An Introduction...
Walking
through the colorful streets of Rajasthan, you chance upon a muscular fellow,
who seems to be wooing the beautiful belles around him- and suddenly all the
people around you starts dancing, joyfully but in synchronization with each other! The
entire place lights up with colors and songs and a whole bunch of strangers start
grooving together.
Now what are the chances of that happening
to you in real life?! Probably never! But you might just experience it yet. For
this is the life of the Bollywood movie- a story within a story, a larger than
life set, and it’s a story that we all become a part of. Matching your feet to
the popular moves, singing your lungs out to the latest hit song in the
bathroom or memorizing the choicest dialogues - Bollywood films has been a part
and parcel of Indian life.
Picture
Source: Google Images
Bollywood
Films are a delight, particularly for the armchair travelers seeking to know
the world, one might say. That stolen kiss behind the big tree in the garden,
the chiffon sari of the lovely actress in the snow covered mountains of
Switzerland or the jaunty moves of the hero on the streets of Bombay- all of these
carry the weight of something much more than just entertainment. Scanning the
scenes behind the hero and heroine; one can discover much about exotic lands of
numerous places. Leaving aside the physical landscapes, the story-lines of Hindi
films touch upon copious issues of identity making, power struggles, cultural
and social norms, values and all that make up the Indian social and cultural landscape.
The human imprint on the soil of the land cannot ignore the stories of joy,
grief, hope and despair that all of us go through. Bollywood is represented as
the celebration of life in every form and every aspect.
A man living in the small room beneath
the bridge, the quirky family living in the slums petting an emu as part of
their family, that determined fellow who travels miles to meet Amitabh Bachhan
to fulfill his dying father’s wish- in the mundane everyday life they would
seem ridiculous. But to dismiss these stories as ridiculous will not do justice
to what lies beneath it. These tales are carrying the weight of eternal hope, the
makings of identity, the negotiations of power struggle in different spaces,
the attachment and connections of people to a place and much more. That these absurd
and the not so absurd stories are adored and accepted by the millions is
symbolic of the intricacies and complexities of Indian life itself.
Traversing through conversations
between land, love and life
Keeping up with this, this particular
series celebrates the contributions of Bollywood films to the making and
representing of Indian landscapes, be it the physical, cultural, emotional, or
the social map of the country to its viewers around the world.
Let us then take a journey of the
cinematic landscapes with the help of the poignant words of our authors, stepping
through the lands of three Bollywood films- Dor,
Life in a Metro & Highway. The articles read beneath the scripts to catch
the flow of emotions and cycles of traditions, the rushes of life and the crawls
of love. The series shines the light on the stories of human romances and
tragedies and enter a conversation with the landscapes that the films showcase.
The traversing of romances and tragedies
in this script runs from the landscape of remote villages in India (Dor), to the Indian City of the teeming
millions (Life in a Metro) and the
road that stands in between (Highway).
Ananya’s article tells us the story of
Dor, and the struggles of two women in their search for justice and happiness. The
string of love helps each of them from falling off the cliff of life and an
extraordinary story of struggles, belief, hope comes out that defy the harshest
of lands and the complexities of fate.
From the serenities of rural life, we travel
to the place that is simultaneously considered to be a fairy godmother as well
as the devil - the city. Juri’s piece
on the movie, Life in a Metro, talks of the relationships that
are built and broken in every nook and corner of the city. The city comes out
on top, as the place which carries the lives of millions of people, with as
many untold stories. Life in a Metro features a number of sections of the
city’s population- the married couple, the corporate office goers, and the
elderly, and the stories that they build over spaces.
The road of this script ends in victory-
victory of the individual from the binds of the land, spreading her wings and
flying to unknown worlds, only to come back to the old place as a renewed
person. This victory is not limited to the protagonist itself, but those who
tread the path of life alongside her. It wraps us in a story where the road and
the individual become one, and takes us on a tumultuous ride of finding love
and freedom in the most unexpected places. These articles leave us with the
knowledge of Bollywood films and the dreams that it carries for the ones
watching it, adoring it and celebrating it.
The series on Romances and Tragedies
thus takes us through a journey- where places and people come together to tell
a story, creating a magical landscape and gears towards the celebrations of
land, love and life.
Come,
let’s celebrate the journey!!!
Series Editor and Author’s Bio- Note:
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