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Bollywood FAQ

Bollywood FAQ 

All That’s Left to Know About 

the Greatest Film Story Never Told 

Piyush Roy 

Guilford, Connecticut

Published by Applause Theatre & Cineman Books 

An Imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 

Lanham Maryland 20706 

www.rowman.com 

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK 

Copyright © 2019 by Piyush Roy 

The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea. 

All images are from the author’s collection unless otherwise noted. 

Printed in the United States of America 

Book design by Snow Creative 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic 

or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, 

without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote 

passages in a review. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available 

ISBN 978-1-4950-8230-6 (paperback) 

ISBN 978-1-4930-5083-3 (e-book) 

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American 

National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library 

Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to 

Nari Hira, my most cherished mentor 

and abiding influence in my career in film journalism, 

and 

Kamal Laxmi Roy, my mother and most consistent film-viewing 

companion from childhood to the present.

Contents 

Acknowledgments 

Introduction: The Greatest Film Story Never Told 

ix 

xiii 

Section 1: History and Highlights 

1 A Century of Bollywood 3 

2 Dadasaheb Phalke and the Birth of Indian Cinema 25 

3 The Rise of Bombay Cinema 34 

4 Breaking Ground: Significant Firsts in the History of Indian Cinema 52 

5 An Indian Way to Film Thinking . . . ! 83 

6 Music, Masala, and Melodrama: An Introduction to Genres 93 

in Indian Cinema 

7 Trend-Spotting Down the Decades 110 

Section 2: Stars from Another Sky 

8 The First Lady of Indian Cinema 123 

9 The “Fearless” Woman with the Whip! 130 

10 The Thespian of Good Acting 136 

11 A Masterclass in Villainy 143 

12 Bollywood’s Monroe (1933–1969) 149 

13 The Superstar Phenomenon 155 

14 Megastar of a Millennium 161 

15 The King of Romance 169 

16 The Game Changer 176 

17 A Diva for All Seasons 184 

18 Crossover Stars: The Bollywood Presence in Hollywood and Beyond 191 

19 Gossips, Scandals, and Grand Affairs 203 

Section 3: Songs, Dance, and Music Magic 

20 A Story About Song and Dance 223 

21 Lights, Camera, Music: The Journey of the Bollywood Film Song 227 

22 Bollywood’s Greatest Music Albums 241 

23 Dancing Stars and Melody Czars 249 

24 Singing Around the Globe 269 

25 Dancing in the Rain! 275

viii 

Contents 

Section 4: The Lists 

26 The Auteurs 287 

27 Class Acts 302 

28 101 Bollywood Movies and Songs to See! 319 

Bibliography 375 

Index 379


I 

have often been asked to put an exact date to the beginning of my brush 

with the Bollywood film, or cinema per se. Well, it could have been around 

any of the following adventures or even a forgotten one. It could have started 

in the weekend ritual of watching Hindi/Bollywood blockbusters every Friday 

evening and Hollywood films on Saturday evenings at the Audio-Visual Hall 

of the Regional Engineering College in Rourkela during my childhood in the 

1980s. 

It may have been during one of those heated fan debates on winner lists of 

the annual Filmfare and Indian National Film Awards, the eagerness to savour 

the latest “breaking gossips” in Stardust and Cine Blitz, that dedicated tuning 

to Ameen Sayani’s Binaca Geetmala (a weekly broadcast countdown of popular 

Bollywood songs), and the still-retained nostalgia for India’s national television 

broadcaster Doordarshan’s film-themed shows like Chitrahaar, Rangoli, 

Showtheme, and the Sunday afternoon telecasts of award-winning art-house 

films from India’s multiple regional-language cinemas. 

The magic of experiencing a Bollywood film was in watching Dilwale 

Dulhaniya Le Jayenge from the front stall of Calcutta’s Metro Theatre (now 

Kolkata), recurrently bathed under a shower of coins at every song appearance 

of its heartthrob lead pair of Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan; savoring superstar 

Salman Khan’s Dabangg with a houseful of kids at Mumbai’s iconic people’s 

theatre—the G-Complex; surreptitiously jumping the boys hostel boundary 

wall on Friday nights to discover the guilty pleasures of an adult film in 

Dhenkanal; or curating a Classic Bollywood season, the first-ever at Edinburgh’s 

landmark theatre space, the Filmhouse. It was in the bargaining for tickets in 

“Black” for sold-out blockbusters most often, until the late 1990s; queuing for 

hours before a betel-stained ticket window for a viewing of the “anti-hero” cult 

movie Baazigar, or for another serving of Madhuri Dixit’s riotous chartbusting 

dance number, Choli ke peeche from Khal Nayak, and then leaving the theatre 

en masse with half the audience, at intermission. It was a realization made 

firsthand about the timeless standalone attraction of a good song moment 

beyond the time-bound pleasures of its hit parent film. 

Bollywood became a much-loved calling for me through my every working 

day at Bombay’s (now Mumbai) iconic Stardust magazine, first as the features 

editor and then as one of its youngest editors. It evolved into a mature affair, 

while pursuing my MSc in film studies at the University of Edinburgh, to

x 


eventually become a passionate interest subject as my doctorate’s research 

quest—the exploration of ancient aesthetic theories to source new theoretical 

frameworks for a fairer appreciation of melodrama on film. 

Bollywood, to me, is Gulzar’s Ijaazat, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, 

Anurag Basu’s Barfi, Mehboob Khan’s Mother India, Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa; all the 

characters and their familiar lines in Sholay and Bahubali; the vocal intensity 

and the sheer screen presence of that veritable textbook on acting, Dilip Kumar; 

auteur Raj Kapoor’s timeless, humanist comedies; the haunting innocence in 

the eyes of Jugal Hansraj in Masoom; the mayhem in the Mahabharat moment 

of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro; the rebellious climax of Mirch Masala; the introduction 

scene of Hindi cinema’s most-loved villain character, Gabbar Singh; Amitabh 

Bachchan in Silsila, Black, and Nishabd; and Sanjeev Kumar’s every appearance 

on celluloid—always! 

It is in the beholding of every song moment in Naushad and K. Asif’s 

Mughal-e-Azam; the joyful ecstasy, grace, and beauty in the classical dance 

competition ushering in the drama of the costume-epic Amrapali; the 

Vyjayanthimala-Shammi Kapoor-Helen–performed East-West fusion song 

competition Muqabla humse na karo (“Don’t challenge us”) in Prince; Waheeda 

Rehman’s enactment of onscreen freedom in Aaj phir jeene ki (“I want to live 

again”) in Guide; music composer R. D. Burman’s uncommon experiments at 

creating new sounds from unexpected instruments; an aging Naseeruddin 

Shah’s youthful awakening to love through the Dil to baccha hai ji (“The heart is 

but a kid!”) song in Ishqiya; a broken-hearted Shabana Azmi holding back tears 

to heartbreaking impact in the Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho (“What tears your 

smiles hide”) moment in Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth; V. K. Krishnamurthy’s visual 

ode to loneliness under a ray of revealing light in Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam 

(“Oh, what a beautiful tragedy time has wrought”) in Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke 

Phool; A. R. Rehman’s Piya Haji Ali (Fiza) qawwali, or the simply divine Kun 

fayaa kun (Rockstar) rendition; the essence of Mera Naam Joker’s Jeena yahan 

marna yahan (“Living here, dying here”) song; or the choreography of Pehla 

nasha pehla khumar (“First love, first infatuation”) from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. 

