Bollywood Feat. Munni and Sheila

Bollywood. The word that has become synonymous with India, along with some other words viz. chaos, unemployment and population explosion.

Bollywood is the front-runner in the group of Indian Movie Industries, including Kollywood( Kannada), Tollywood(Tamil) and The Bengali Industry.

Yes, Bollywood is like a factory, vomiting movies with weak, family-oriented, over-dramatized scripts and an unusual amount of songs.

And yes, Bollywood does in fact consist of songs with ridiculous music, outrageous lyrics and a horde of ugly people moving their bodies at bizarre angles around trees, which they call dancing.

Bollywood has a glorious history, achieved its “Golden Age” during the 40s and 50s, after Independence. This period included a number of gems in the now tarnished crown of Bollywood viz. Pyaasa, kaagaz ke phool, also the epics Mother India and Mughal-e-azam, making remakes of which the existing crop of “film-makers” earn their bread n’ butter.

So, Why “ now tarnished” crown?

Because, Bollywood is like the faulty MIGs in the Indian Air-Force, without engines, spiralling out of control and the “Eject Seat” mechanism has been jammed due to use of low-quality raw-materials.

It has degraded from “Mother India” to “Kraazzy 4”, from “Mughal-e-azam” to “Faltu” and from “Awaara” to “Julie”.

And that was just in terms of scripts.

Bollywood, has gone from the exquisitely written songs of the yesteryears’ like “Kuch toh log kahenge” to

“Munni badnaam hui, darling tere liye,

Main Zandu balm hui, darling tere liye,

Main atom bomb hui, darling tere liye”

From “Jis Des mein Ganga behti hain” to

“Sheila, Sheila ki jawaani,

I’m too sexy for you,

Main tere haath na aani,

NONONONONO, Sheila!“

The de-evolution is evident for all to see.

There are a few promising ones over the years too, viz. Rang de Basanti, a beautiful interpretation of the youth, Being Cyrus, which is endearingly twisted, A Wednesday, Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher, enough said, Ishquiya, was a breath of fresh air and Omkara, a rather successful adaptation of Othello.

Producers and Production companies need to encourage such scripts, provide a platform for such movies and movie-makers to showcase their abilities and not dismiss certain scripts just because they do not appeal “commercially”.

The public need to grow up, for one, and TRY to acquire a good taste in movies and music. It’s ultimately the public’s fault that these production houses churn out such disgraceful movies every week.

It’s a case of uniform degradation of quality(refer to the previous post about human de-evolution), as they degrade, so do their tastes, they with the money-minded boneheads who give them what they “desire”, have bungled the “movie-going” experience for the rest of us.

So, next time, before you ask me to go for some Hindi movie with you, remember that, I’d rather jump off a a boat in the middle of an ocean with a boulder tied to my feet.