WRITING A BOOK ABOUT BOLLYWOOD is a bit like making a Bollywood film. There’s a substantial time lag between idea and execution. Editing takes forever. Producers are hard to find just when they’re most needed. And the stars—those ideas that glittered so enticingly in the dark screen of the mind—become hard to pin down just as the schedule for completion nears. The only reason the book and the film are ever completed is the willing collaboration of many who throw themselves into the project in which they passionately believe.
It is an honor to name the many collaborators of this book. Thanks first to my students at Berkeley and Temple whose enthusiasm and indulgence shaped my thinking as the project developed. Students in a 2005 Berkeley Freshman Seminar insisted that I include blockbusters after liberalization in the book, and the chapter on Bollylite is a partial reply to them. Students at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute came to Bollywood after full careers and lives elsewhere and took unscripted delight in the form and its many pleasures.
This book would not be this book without the many intellectual and practical resources Temple University provided. Conversations at the New India Forum were invaluable in keeping contemporary India front and center. Special thanks to Richard Immerman and Peter Logan of the Center for the Humanities for bankrolling the Forum, and to Arvind Phatak and Kim Cahill for extending the largesse from a CIBER grant to pursue the lines of inquiry we did in those heady years. A 2011 workshop on the 1970s and its legacies in India’s cinemas focused many of the ideas that shape the present study. Thanks to the workshop participants, CIBER, and the College of Liberal Arts Research Council for making the event possible. Invitations to present portions of the argument at Brandeis, Bryn Mawr, Chicago, Harvard, Hawai’i, Iowa, Madison, Old Dominion, and Penn provided lively occasions to sort out its claims.
Research in the humanities incurs considerable cost. Grateful thanks to the University of California, Berkeley, Washington University in St. Louis, Temple University, Temple’s Center for the Humanities, and the Penn Humanities Forum for enabling archival trips to India and supporting the writing time to complete this book.
The research staffs at the Library of Congress Film Research Division in Washington, D.C., and the British Film Institute in London were extremely accommodating. The National Film Archive of India in Pune provided unmatched courtesies during several visits. Special thanks to the director, Mr. Sheshadri, and the research staff: Kiran Diwar, Shubhalakshmi Iyer, Urmila Joshi, Arti Karkhanis, and above all the legendary P. K. Nair, who founded the archive and provided immensely useful oral histories of the Bombay film industry in the 1950s and 1970s. Temple’s Paley Library cheerfully acquired every obscure source requested, and its circulation staff took it upon themselves to flag and hold titles of potential interest for me—unasked. Kristina DeVoe’s expertise made it possible to conduct research in the midst of full teaching terms: her clarifying questions frequently led to unanticipated areas of inquiry.
I was especially fortunate in my research assistants for sleuthing through the dense jungle of non-digitized sources and locating retrieval-resistant print materials: Daisy Duggan at Berkeley, Jason E. Cohen at Madison, Rich Gienopie and Daniel Ryan Morse at Temple were matchless in their genial partnership.
The community of scholars on Hindi cinema provided solidarity with this book and readily engaged its arguments by posing better ones of their own. The debt in the notes is one kind of payback. For the other kind are public thanks to many who are now personal friends as well: Ulka Anjaria, Kazi Ashraf, John Briley, Emma Bufton, Sumita Chakravarty, Sanjoy Chakravorty, Vikram Chandra, Gayatri Chatterjee, Anupama Chopra, Lawrence Cohen, Corey Creekmur, Kavita Daiya, Jigna Desai, Sara Dickey, Rajinder Dudrah, Rachel Dwyer, David Farris, Tejaswini Ganti, Ajay Gehlawat, Monica Ghosh, Sangita Gopal, Nitin Govil, Priya Jaikumar, Madhu Jain, Abhijat Joshi, Suvir Kaul, Sudipta Kaviraj, Sunil Khilnani, David Ludden, Philip Lutgendorf, Purnima Mankekar, P. K. Nair, Ashis Nandy, Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai, Satish Poduval, Madhava Prasad, Amaneep Sandhu, Harleen Singh, Jyotika Virdi, and Amanda Weidman. Behroze Gandhy and Rosie Thomas graciously provided permission and image, respectively, of the 1985 election poster that appears in chapter 3. Nasreen Munni Kabir opened doors in Bombay and Pune that would have been impenetrable otherwise. Her formidable research that established an archive of the industry has greatly enabled my scholarship. Nasreen’s hospitality in London and her friendship since make her a fairy godmother to this project.