Bollywood, to me, is the lively beauty and uplifting presence of Madhubala 

that added color to the black-and-white films; the mere recall of that halo-constructing 

introduction shot, languorously panning upwards to reveal a poignantly 

gorgeous Meena Kumari, as Choti bahu, in Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam; and 

studying before a life-sized poster on my study room’s wall to one of those qaatil 

adaas (heart-stopping gestures) from Umrao Jaan featuring Rekha, a diva whose 

life is Bollywood’s echoes Norma Desmond’s statement from Sunset Boulevard: 

“I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small.” 

The memories and inspirations, the joys and triggers, leading to the 

Bollywood FAQ book are many, but they might not have come together as a 

writing project if not for the proverbial “offer I couldn’t refuse” by my agent,


xi 

Robert Lecker, of the Robert Lecker Agency, and his diligent persuasion since, 

from beyond seven seas. 

Thanks to Marybeth Keating, of Hal Leonard Publishing, and Carol 

Flannery, of Rowman & Littlefield, for their patience and guidance through 

the editing and submission process respectively. And to my star copy editor, 

Lon Davis: Your elaborate, explanatory edits and conversational observations 

were an empathetic education in cross-cultural tropes, thought transitions, 

and translations. Lon, your letter of appreciation at the end of the editing 

process, arguably the book’s first review, is one to cherish forever. 

Thanks are due to my fellow film enthusiasts: Prof. Arnab Bhattacharjee, 

Elena, Amit Vats, Subhranil Bhadra, Sudhanshu Sharma-Ji, Roshini, and Vikas 

Dubey from my days in the Burgh (Edinburgh); friends and journalists Rajiv 

Vijayakar, Sonali Chakraborty, Rajesh Naidu, and Ramkamal Mukherjee in 

Bollywood’s capital city of Mumbai; and Shubhangi Rastogi Dave, a fan of 

everything non-Bollywood, for our many argumentative conversations on perceptions 

about good cinema—cheers and disagreements that have consciously 

and subconsciously lent themselves to enriching the reviews and observations 

in the book. 

Abha Sharma Rodrigues, Nandini Sen (Di), and Gaurav Chaudhary, for 

your infectiously inspiring love for the Masala Film and being my most adorable, 

enjoyable, and stimulating companions for film viewing. 

Shaikh Ayaz, for your unwavering friendship and for never turning me 

down—either at short or long notice—when it came to providing invaluable critiques 

and for proofreading my ideas. Jubin Mishra, for your amazing appetite 

for Bollywood binge watching, your eye for detail, and enthusiastic reviewing 

of the book’s longest chapters (The Lists). And my first film-buddy from school 

years, Susim Mohanty, for also being my first critic, ideator, reader, and onestop 

search engine for everything on classic Hindi films and its music, long 

before Google happened. 

A thank you, also, to all my entertainment, film, and features beat editors 

and colleagues at The Asian Age, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, Society, 

Stardust, and Orissa Post. 

Last, but certainly not least, for who they are and what they make me, I 

would like to thank my wife, Suratarangini Jena Roy, for sharing and sustaining 

my passion for enjoying a diversity of cinema across genres, languages, 

and nations, reaffirming that watching a film together could indeed be such 

a romantic activity; and my parents, Prof. Gopendra Kishore Roy and Prof. 

(Mrs.) Kamal Laxmi Roy, for their constant encouragement and for making 

good cinema accessible throughout my childhood and teen years, a time when 

going to the cinemas was yet to be a permissible hobby for young people from 

middle-class families in India’s suburban towns.

Introduction 

The Greatest Film Story 

Never Told 

Bollywood, a popular nomenclature for India’s “national” film industry 

in the Hindi language, is—along with the Taj Mahal, Yoga, Buddha, and 

Mahatma Gandhi—one of the best-known introductions and universally recognized 

associations with India across the world today. Despite its predominant 

narrative styles not conforming to the First World European and/or American 

cinema narrative structure, Indian cinema is acknowledged as highly influential. 

Its twenty-first century avatar is increasingly acknowledged as the world’s 

second-most important and influential film industry, after Hollywood. 

Bollywood FAQ provides a thrilling, entertaining, and informative joy 

ride into the vibrant, colorful, and multi-emotional universe of the world’s 

most prolific—and most watched—film industry, boasting a cumulative output 

of more than fifty thousand films since its modest, early twentieth century 

beginnings. 

Outside of India, Bollywood films are simultaneously screened in theaters 

in over a hundred nations, from the United States to Japan, New Zealand, and 

the Netherlands, with an increasing distribution presence in the dubbed film 

circuits of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. A rise in its viewership among 

local audiences in hitherto-unknown destinations—like Peru or Siberia—has 

also been noted. It is no wonder that the popularity barometer of one of its 

biggest twenty-first century superstars, global culture icon Shah Rukh Khan, 

declares: “Three billion-plus people in the world, or roughly three times the 

population of India, and literally one in every second person in the world, 

recognizes Shah Rukh Khan!” 

India has been the largest movie-making nation in the world for over 

three decades. Today, every major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros., Fox Star, 

Disney, Sony Pictures, and Viacom 18) since Sony Pictures’ 2007 debut with 

Saawariya (The Lover), is either making or distributing films in the Hindi 

language, with more than an office presence in Bombay (now Mumbai), the 

epicenter of India’s national language cinema in Hindi. Indian film production 

companies, such as Reliance Big Pictures, are co-producing Hollywood

xiv 

Introduction 

films. The Indian International Film Awards, which had its start at London’s 

Millennium Dome in 2000, has emerged as the biggest export event of any 

national film industry, with an annual Olympics-style bidding for its hosting 

by cities across the globe. Numbers had always been Indian cinema’s biggest 

edge. The fact that it was acknowledged as the most viewed cinema worldwide 

is a post-2000 achievement, peaking at 2.6 billion cinema admissions in 2012, 

in contrast to Hollywood’s 1.36 billion (UNESCO-released data based on ticket 

sales). Annual ticket sales of Indian cinema releases have now crossed the 3 

billion mark! 

Indian cinema continues to amuse and confuse audiences and critics 

outside of its own country, with its “epico-mythico-tragico-comico-supersexy-high-masala-art 

form in which the unifying principle is a techni-colourstoryline,” 

as famously stated by Booker of Bookers Prize–winning novelist 

Salman Rushdie. 

This book will explain and explore the above myths and magic, introduce 

India’s maharjah-like stars and their cult-commanding stardom, and, in doing 

so, will offer some inspiring stories of human achievement. For movie buffs, 

it will provide a handy list of iconic films and performances readily available 

in DVD/online rentals, along with a ready reckoner on some of the most spectacular 

song-and-dance moments on celluloid that can be enjoyed anytime on 

popular online media, particularly YouTube. It will enable both the fans and 

the uninitiated to explore and enjoy the pleasures and popularity of a national 

cinema that has become a genre in itself. 

Bollywood FAQ can be both an informative starting reference and the ultimate 

guide to everything this spectacular, robust, humongous, colorful, and 

dramatic multi-generic cinematic entity has to offer. The information has been 

enriched with insider insights culled from my more than two decades as a film 

writer and critic in the city of Bollywood, Mumbai. 

