“ Mujhe Jeene Do, ” says Bollywood

I need to make an initial disclosure; I’m a sucker for Bollywood. They provide such dizzying entertainment without interruption that you have to be a boring thoroughbred to dislike them. Just one scene from masterful fantasy film maker Manmohan Desai would be enough to get your adrenaline pumping. A swollen Amitabh Bachchan, after denouncing several scary villain henchmen, pursues the fleeing thug. There’s only one problem, the villain is already on a dirt track aboard a small plane, while Mister Mard gallops on a white horse.

But for Bachchan, any trapeze required to get into the forward transport vehicle is like a walk in the park. He throws a long lasso at the aircraft in flight, which immediately hooks in a perfectly rounded knot to the tail of the aircraft, knocking it off balance. Bachchan then confidently jumps off the horse onto the plane, and I leave the rest to your wildest imagination. Fortunately, the poor horse was spared the pyrotechnics perhaps to avoid some animal rights violations or the lack of CGI then.

While most of us laugh loudly at this ridiculous excess now, I remember being delighted and clapping with the audience when Bachchan did that Superman shot (the “ double ” was the real hero actually). Seriously, how can we now take down these illogical fantasy-making dream merchants?

Bollywood makes no claim to be the epitome of professional perfection. It’s far from ideal, it is full of human bankruptcies, like the rest of us. He even sporadically distributes terrible dishes. But yet Bollywood is the ultimate stress reliever in the country. Not everyone can afford to go to an Ayurvedic camp in Kerala or the lush green Himalayan five-star resorts at hill stations to do dawn meditation exercises. Or hire expensive therapists. Bollywood makes us laugh (I literally remember all the Inox theater in the aisles watching “No Entry”) and cry (the last scene of “Devdas” at New Excelsior had wrung out their tissues a lot). Even in his most trashy productions, there is a method in chaos.

I grew up at the age of Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan; between them we had our ultimate entertainment. The romantic phenomenon against the angry young man. It wasn’t so much the cinematic experience, but the build-up of it, right from the mahurat stroke and the little bits and pieces that followed in the gossip columns of Filmfare, Stardust, Cine Blitz and Star & Style. And then, of course, there were the huge full-page ads that followed in The Times of India when they were released.

I was very excited to book the ticket, standing in line for hours. As we approached the wicket, our hearts would pound with unrestrained excitement. Tickets were generally different colors for Stall (front and back), Dress Circle, and Balcony. Once the Herculean task was completed, we returned with the triumphalism written on our face. On the day of the movie, we wore smart clothes and shiny shoes and got to the theater at least half an hour early, to have Sosyo or Mangola with those Iranian samosas, shaped like an equilateral triangle. It was like a family picnic. And no matter what movie you saw, empty and silly as it was, it made you smile.

One of them was Amar Akbar Anthony (it’s hard not to imagine social media trolls going mad in today’s sulfuric climate against the film’s syncretic title). It was released in 1977 and contained three popular favorites: Amitabh, Vinod Khanna, and Rishi Kapoor. And therefore, he was also to have three heroines (Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi and Neetu Singh, coincidentally belonging to the same religious community as the respective heroes); it was symmetrical secularism, synchronized on a T. And everyone had the same screen time.

For us, the multi-stars were “total paisa vasool”. AAA must be seen to be believed; the children separated at birth, adopted into three different religions repeatedly clashing against each other, and lost parents crossing each other, but miraculously missing each other. It was a consummate fairy tale with the most exhilarating twists. And the more bizarre it got, the more tumultuous the impact; all three contribute to a blood transfusion scene for their mother.

Looking at AAA, it seemed like all of Mumbai was living in the same crowded chawl. At one point, Eternal Mother Nirupa Roy magically recovers her sight in a temple after laser-like lights emanate from a statue of Sai Baba. Comparatively, multiplexes these days are such sanitized holes (despite their organized menus), because when AAA was playing in theaters (each of them was on one screen), people were dancing, standing and clapping, and you could hear the sound of clinking coins thrown on the floor. It was a collective joy and everyone participated in the wild mirth with unbridled abandonment. The craziness continued unabated, despite competition from hyperventilating news channels, small-screen soap operas and OTT platforms on the web. Bollywood still reigns supreme, but it’s suffocating. He needs to breathe.

It’s that same film industry that has recently been painted as a scatological, hedonistic, drug-consuming niche with X-rated characters, sleazy sugar daddies, and manipulative oligarchic merchants controlling its precious infrastructure. And condemning its vulnerable young stars not kept in oblivion. And even death. For the first time, there seems to be a clear ideological animosity between the warring camps. Like India, it is a divided, polarized house. Once Bollywood reflected Indian reality, now that same reality has caught up with it.

The writer is a suspended congressional leader.