find it in the rooms of our house, on the billboard dense streets, in the telephone calls to friends, the sleeping dragon begins to awaken.
Well, begins to yawn is more like it...I have stopped enjoying the Bollywood movies made today; I have become intensely more choosier about the movies I watch (
how can I be drawn by the same movies glorified by our millions of Bollywood goers in all sizes and income ranges, or some such elitist thought); and the fam has also ceased to be interested in them...and so I've stopped watching them.
Just, in some such times, memories tend to nudge and elicit random outbursts of writing....