The book is divided into four sections. The first provides a historical overview 

and introduction to Bollywood in all its milestone moments, genres, 

trends, and signature attributes. Section two is dedicated to introducing the 

stars and legends whose colorful and inspiring life journeys make for some 

compelling reading. The singular attraction and a universal expectation from 

a Bollywood movie experience is the promise of some hummable and magical 

moments of song and dance. This, the third section, indulgently navigates 

through the journey of the Hindi film song, with ample trivia titbits to soothe 

and tickle. And, as no cinema book is complete without recommendations 

of what (and why) to watch, the fourth section is a veritable list of everything 

Bollywood. For diehard fans, it offers concise information on the best 

Bollywood films, soundtracks, directorial achievements, and performances. 

Each section will thus probe and prescribe aspects of Bollywood that will give 

readers a well-rounded overview, while answering the most obvious to the

Introduction 

xv 

seemingly silly (yet necessary) queries that are fundamental to any informed 

appreciation of the stars and the styles in the crowded universe of Indian 

cinema’s galaxy of more than fifty thousand films. 

“Namaste and Welcome” to a joyful read about the world’s greatest film 

story never told!

Section 1 

History and Highlights

1 

A Century of Bollywood 

In 1910, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (1870–1944) happened by chance to 

attend a screening of an American film, The Life of Christ in Bombay (now 

Mumbai) in the Christmas of 1910. Instantly, an idea took shape that led to the 

birth of the Indian film industry. Phalke, who went on to become the founding 

father of Indian cinema, had noted, “While The Life of Christ was rolling fast 

before my physical eyes, I was mentally visualizing the Gods, Shri Krishna, 

Shri Ramachandra, their Gokul and Ayodhya. . . . Could we, the sons of India, 

ever be able to see Indian images on the screen?” Phalke’s ambition has been 

realized as a prolific, living, 

breathing, and constantly expanding 

industry, with its fair share of 

highs and quirks, magic and 

mayhem, loves and losses. Here’s 

looking at the Bollywood’s century, 

through one hundred landmark 

dates, events, and exciting 

moments of movie-making magic, 

along with entertaining anecdotes 

about some of its most influential 

magicians. 

1. 1913—The release of 

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s 

Raja Harishchandra (King 

Harishchandra), India’s first 

indigenously made feature 

film with an all-Indian cast 

and crew. The four-reel long 

film would be remade by 

Phalke in 1917. He also produced 

a behind-the-scenes 

An advertisement in the Bombay Chronicle calling audiences 

to the first screening of Raja Harishchandra in 

1913. Courtesy of the National Film Archives of India (NFAI).

4 

Bollywood FAQ 

short, featuring vignettes from Raja Harishchandra, titled How Films are 

Made. 

2. 1914—Phalke releases his third film, Satyavan Savitri, which is based on 

a Hindu legend. A commercial success, it leads to prolific filmmaking 

in India. His films become popular enough for distributors to demand 

twenty prints of each title, as opposed to just one. Phalke’s first three 

films—Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra), Mohini Bhasmasur (The 

Beauty and Demon Bhasmasur), and Satyavan Savitri—are exhibited in 

London. Critics of the time offer praise for the self-taught filmmaker’s 

technical achievements. 

3. 1918—Film censorship comes to India by means of the Indian 

Cinematograph Act. In 1920, censor boards are set up in Bombay, Calcutta, 

Madras, and Rangoon, important metros in then-British India. S. N. 

Patankar directs the first Indian film series, the four-part Ram Vanwas (The 

Exile of Rama). 

4. 1925—The Light of Asia, an Indo-German co-production of Himanshu Rai 

directed by Franz Osten, based on landmark events in the life of Buddha, 

starts a series of international ventures of reputed artistic merit. Along 

with Phalke, Osten emerges as one of the most important filmmakers of 

India’s silent era. 

Himanshu Rai (seated second from right) along with the cast and crew of The Light of Asia, including 

director Franz Osten. 

Photo courtesy of NFAI


5 

5. 1925—Chubby, petite, and browneyed 

Sulochana (a Jewish girl 

whose real name was Ruby Myers) 

makes her debut with Veer Bala 

(The Brave Girl) to become the 

“First Sex Symbol of Indian 

Cinema.” She becomes the highest-paid 

actor of India’s silent era, 

famously earning a salary more 

than the governor of the Bombay 

state. Her hit films include Typist 

Girl (1926), Balidaan (Sacrifice, 

1927), Wildcat of Bombay (1927), 

Madhuri (1928), Anarkali (1928), 

and Indira B. A. (1929). As the 

titles suggest, the stories revolve 

primarily around the female protagonist. 

She displayed her versatility 

in Wildcat of Bombay (1927) 

by playing eight characters, 

including a gardener, a policeman, 

a Hyderabadi gentleman, a 

street urchin, a banana seller, and 

a European blonde. 

Actress Ruby Myers, popularly known by the 

screen name of Sulochana. Courtesy of NFAI 

6. 1927—The Indian Cinematograph Committee is formed to study the 

cinema in India, and the feasibility of making and furthering Empire 

Films (those made within the territories of the British Empire) to counter 

American dominance. The real purpose of the committee, however, is 

to censor politically objectionable subject matter critical of the British 

government, and to preserve English morals and codes. 

7. 1930—The British government initiates the ban of newsreels featuring 

speeches, activities, and demonstrations of emerging Indian leader 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. 

8. 1931—The talkie era begins with a bang, with Alam Ara (Ornament of the 

World). The film’s first song, “De khuda ke naam par pyare . . .” (“Give 

alms in the name of the lord”), becomes an instant hit; it is still sung as a 

“professional anthem” by beggars seeking alms at holy places across the 

nation. Most silent film companies collapse, and many Anglo-Indian/ 

English-speaking artists are forced into sudden, premature retirement 

due to their inability to speak proficiently in Hindustani. Nearly thirteen 

hundred silent feature films were made between 1913 and 1934, peaking 

at two hundred in 1931. Their number drops to only seven films in 1934.

6 

Bollywood FAQ 

9. 1932—J. J. Madan’s spectacular musical, Indrasabha (The Court of the King 

of Heavens, Indra), featuring more than seventy songs, has a mammoth 

running time of 211 minutes. Madan Theatres emerges as a major production 

studio with the success of Indrasabha, making eight of the thirty talking 

pictures released throughout the year. Owning 126 cinema theaters by 

the 1930s, the Madans enjoy a monopoly over the film distribution chain 

across the Indian subcontinent, up to Burma. 

10. 1933—Four bhajans (devotional songs), sung by Kundan Lal Saigal for the 

film Puran Bhagat (Devotee Puran), create a sensation throughout India, 

as the film industry get its first singing star. He goes on to become its 

most influential actor until his untimely death at the age of forty-two 

in 1947, making his work-city, Calcutta, the nation’s temporary numberone 

filmmaking center before Bombay. Saigal’s first film, Mohabbat Ke 

Aanshu (Tears of Love), followed by two others, are released in 1932; they 

fail at the box office. Saigal drops his screen name of Saigal Kashmiri 

and reverts to his own. Most of his memorable blockbusters—Chandidas 

(1934), Devdas (1935), President (1937), Street Singer (1938), Jiban Maran 

(Life and Death, 1939), Zindagi (Life, the highest grossing Indian film of 

1940), and Shahjehan (1946)—have stood the test of time due to his hummable 

vocals. A huge singing influence on the playback industry and its 

two greatest icons, Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar, Saigal became 

the subject of the first biopic on an Indian film star when, in 1955, New 

Theatres’ B. N. Sircar releases Amar Saigal (Immortal Saigal). This musical 

tribute features nineteen of his hit songs. 

