Hooray for Bollywood's tales of love

"star wars" couldn't have been made here: No one gets married.

"Mission Impossible"? Not without a dance number.

In Bombay - the L.A. of India, also known as Bollywood - forget action-adventure, horror, drama, sci-fi, and comedy. India produces 800 films a year, twice Hollywood's output, yet in a formula that almost never strays: boy meets girl.

Unless of course, girl meets boy. They fall in love amid mild adversity and much song and dance. They marry and live blissfully ever after. Indians never tire of the formula.

Sociologists say India's urban world is now more commercially driven, violent, and lonely. Its rural populations, however, are still desperately poor, and often live in strict, medieval-style patriarchies. So when it comes to cinema, as popular here as religion, Indians do not want art to imitate life.

In this amazingly diverse country, one thing everyone can agree on is films that allow an escape from harsh realities - into a simple and happy dream of uncomplicated heroes and love that is always requited.

In the 1990s, partly due to the influence of the West, the love story here has changed paradoxically. Call it a new mixture of Hollywood and Hindu: Ever younger audiences want hipper characters who live in suburban utopias, wear jeans and sunglasses, and talk like Leonardo DiCaprio. But they want them acting in films with a more traditional Hindu "family values" script - and a story line so fancifully romantic that tearjerkers like "The Princess Bride" or "Titanic" seem ho hum.

Even against-the-grain Canadian-Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose new picture "Earth" is being screened this month in the US, has nodded to the power of a love story. "Earth" is set in the pathos of the 1947 breakup of India into India and Pakistan - the largest population switch in history. Yet its backbone is a love triangle between two Muslim suitors and a beautiful Hindu nanny.

Fantasy lives

"Indians all know they have another hard day tomorrow, so if you want a commercial blockbuster, you have to do a love story," says director Tanuja Chandra. "People want complete fantasy, a world minus problems. We don't see anything wrong with that."

Just ask Sanjay, Siachen, and Makarand, a team of vacuum-cleaner salesmen in Bombay who are in line at the popular Art Deco Regal theater, located near historic Churchgate, which plays Western films. Tonight "The Mummy" is on - it's a slick Hollywood thriller with the special effects and technical virtuosity that has started to corner a market in India. Still, these young men say their hearts are with the Hindi love story. "We work from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and we only sneak away once in awhile," says Siachen. "We want love. A moment like that is the most important thing, especially if a person is missing it. It makes us feel good to see it acted out."

"Our life today is more materialistic, and love seems further removed," says Rauf Ahmed, editor of The Premiere, Bombay's top film magazine. "There's so much violence on the streets that no one wants to pay to see it any more. Three of the four megahits of the last two years had no violence or sex. They were films of happy, celebrating people."

A good example is last year's Bollywood blockbuster, "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" ("Something Happens"). Patterned after "Sleepless In Seattle," the film opens with college scenes of a man and his two close female friends. He marries one who later dies giving childbirth. Then, at age 8, the child conspires to put the man together with his other old girlfriend - who has sacrificed loyally for years, never saying how much she wanted the man. Cut to a rosy, tearful ending.

"Kuch Kuch" struck a chord with Suvendu, a chef in Udaipur, Rajasthan. The film dealt indirectly with the complex emotional issues around arranged marriages - that often never get dealt with. Polls show Indians young and old still overwhelmingly desire the security of having parents find their partners for life.

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