Hooray for Bollywood's tales of love

Yet these marriages still leave many former romances in the lurch and unresolved. A love story like "Kuch Kuch" often raises expectations that aren't met at home - but does so in a way that leaves everyone imagining happy circumstances. "A lot of us marry to satisfy our families, and we say goodbye to our girlfriends," says Suvendu. "It isn't easy."

Hollywood influences

The Hollywood juggernaut has permanently altered Bollywood landscape, says Mr. Ahmed. Action thrillers are on the wane, for example. B-grade plots, corny dialogue, homespun production values, and overacting, for example, (gangsters are still referred to as "boss") seem pass. In middle-class homes, the kids can watch American film on cable TV movie channels every night.

A talented new generation of under-30 Bollywood directors has arrived - but they have stuck with the commercially safer, low-budget love story. Director Karan Johar says that the tone and look of the college scenes in "Kuch Kuch" are patterned after "Beverly Hills 90210." "The art, the costumes, tilt toward the West," says Mr. Johar. "But the soul of the film is Indian."

Mr. Johar, like Ms. Chandra, admires epic Western films. The Cecil B. deMille style matches at least in time the requisite three-hour Bollywood film. "Ben Hur" and "Gone With the Wind" are big with Bollywood directors, as are family films like "Stepmom," "Jerry McGuire," and "Kramer vs. Kramer." "Titanic" was perhaps the most popular of all.

"I bought all the emotional stuff in "Titanic," I let myself be used and maneuvered, and the rest," says Johar of the "Titanic" hit of last year. "I didn't care, I cried in the aisles."

If Indian film has consolidated around an Indianized middle-class dream of happy families - it has also further moved away from earlier themes of social justice and tragedy.

Critics say the traditional Indian love story still has women confined to roles either as family-breaking vamps, or as dutiful wives. Mr. Johar says this is commercially necessary. He can't do a blockbuster that challenges the traditional male-dominated gender formula. He could not, for example, make a picture like "Kuch Kuch" where a widow looks for a new mate. "You have to satisfy so many audiences, most of which are in villages, and they won't want a film where women change roles. Females need to be seen as sacrificing themselves for the idea of family," says Johar.

Traditional roles

Yet as Bombay columnist Amrita Shah points out, many females seeking liberation themselves often admire less-than-liberated males. She visited a women's college shortly after the release of a film called "Darr." The film had two male leads. One was a troubled man obsessed with the female lead. The other was an Indian naval officer hero famous for fighting pirate-terrorists, and who eventually stopped the psychopath from hounding the lady. But in discussion groups after viewing "Darr," the college girls were, almost to a woman, smitten with the first male lead. "That," confided one, "was true love," Ms. Shah recounts.

One reason for monocinematic love stories, say experts, is that for the majority of Indians, especially in villages, relations between boys and girls are still tightly controlled. Holding hands and even extracurricular talking is often verboten, though this is changing in cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Bangalore, and New Delhi.

"The kids in the villages can't freely express love. But the boys and girls on the screen can," says Ahmed. "It offers a transparency of relationships that has an allure."

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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