11. 1933—Devika Rani enacts a controversial, four-minute-long kissing scene 

with her co-star (and real-life husband), Himanshu Rai, in the bilingual 

film Karma. Although a hit abroad, it fails to excite the public, despite its 

kissing sequence, the longest in any Indian film to date. 

12. 1935—Playback singing is introduced in director Nitin Bose’s Dhoop 

Chaon (Light and Shade), under the baton of music director R. C. Boral, 

bringing “folksy, full-throated” singing by women singers to the fore. The 

film’s hit song, “Main khush hona chahun” (“I want to be happy”), features 

an unprecedented all-female chorus, led by Parul Ghosh, Suprova Sarkar, 

and Harimati. 

13. 1935—The Bengali and Hindi versions of P. C. Barua’s Devdas is successfully 

released, establishing a template for the Hindi romantic hero as a 

tragic character pining in unrequited love, who drinks himself to death. 

Seventeen-year-old Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Devdas (written 

in 1917) becomes the most adapted literary source in Indian cinema, with 

more than twenty adaptations—official and otherwise—featuring leading 

actors of multiple generations. The prominent Bollywood adaptations 

include various versions of Devdas, across the decades, directed by P. C.


7 

Devika Rani and Himanshu Rai in Karma. 

Photo courtesy of NFAI 

Barua (1935), Bimal Roy (1955), Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2002), and Anurag 

Kashyap (2009), featuring such stars as K. L. Saigal, Dilip Kumar, Shah 

Rukh Khan, and Abhay Deol playing the character of Devdas, respectively. 

Each of these films remain landmark achievements. 

14. 1935—The Fearless Nadia franchise of stunt-adventure films is launched 

with an unusual action hero in Hunterwali (The Lady with a Whip), a 

feminist heroine who thrashes man after man in film after film, each 

with more or less the same storyline. A noted sex symbol, her onscreen 

exercising while wearing gym shorts is an erotic highlight for her many 

followers. 

15. 1936—Bollywood’s first iconic love duet is crooned by two star-crossed 

lovers, an upper-class Brahmin boy (the dapper Ashok Kumar) and a 

village girl belonging to the “untouchable” working class (the exquisite 

beauty Devika Rani). The actors may appear too posh to portray their 

underprivileged characters, but their sincere interpretation of “Main ban 

ki chidiya” (“I am a jungle bird”) in the Bombay blockbuster Achhut Kanya 

(The Untouchable Girl, 1936) remains a timeless romantic melody. The song 

was composed by Saraswati Devi (a.k.a. Khorshed Minocher-Homji), one 

of the few female songwriters to make a mark in film. 

16. 1938—The Indian film industry celebrates its Silver Jubilee with the convening 

of a Motion Picture Congress, with conferences and a screening

8 

Bollywood FAQ 

of Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (1913) as the starting reference. 

Ironically, Phalke attended the convention as an ignored and unrecognized 

commoner, while leading film celebrities paid glowing tributes to 

his contribution. He was eventually recognized and brought onstage by 

emerging auteur V. Shantaram. 

17. 1940—In one of the first work-stress-related tragedies to strike the film 

industry, Himanshu Rai, pioneer filmmaker and founder of Bombay 

Talkies, dies at the age of forty-eight, following an on-set nervous 

breakdown. 

18. 1941—Mehtaab, in a daring first for a leading Indian actress, does a nude 

bathing sequence in the costume drama Chitralekha. But Sohrab Modi, 

the film’s director and Mehtaab’s fiancé, insists that the scene was “gracefully 

and aesthetically done.” 

19. 1942—There is a shortage of raw film stock, which has been diverted 

towards the making of war propaganda films. Producers are therefore 

limited to a maximum of eleven thousand feet of raw stock for feature 

films, and four hundred feet for trailers. Three of Bollywood’s most influential 

producer-directors of the 1940s—V. Shantaram, Mehboob Khan, 

and A. R. Kardar—break from their parent studios to set up independent 

film-production units. 

20. 1943—Freedom fighter and India’s national leader, Mahatma Gandhi, 

known for his conservative views on the “harmful” social influence of 

films, makes an exception to watch Vijay Bhatt’s Ram Rajya (King Rama’s 

Kingdom). It was the only film the “Father of the Nation of India” would 

ever see and sanction. 

21. 1944—The year brings to the fore two icons who would make a stylealtering 

impact on Bollywood. Music director Naushad, known for his 

fine continuation of classical Indian music influences in the shaping of 

orchestrated popular film music, has his first musical success with the 

top-grossing Rattan (1944). (The film is remembered today only because 

of its music.) Naushad follows Rattan with thirty-five silver jubilee hit 

films, twelve golden jubilees, and three diamond jubilee mega-successes. 

Dilip Kumar makes an inconsequential box-office debut in a film ironically 

titled High Tide (Jwar Bhata). He goes on to star in sixty blockbuster 

films, with an equal number of acting achievements, in a career spanning 

six decades. 

22. 1946—Playback singer Lata Mangeshkar, the “Nightingale of Indian Film 

Music,” and Indian cinema’s most venerable singing/film-singer screen 

icon, records her first Bollywood song, “Paon lagu . . .” (“Offering prayers 

with folded hands”), in the film Aap Ki Sewa Mein (In Your Service). 

Mangeshkar goes on to become a much sought-after playback singer artist


9 

and an influential singing voice for four generations of leading ladies/ 

heroines. 

23. 1947—India wins independence, but the Indian subcontinent is partitioned 

into two nations, India and Pakistan. Partition reshuffles the population, 

especially in the border states of Punjab and Bengal, and their 

leading film industry centers. Bombay emerges as the biggest, while 

Calcutta is reduced to a regional-language cinema center, making Bengali 

films. The Lahore film industry is shattered, giving way to Karachi as the 

filmmaking capital of Pakistan. Thousands of South Asians also migrate 

to Britain and East Africa, leading to the creation of specialist cinemas in 

those countries showing Bollywood films. 

24. 1948—Bollywood’s most influential post-Independence auteur, Raj 

Kapoor, establishes his RK Films banner at the age of twenty-four, with 

the release of Aag (Fire). In 1950, he builds the iconic RK Studio, which 

becomes the most influential hub in the film industry, while establishing 

Kapoor and his extended family of actors as Bollywood’s “First Family of 

Film.” The RK Studio logo is inspired from a pose featuring Raj Kapoor 

Shobhana Samarth as Queen Sita coloring an image of King Rama, in a still from Vijay Bhatt’s Ram 

Rajya. 


10 

Bollywood FAQ 

and Nargis, his leading lady of sixteen films, from their second film, 

Barsaat (Rains, 1949). 

25. 1949—The Films Division of India is established in Bombay. A countrywide 

closure of movie theaters takes place against the governments taxation 

policy. 