Hindi cinema is hydra-headed, and heartfelt thanks to those in the industry who spoke with me about the 1970s without insisting that theirs was the only account that mattered. Javed Akhtar was especially generous during his visit to Philadelphia and always made time for my questions about the industry. Shabana Azmi, Randhir Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, the staff of RK Studios, Girish Karnad, Feroze Rangoonwalla, Ramesh Sippy, Rohan Sippy, and Sheena Sippy were extraordinarily forthcoming with their time and insights in Bombay, Chembur, Khar, and London.
Others, not involved with Hindi film, had the critical distance to ask clarifying questions and the patience to let me fumble over the answers: Ann Banfield, Ian Duncan, Jim English, Susan Stanford Friedman, Oliver Gaycken, Lewis Gordon, Peter Logan, Franco Moretti, Paul Saint-Amour, Ellen Scott, Todd Shepard, and Howard Spodek. Michael Rogin got my project before I did, and it’s a shame I didn’t finish it in time so he could help me make it better. A quarter century ago, two teachers at Columbia shaped much of my understanding of popular culture. Andreas Huyssen’s trilogy on the Frankfurt School and Russell Berman’s Freud seminar modeled the theoretical work I had no idea I would one day want to pursue. Here is the paper I probably still owe both of them.
At Columbia University Press, Jennifer Crewe’s celebrated patience and loyalty to this book defy encomia. Her many kindnesses ushered this book and its author into print for which mute thanks. The anonymous readers for the Press provided helpful suggestions for revision and enthusiastic support when both were most needed. The Press’s faculty board deserves special thanks for its loyal faith in the author. Kathryn Schell and Jordan Wannemacher cheerfully helped with the details of publishing that make most authors weep. Roy Thomas’s editorial eyes were a precious gift that only an author in heaven’s favor receives.
Versions of chapters 3 and 4 appeared, respectively, in considerably different forms in South Asian Popular Culture 8.3 (2010) and 10.1 (2012). Neither would have been possible without the kindness of the journal’s founding editor, Rajinder Dudrah, who has been a model of professional courtesy to so many, including this author. His innumerable gifts have produced a debt that can only be paid forward.
. . .
Beyond the gifts of time and money is the gift of peace. And that, as every parent who is a writer knows, is the gift that comes from excellent childcare. We were specially blessed with the magnificent Parent-Infant Center in West Philadelphia and Amanda Barkhorn. Endless thanks to both.
All the films I write about in this book were blockbusters because families went to watch them across generations, often together. Mine was no different, though the opportunities were sparsely doled out in our family during the 1970s. When a film was considered too violent or risqué, my mother Kusum Joshi’s gift for storytelling narrated it in real time, so I knew Sholay well before I actually saw it, thanks to her. My sisters, Chaya Nanavati and Priti Joshi, embody middle-class responses to Bollywood in their total indifference and total immersion in it. (But when Chaya’s play-list suddenly went from three songs to ten, we knew she was finally getting it.) My aunts in Delhi were unfailing resources with material often irretrievable from traditional archives. Kumud Pant’s gift with translations is unmatched, and Mrinalini and Lalit Pande could recite forgotten lyrics on demand. Thanks to Rishabh Pande and Swetha Ramakrishnan for their frequent hospitality in Bombay.
They say virtue skips a generation, but that is not the case in the Nanavati household. My nephews, Akshay, Amal, and Anuj Nanavati, have been my closest collaborators in this project as we watched films and talked about them across the past decade. Amal Nanavati’s authority, even as a 9-year-old, became legend in my Berkeley classroom. He has been a generous resource on contemporary Hindi film to whom I owe many of the insights of the Epilogue. Sameer Nanavati helped me get the 1970s right and keep it simple.
My own household has a different logic: the Scandogreeks in it have not been able to sit through a complete Hindi film though they generously allow me to do so in about 7-minute segments. One day . . . Nestor Fioretos’s daring interpretive moves vanquished my timidity. His keen understanding of media frequently deepened my own. Monologues with him about my work were remarkably productive even when they took place with his fingers in his ears. Orfeo Fioretos set an example of analytical clarity that helped locate this book’s core arguments and frame them. His ideas have become mine, and I’ve gratefully absorbed his brilliance and extraordinary work ethic. He kept our households and lives humming with joy when I disappeared for long stretches. And as Mentor, he did what his namesake in Ancient Greece once did: inspired me to go after the things that really matter.
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
Thank you, my love. This book is for you, and if you’ll share it, for Nestor and Amal as well.