Bitten by the Bollywood bug

I must be mad!

I have watched three Indian movies in the last 48 hours – twice for each movie! - and am now looking to buy more. This can’t be real.

For years and years I studiously avoided all Hindi movies and anything Bollywood.

When I was working in Kuala Lumpur, a fever hit Malaysia in 1998 with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens), starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol.

I avoided that one too, although that must’ve been the year when my wife and daughter got struck with the Bollywood virus.



Me? I couldn’t stand those weak plots about a poor guy falling in love with a rich girl (or vie versa), fights between the hero and villain where no one suffer bruises at the end.

And urgh, those songs in the course of the movie - where the heroine would roll on the grass without messing up her dress and tresses, and the hero would wail some song from some waterfall one minute and atop a mountain the next!

How could any moviegoer go through that!

(I knew all these after getting glimpses of past Hindi movies that my parents used to watch. Yes, they are fans too. Sigh).

Give me Aliens, Terminator or even Sleepless in Seattle anytime, I often say.



But things have changed since 1998.

In the last few years, whenever a top Hindi movie played on TV, I would be told by my wife and daughter to not disturb them until Shah Rukh or Aishwarya Rai and friends had finished their last song and dance.



And then last week, the government of India invited a group of Asean journalists to take part in a high-level forum, tour New Delhi, Agra and Mumbai, and arranged interviews with top business players.

I was put aboard Air India for the 5-hour Singapore-Delhi flight.

There was an entertainment screen at every seat, but to my horror, the six channels only played Bollywood movies. Arghh, I said to myself.

Getting bored half an hour into the flight, I listened to my Walkman and read Matthew Reilly’s latest thriller.

I just happened to switch to one channel and a movie was playing. But my eyes kept glancing at the movie which had English subtitles.

There was a sweet actress busy with some love affair with a short fat guy. I learnt later that her name was Deepika Padukone and his name was Saif Ali Khan.

The movie was Love Aaj Kaal (Love These Days) – I learnt this from the movie guide in the airplane much later.

I must admit I have never heard of the duo or the movie.



You see, my Bollywood dictionary didn’t go beyond Shah Rukh Khan (SRK to his zillions of fans), Kajol, Aishwarya Rai, Amitabh Bachchan and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

I didn’t even know how Kajol looked like and what Kuch Kuch was about.



Back to my flight - Thanks to the English subtitles, I suddenly stopped listening to my Walkman and reading the book, and started to follow the plot of the movie. It turned out that there were two separate stories in this Love Aaj Kaal movie.

At the end of 1.5 hours, I had become a fan of Deepika and Saif. I was to learn later that they are big names in Bollywood (though I still could not understand why the ugly Saif could be a star. Then again, his physique is like Charles Bronson’s, the anti-hero).

And, wow, Love Aaj Kaal is in fact a hit movie for 2009, with many nominations for top awards.

I watched it twice on the plane (in between dinner and naps)!

Heck, I even like the dance routines.



This is weird, how come Hindi movies suddenly got this pull on me?

During my trip to Mumbai, I bought Love Aaj Kaal and another hit movie, Om Shanti Om, starring SRK and Deepika.

And back in Kuala Lumpur for a short holiday, I bought Slumdog Millionaire, a hit movie that I had avoided because it was, in my mind, another Bollywood movie.



I think these movies caught on with me because I could identify with the angst, simple life and hardships plus this 'kehidupan manusia biasa' portrayed in them.

I guess that unlike those Hollywood movies, I see a bit of old P.Ramlee movies in some of these Hindi ones except Saloma, Aziz Sattar and Sarimah didn't do any high-energy dance number.



-------------------------------------------------------

Indian journalists and officials that I met during that one week trip to India have been listening with bemusement at my own theory on why the country will be bigger than China on the global stage.

It goes like this: America the Superpower has shown the world its prowess in software (Windows, Apple, Google) which is backed by the huge commercial success of Hollywood movies.

In simple terms, America shows how great the country is every time you switched on your computer in the office and TV at home.

At home, America dominates as most Western movies and shows come from the US of A, seen through American lenses.

The media also is dominated by America – CNN, Newsweek, International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal. The world is analysed from American perspective of the world, and the world largely accepts this.

And then America also has financial prowess. Before the 2008 global economic crisis, Wall Street banks were much loved from Lehman Brothers to Citibank and Bank of America.

Backing up all these? Benign American military power (though not so benign in the George W. Bush era).



So, I told those who would listen to me, India already has software power – just look at those Indian IT engineers all over the world. From those in Google, HP and those who are everywhere in other big technology companies, including those in Singapore.

Indians just need a hit apps (application software) or a hardware blockbuster to seal its technical greatness in this area. China has Lenovo.

So, okay. China, too, has many great IT engineers but they are not as seen widely in the global market - perhaps because the Indian ones speak English readily and thus are more employable.

And India has another advantage compared to China because it has Bollywood!

China, too, has its own movie world, sure.

China’s biggest movie star is Jackie Chan, known widely as being “from Hong Kong” – ie not quite China proper.

Zhang Zi Yi and Jet Li! Yes, but they don’t do dances like those Bollywood stars that somehow captivate audiences, including those in Southeast Asia (think of the Indian diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the millions of SRK fans among Malays in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore).

India, of course, does not have the financial brand name of the Wall Street banks and investment houses. Neither is India’s military prowess near China’s.



But from here, by careful nurturing or chaotic expansion, India could grow its “soft power” brands – IT engineers and Bollywood - in a crowded global marketplace.

Just like Singapore is known for its “efficiency” and an Asian financial powerhouse to the world.

Then again, maybe all these are the imaginings of someone who had watched too many Hindi movies in such a short span of time…



Enough said. Let me now go out and buy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, 3 Idiots and Billu Barber. While I wait for Salman Khan’s Veer (Gladiator Mamak - see PICTURE) to play here.

Hahaha, aku merapu lagi!