26. 1950—French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer, and author Jean 

Renoir comes to India to film The River (1951), a coming-of-age love story. 

Then ad-industry professional Satyajit Ray meets and observes Renoir 

at work. The interaction leads to the next burst of creativity in Indian 

filmmaking. 

27. 1951—The S. K. Patil Film Enquiry Committee reports on all aspects of 

cinema, noting the emerging shift from the studio system to individual 

ownership. The Central Board of Film Censors is established, with the 

New Theatres’ founder, B. N. Sircar, representing the film industry. A year 

later, the Cinematograph Act is established, ruling that onscreen kissing 

be deemed indecent. Filmmakers start showing intimacy through puerile 

symbolism, including lovers running behind trees with two flowers 

touching. The Supreme Court of India rules: 

Film censorship becomes necessary because a film motivates 

thought and action and assures a high degree of attention and 

retention as compared to the printed word. The combination of 

act and speech, sight and sound in semi-darkness of the theater 

with elimination of all distracting ideas will have a strong impact 

on the minds of the viewers and can affect emotions. Therefore, it 

has as much potential for evil as it has for good and has an equal 

potential to instill or cultivate violent or bad behaviour. It cannot 

be equated with other modes of communication. 

Thirteen thousand Indian women in Delhi in 1954 send a petition to 

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, urging him to address the cinema’s wild 

potential to encourage “precocious sex habits.” 

28. 1951—Raj Kapoor’s Awara (The Vagabond) is released to critical and commercial 

acclaim. The first Bollywood film to be a global success, it was the 

second-highest-grossing film of 1951. It goes on to be a hit in the erstwhile 

Soviet Union, East Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. The 

film’s leads, Raj Kapoor and Nargis, became instant icons in Russia, and 

the title song, “Awara hoon. . . “ (“I am a vagabond”), is hugely popular 

across the Indian subcontinent, in the USSR, Turkey, Romania, and was 

a favorite of Chairman Mao Zedong of China. The film also established 

what was and what was not permissible regarding Bollywood’s depiction 

of lust. The scene in which the film’s hero, played by Raj Kapoor, expresses 

his desire for the swimsuit-clad heroine, played by Nargis, in one of its


11 

pre-song moments, resulted in some unprecedented rough onscreen 

foreplay. 

29. 1952—Pakistan bans the importation of Indian films to protect its fledgling 

motion picture industry. 

30. 1952—Actor Jagdish Raj dons the police uniform for the first time, in CID. 

He goes on to wear this costume in a record-breaking 144 films. 

31. 1954—Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zameen (Two Acres of Land) wins the 

International Prize at the Seventh Cannes Film Festival, and the Social 

Progress Award at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Back home, 

it wins the Best Director award for Bimal Roy at the first Filmfare Awards 

(the Bollywood “Oscars”), starting Roy’s consecutive winning streak from 

1953–1955. Inspired by Italian neo-realist cinema, the critical and commercial 

success Do Bigha Zameen paves the way for other Indian filmmakers 

to attempt similar films in the 1950s. 

32. 1955—New Theatres releases its last feature film. Prabhat Film Company 

had ceased production in 1953, and Bombay Talkies in 1954. With the 

shutting down of New Theatres, the curtain falls on Indian cinema’s first 

Big Three studios. 

33. 1955—Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song on the Little Road), the first of 

a trilogy of films to follow the life of a poor village kid, Apu, from childhood 

to parenthood, is released. Its world premiere at the Museum of 

Raj Kapoor and Nargis in Awara. 


12 

Bollywood FAQ 

Modern Art in New York City, on May 3, 1955, is celebrated by Western 

media for its “authentic representation of realities.” 

34. 1957—India’s first Academy Award entry, Mother India, picks up a Best 

Foreign Language Film nomination in 1958. Indian cinema’s global felicitation 

continues with Raj Kapoor’s Jagte Raho (Keep Awake) winning the 

Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito 

(The Unvanquished) winning the Golden Lion (first prize) at the Venice 

Film Festival, and Tapan Sinha’s Kabuliwala picking up the Silver Bear 

Extraordinary Prize of the jury at the Seventh Berlin Film Festival. 

35. 1958—Bimal Roy’s Madhumati sweeps the Filmfare Awards, picking up 

nine of the fifteen honors, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best 

Music. The record is held for thirty-seven years until Dilwale Dulhaniya 

Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride, 1995) scores the first 

Perfect Ten. Madhumati marked its director Bimal Roy’s second hattrick 

at winning the Best Director trophy for the years 1958–1960. 

36. 1959—A new record for foreign films is created in the United States when 

Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955) runs for over 

seven months at the New York’s 5th Avenue Playhouse. 

37. 1960—Featuring a cast of thousands, Bollywood’s grand historical epic, 

K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal), shot over a period of twelve 

years, is the costliest Indian film made up to that time, with a budget 

exceeding three million dollars. It is released on August 5, 1960, an event 

so highly anticipated that patrons line up for days in advance to purchase 

a ticket. It breaks the box-office record, remaining the highest-grossing 

Bollywood film for fifteen years. In 2004, it became the first black-andwhite 

Hindi film to be digitally colorized. 

38. 1961—The Dilip Kumar–starring dacoit film, Gunga Jumna (Gunga and 

Jumna), becomes the first successful Bollywood film to be made in a 

regional dialect, Bhojpuri, instead of the preferred Hindustani language. 

39. 1962—Meena Kumari becomes the first actor in the history of award ceremonies 

to garner all the nominations in a single category. She picks up 

all the nominations in the Best Actress category at the Tenth Filmfare 

Awards, and wins the honor for the critically acclaimed tragedy Sahib Bibi 

Aur Ghulam (The Master, Wife and Servant), portraying an alcoholic pining 

for her husband’s love in a crumbling aristocratic household. 

40. 1963—An inebriated Leela Naidu, in the role of the beautiful housewife of 

a handsome naval officer (Sunil Dutt), succumbs to the seductions of a 

socialite playboy (Rehman). Adultery becomes big-screen fodder with Yeh 

Raaste Hain Pyar Ke (These Paths of Love). It was inspired by the 

Commander K. M. Nanavati vs. the State of Maharashtra case of 1959, in 

which Nanavati, a naval officer, was tried for the murder of his wife’s 

lover, Prem Ahuja. The case attracted unprecedented media coverage for


13 

Portraits of lead stars Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala on a poster of 

Madhumati. 


the jury’s acquittal of Nanavati, leading to the abolition of the jury system 

in India. Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke was one of the first Indian movies to be 

based on a contemporary news story. 

41. 1964—Actor and auteur Guru Dutt commits suicide in Bombay at the age 

of thirty-nine. 

42. 1965—Guide becomes the first film to sweep the top four Filmfare 

awards in the categories of Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and 

Best Actress. A bilingual production—a Hindi version directed by Dev 

Anand’s younger brother, Vijay Anand, and an English-language version 

by American writer-novelist Pearl S. Buck, directed by Tad Danielewski, 

it introduces India’s first matinee idol, Dev Anand, to Western audiences. 

While the Hindi Guide went on the become a game-changer in Indian

14 

Bollywood FAQ 

cinema for its “grey” leading lady, who opts for choice over confirmation, 

the English version failed to make much of an impact. Incidentally, the 

English Guide shows Dev Anand zipping up his fly after making love to 

the heroine, played by Waheeda Rehman. Predictably, the scene was left 

out in the Indian version which caters to more conservative audiences. 

43. 1965—Shaheed (The Martyr), based on the inspiring life of Bhagat Singh 

(1907–1931), a young revolutionary of the Indian freedom struggle, serves 

as an introduction of Manoj Kumar as Indian cinema’s first “patriotic 

hero.” His reputation as the ideal actor to play Mr. India onscreen was 

established after the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, when Prime Minister 

Lal Bahadur Shastri requested Kumar to create a film based on his slogan 

“Jai jawan jai kissan” (“Hail the soldier, hail the farmer”). The result was 

Kumar’s directorial debut Upkaar (Benefit, 1967), which firmly established 

him as Mr. Bharat (Mr. India). The actor deliberately opted for the screen 

name of Bharat (or India) in all the subsequent patriotism-themed films 

for which he served as producer, director, and star. 

44. 1967—Hindustan Photo Film makes India self-sufficient concerning 

black-and-white sound film. All color film is still imported and locally 

perforated. 

45. 1968—Writer-journalist, K. A. Abbas’s independent short film, Char 

Shahar Ek Kahani (Four Cities, One Story), sparks a major controversy by 

implying that censorship violates a creative person’s right to free speech 

as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. 

46. 1969— Art-house auteur Mrinal Sen and Kashmiri screenwriter-filmmaker 

Arun Kaul launch a manifesto, advocating for a “New Indian 

Cinema Movement.” It argues the case for a state-sponsored alternative to 

popular cinema. This New Indian Cinema, financed by the Film Finance 

Corporation, establishes itself by rejecting the storytelling style and 

substance of popular Bollywood cinema. The outcome is a new wave of 

realism-celebrating films opting for performative restraint over melodrama, 

pioneered by Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome (Mr. Bhuvan Shome) and 

Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (Other’s Bread). Films made within this format come 

to establish the parallel—or the Indian art-house cinema—as a distinct 

style and sensibility alternative to popular Bollywood. 

47. 1969—The Rajesh Khanna phenomenon hits the Indian screen, as female 

fans go crazy across the country following the spectacular success of 

Aradhana (Devotion). Khanna plays both the father and son in this tale 

about the trials of an unwed mother. The film’s highlight is the sexually 

charged love song featuring a hairy, bare-chested Khanna and a rainsoaked 

Sharmila Tagore, as Kishore Kumar sings the intoxicating “Roop 

tera mastana . . .” (“Your exciting beauty . . . ”). Leaving little to the imagination, 

this becomes the steamiest scene featuring two leading actors ever


15 

to hit the Hindi film industry. Khanna follows the success of Aradhana 

with fifteen subsequent blockbusters in the romance and social drama 

genres, becoming Bollywood’s first superstar. 

48. 1970—The publication of the English-language magazine Stardust, by 

Nari Hira, featuring bold interviews and scandalous revelations about 

stars’ lives and activities, introduces tabloid journalism in India, elevating 

magazines to a previously unheard-of popularity. Its cover story on 

the reigning star of the day—“Was Rajesh Khanna Secretly Married?”— 

shocked readers. While other magazines were priced at Rs. 1, Stardust 

launched itself with a pricing of Rs. 2. An estimated twenty-five thousand 

copies were sold in the issue’s first three days of publication, necessitating 

multiple reprints. 

49. 1971—India makes 433 feature films, becoming the world’s biggest film 

producer. 

50. 1972—Black-and-white films are gradually relegated to the past as more 

than 90 percent of films are made in color. In a radical role-reversal, 

dancer-actress Helen tries to win her man through cave-woman tactics in 

Mere Jeevan Saathi (My Life Companion). In one torrid scene, she ties up 

the film’s hero, Rajesh Khanna, and threatens to rape him. 

51. 1973—Bobby, featuring an attractive pair of teenage leads, Rishi Kapoor 

and Dimple Kapadia, becomes India’s biggest romantic hit thus far, due to 

its realistic ode to pubescent love 

at a time when other stars—many 

now over the age of thirty—were 

trying desperately to carry on 

as romantic icons. Zanjeer (The 

Chain) brought to the national 

limelight Amitabh Bachchan, a 

brooding young star with thirteen 

box-office flops to his credit. 

Playing an honest police inspector, 

Bachchan’s bottled-up anger 

against a corrupt system explodes 

onscreen, giving birth to India’s 

answer to the “angry young man” 

genre. These action films make a 

bold statement, with limited, contextual 

usage of Bollywood’s traditional 

song-and-dance element. 

52. 1974—Shyam Benegal, Indian cinema’s 

second-most influential arthouse 

auteur since Satyajit Ray, 

The October 1971 cover of the inaugural issue of 

Stardust priced for Rs. 2. 

 

Photo courtesy of Stardust magazine.

16 

Bollywood FAQ 

achieves a memorable debut with Ankur (The Seedling), a seething social 

critique on class- and gender-based exploitation in a conservative, rural 

milieu. Consistently ranked among the “most influential Bollywood classics,” 

Ankur, along with Ardh Satya (1983’s Half-Truth, which was made by 

Benegal’s protégé Govind Nihalani) remain the only two song-less films 

to achieve blockbuster status. Made at a budget of only half-a-million 

rupees, Ankur went on to gross more than ten million. Benegal’s debut 

paved the way for realistic cinema’s commercial viability while giving 

Indian cinema one of its greatest acting talents, Shabana Azmi, an actress 

often compared favorably with Meryl Streep. 

53. 1974—Under the guise of sex education, Gupt Gyan (Secret Knowledge), 

passed by the censor board after a long tussle, unflincingly covers several 

hitherto-taboo topics onscreen, with animated visuals of the male and 

female anatomy. The film becomes a major box-office hit, spawning similarly 

explicit, “educative” films as Stree Purush (Man-Woman), Adi Manav 

(Primal Man), Kaam Shastra (The Sex Manual). 

54. 1975—Ramesh Sippy’s multi-star, dacoit-revenge drama Sholay (Embers) 

is initially met with lukewarm audience response, but picks up within 

a week to break all pre-existing box-office records; it will be described 

in retrospect as “the most-loved, most-watched, and most-referenced” 

Bollywood movie of all time. It becomes the first Indian film to celebrate 

a silver jubilee in more than a hundred cinemas, and runs for over five 

years at Mumbai’s Minerva Theatre. Interestingly, Sholay’s dream run is 

closely contested by a small film, with no stars, based on a local lore, Jai 

Santoshi Maa (Hail Goddess Santoshi). The success of the film generates 

a cult following for the little-known goddess Santoshi, with pan-Indian 

devotees replicating in daily life the rituals shown in the film. 

55. 1976—Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares a state of national emergency 

in 1975, leading to strict censorship of various media, including 

films. Original copies of Member of Indian Parliament and politicianturned-filmmaker 

Amrit Nahata’s political satire, Kissa Kursi Ka (The Tale 

of the Throne) are destroyed by agents of the ruling Congress Party for 

being critical of the politics of Prime Minister Gandhi and her son Sanjay 

Gandhi. Nahata reshoots the film after the emergency is lifted and the 

Congress Party is voted out of power in 1977. 

56. 1978—Raj Kapoor’s Satyam Shivam Sundaram (Love Sublime), starring his 

brother, the dapper Shakespearean actor Shashi Kapoor, features Hindi 

cinema’s first controversial kiss, the recipient being Miss Asia Zeenat 

Aman. New boundaries of onscreen licentiousness are crossed with 

Zeenat wearing a band-sized choli (blouse) throughout, and bathing a 

Shiva Lingam (a phallus-like representation of Lord Shiva) in a very suggestive 

manner.


17 

57. 1978—Bollywood superstars share celluloid space with Hollywood star 

power in Krishna Shah’s thriller-caper Shalimar (The Precious Stone). 

Leading Bollywood stars of the 1970s—Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, 

Shammi Kapoor, and Prem Nath—acted alongside Rex Harrison, John 

Saxon, and Sylvia Miles in their first and only Bollywood outing. The 

English version of the film, titled Raiders of the Sacred Stone, was unsuccessfully 

released in theaters, but gained cult status when it came out in 

a home video format. 

58. 1980—Auteur of reformist social dramas, B. R. Chopra’s Insaaf Ka Tarazu 

(The Scales of Justice), plumbs new depths of depravity with two long and 

graphic rape sequences, the latter featuring a fifteen-year-old Padmini 

Kolhapure. Irrespective of the declared intentions of the director to 

the contrary, the critical consensus is that the outcome is unabashedly 

titillating. 

59. 1982—The nation’s collective heart skips a beat and fans line up for continuous 

prayers at churches, temples, mosques, and gurudwaras when 

India’s biggest superstar of the day, Amitabh Bachchan, has a near-fatal 

accident on the set of Manmohan Desai’s Coolie (1983). Prime Minister 

Indira Gandhi flies down from Delhi to Bombay to visit him. Puneet Issar, 

the young actor who had been playing opposite him in a fight sequence— 

and had inadvertently delivered the killer punch—becomes an instant 

national pariah with the film industry treating the struggler with a barge 

pole, in an illogical reaction to the mass hysteria. Issar’s acting career is 

later revived on television towards the end of the decade as the lead villain 

Duryodhana in a popular TV series based on the epic Mahabharata. 

60. 1983—Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi becomes the most popular foreignlanguage 

film at the Indian box-office, proving as popular as the domestic 

films. 

61. 1983—The last of the golden era’s movie moguls Kamal Amrohi’s costume 

drama, Razia Sultan, is released. The film is about a Muslim empress, 

Delhi’s first lady ruler. A ruler with bisexual leanings, she sings a suggestive 

lullaby, ending with actress Hema Malini (as Razia) and her onscreen 

confidant/bodyguard Parveen Babi in an embrace. It marked the first 

time sapphic love had been depicted in a Bollywood film. In the middle 

of the lullaby, the duo disappears behind a fan for a mysterious interlude 

with the hint of a kiss. “LESBIANISM,” screams the headlines, but director 

Amrohi insists that this is not so. The song is eventually cut for the home 

video release. 

62. 1983—Southern superstar Rajnikanth makes his Bollywood debut in a 

social-drama-cum-crime-thriller Andha Kanoon (The Law is Blind), opposite 

the biggest stars of the day, Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini. He, 

however, has to wait for nearly decades to extend the frenzy surrounding

18 

Bollywood FAQ 

his movies in his home state, Tamil Nadu, to a pan-Indian craze with 

Enthiran, dubbed in Hindi as Robot (2010). During that interval, he 

emerges as a popular star in Japan with the release of his 1995 film Muthu, 

dubbed as Dancing Maharajah (1997), attracting a cult following in the 

country’s underground cine-circuit. 

63. 1985—Bollywood’s leading men finally attempt to show some skin, 

with the heroes appearing bare-chested in such films as Tarzan, Ram 

Teri Ganga Maili (Oh Rama, Your Ganges Has Become Dirty), Saagar (The 

Sea), and Arjun. The trend in male semi-nudity doesn’t really catch on 

until the handsome Hrithik Roshan reached his peak, two decades later. 

Meanwhile, at 912 feature-length film releases, India achieves a world 

record for maximum films by any country in a single year. 

64. 1986—A shining star of art-house cinema and the Indian new wave, Smita 

Patil, dies at thirty-one as a result of complications following child birth. 

Winner of two Best Actress National Awards, she made more than eighty 

films in a comparatively brief, decade-long career. Patil becomes the 

youngest Indian actress to be the focus of film festival retrospectives 

across the world. 

65. 1987—A record number of a million-plus people, the highest for any film 

celebrity, attend the funeral of film star-turned-politician and chief minister 

of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Maruthur Gopala Ramachandran 

(a.k.a. MGR, 1917–1987). More than twenty citizens are killed during a 

riot in response to the public mourning that grips the Tamil Nadu state 

after his demise, while another twenty-plus fans commit suicide, unable 

to bear their loss. Millions across the state tonsure their heads in a Hindu 

ritual of mourning. The reaction to MGR’s passing triggers a trend, at 

least by certain fans in south India, of idolization and deification of stars 

as gods. 

66. 1988—Zakhmee Aurat (The Wounded Woman) triggers national debate, 

with its heroine, Dimple Kapadia, emerging as a feminist icon (by default) 

for the film’s novel, but violent, way of dealing with rapists—castration. 

67. 1989—Mira Nair’s gritty, heart-wrenching account of life in Mumbai’s 

slums, Salaam Bombay!, becomes the second Indian film to make it to the 

Oscars’ Best Foreign Language category. 

68. 1989—Sooraj Barjatya’s class-crossed rebel love story, Maine Pyar Kiya 

(I Fell in Love) soars to the top of the box-office to become the decade’s 

biggest hit, marking the ascendancy of its hero, Salman Khan, as a Gen 

Next Bollywood superstar. The film keeps conveniently returning to the 

theaters every few months, re-cut and re-edited, and then re-released. 

69. 1991—Bollywood defends the use of gay characters, albeit keeping them 

on the the fringes. In Sadak (The Road), the villain is a freak, while in Mast 

Qalandar (Happy Go Lucky!) and Veeru Dada (Master Veeru), popular


19 

actors Anupam Kher and Shakti Kapoor play the first unabashedly open 

homosexuals in a Bollywood film. 

70. 1992—Satyajit Ray, one of the twentieth century cinema’s greatest legends 

and a pioneer auteur of India’s art-house cinema, is awarded the Honorary 

Oscar for Lifetime Achievement “in recognition of his mastery of the art 

of motion pictures . . .” In the same year, he is also awarded India’s highest 

civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India). On April 23, 1992, just 

days after receiving the Academy Award, Ray passes away at his Calcutta 

home at the age of seventy-one. 

71. 1992—Majrooh Sultanpuri (1919–2000) becomes Bollywood’s first songwriter 

and lyricist to win the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the longestlasting, 

most notable songwriting career in the film industry. Sultanpuri 

had penned his first song for Shahjehan (1946), performed by the talkie 

era’s first singing star, K. L. Saigal, and received his last Filmfare Best 

Lyricist nomination for Aaj main upar (Khamoshi: The Musical, 1996) picturized 

by Salman Khan and Manisha Koirala. In 1992, Sultanpuri had 

penned an ode to first love, “Pehla nasha, pehla khumar . . .” (“The first 

intoxication, the first hangover”) for the Archie comics–inspired school 

sports-drama Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (The Winner Takes All). He wrote an 

estimated eight thousand songs for over 350 films during his five-decadelong 

career. 

72. 1993—Hindu-Muslim riots break out in Bombay in January, followed by 

a series of twelve bomb blasts across the city on March 12, 1993, with a 

reported three hundred casualties. Leading film star Sanjay Dutt, who 

owned an AK-56 assault rifle, is arrested for illegal weapon possession 

under the Terrorists and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act. His arrest 

causes a crisis in the Bombay film industry as production of twelve of his 

films is suspended. 

73. 1993—The raunchy lyrics and risqué choreography of the song “Choli 

ke peeche kya hai . . .” (“What is beneath the blouse?”) from Khalnayak 

(The Villain), make it the most controversial Indian film song of all time. 

Morality debates abound concerning the song’s presence on primetime 

radio and television as it rises in popularity, becoming a chartbuster. 

Repeat audiences throng the theaters just to see the song and walk out 

during the interval. 

74. 1993—Two films—Darr (Fear) and Baazigar (The Gambler)—rejected by 

most image-conscious stars for their anti-hero protagonists—are lapped 

up by Shah Rukh Khan, an ordinary-looking TV actor with tremendous 

energy and an infectious charm. Following the film’s release, Khan 

becomes an instant national heartthrob and begins his two-decade journey 

to becoming the world’s most-recognized star. But the film that keeps 

the media buzzing about him, Maya Memsaab (Madam Maya, an Indian

20 

Bollywood FAQ 

adaptation of Madam Bovary), is due to a nude bedroom scene featuring 

Khan and his co-star Deepa Saahi. Saahi, incidentally, is the film’s titular 

star and the wife of its director Ketan Mehta. 

75. 1993—While starring in Junoon (Obsession), Rahul Roy becomes the first 

Indian film hero to bare his bottom onscreen. As he rhetorically asked: “I 

don’t know how much the censors will keep, but I didn’t mind mooning. 

An animal can’t wear clothes—can it?” 

76. 1994—India gets its first film to cross the rupees 100-crore box-office 

record, and Hollywood get its first pan-Indian blockbuster in its century-long 

history. The fourteen-song romantic musical “Hum aapke 

hain koun . . . !” (“Who am I to you?”) becomes the biggest hit in the history 

of Indian cinema, until then, collecting over 1,000-million rupees. 

Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park is dubbed into Hindi and grosses 

120 million rupees, beginning a trend for dubbing and releasing new 

Hollywood movies. Its success, however, isn’t repeated until the release 

of Titanic (1997). 

77. 1995—In the centenary year of world cinema, Bollywood makes Dilwale 

Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride), its 

longest-ever, continuously running film, revolving around protagonists 

from the Indian Diaspora in London. The film sets the precedent for a 

subgenre called NRI (non-resident Indian) films. It sweeps the forty-first 

Filmfare Awards with a still-unbeaten record of ten wins from fourteen 

nominations, and holds an ongoing world record for being continuously 

shown at a theater for over two decades, from its October 20, 1995 release 

to the present, at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir. 

78. 1996—The BAFTA–nominated Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen (1994) 

becomes the most controversial film of the twentieth century, with direct 

intervention by Indian courts to prevent its release. Two years following 

production, the film is finally released in January, and then banned in 

March by the Delhi High Court in favor of a defamation suit filed by a 

member of the Gujjar community. The Supreme Court eventually lifts 

the ban. 

79. 1997—Music baron and owner of the largest record label, T-Series, 

Gulshan Kumar, is gunned down in broad daylight by hired assassins 

outside a Mumbai temple. Leading music director Nadeem Khan is 

accused of conspiring to kill Kumar, along with fugitive Mumbai don 

Dawood Ibrahim. The media openly speculates on the extent to which the 

Mumbai Mafia has an invisible hold on, and an unstated nexus with, the 

“who’s who” of Bollywood. 

80. 1998—The film industry is declared a legitimate industry by the government 

of India, thus making it eligible for institutional financing.


21 

81. 1998—The state of Pakistan 

honors Dilip Kumar with 

its highest civilian honor, 

the Nishan-e-Imtiaz (Order 

of Excellence). He remains 

the only Indian film personality—and 

only the 

second Indian—to be so 

honored by a nation that 

has fought four wars with 

India. 

82. 1999—In a global 

online poll by the BBC, 

Amitabh Bachchan is 

voted—by a large margin 

—the Superstar of the 

Millennium. (Runners-up 

were Sir Laurence Olivier 

and Sir Alec Guinness.) A 

year later, he becomes the 

first Indian actor to have 

a waxwork made in his 

likeness by the Madame 

Tussauds wax museum in 

London. 

83. 2001—Ashutosh 

Gowariker’s 224-minutelong, 

British period drama 

magnum opus Lagaan 

(Land Tax), revolv i ng 

Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit become national heartthrobs wi 

Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! 

Authors collecti 

around a fictitious cricket match set in British India between a motley 

team of peasants and their rulers, is the third Indian film to receive a Best 

Foreign Language Film nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture 

Arts and Sciences. 

84. 2002—Bollywood captures and inspires the popular imagination of the 

U.K. in the new millennium. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bollywood-inspired 

musical, Bombay Dreams, opens to packed houses in London’s Apollo 

Victoria Theatre. An exhibition of posters representing Hindi film history 

titled, “Cinema India—The Art of Bollywood,” is held at London’s 

Victoria and Albert Museum. The Selfridges’ chain of department? stores 

in England hosts a “Bollywood Season,” at one of its London stores, where

22 

Bollywood FAQ 

film sets are recreated in the store premises, with one replicating actress 

Dimple Kapadia’s entire Bombay home! 

85. 2004—A German television channel, RTL2-TV, shows the Germandubbed 

version of Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Sometimes 

Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow) for the first time. Germany’s fascination 

with Shah Rukh Khan begins. 

86. 2003—Actress and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai becomes the first 

Indian actress to join the jury of the Cannes Film festival. A year prior, 

Aishwarya’s opulent musical, Devdas, was the first mainstream Hindi film 

to premiere at Cannes. 

87. 2003—Prince Charles gives the ceremonial clap at the inaugural shot 

of historical biopic, Mangal Pandey: The Rising. Interestingly, the heir to 

the British throne was launching an Indo-British joint venture featuring 

Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens, which was based on an Indian sepoy (soldier) 

who triggered India’s first war of independence against the British 

Empire’s East India Company in 1857. 

88. 2008—Film production in India comes to a halt as approximately 147,000 

workers belonging to a federation of twenty-two unions go on a three-day 

strike, demanding better working conditions and basic benefits, such as a 

twelve-hour-maximum work day, improved safety, and on-time payment. 

89. 2009—Slumdog Millionaire’s Academy Awards sweep brings three Oscars 

to India, won by A. R. Rahman, Resul Pookutty, and Gulzar. However, 

several hundred protestors rampage through a cinema in Patna to protest 

Danny Boyle’s use of the word dog to describe slum dwellers. Meanwhile, 

one of the film’s child actors, Rubina Ali, becomes a subject of controversy 

after a British tabloid alleges her father had tried to sell the nine-year-old 

to an undercover reporter. Slumdog Millionaire opens to lukewarm boxoffice 

response in India. 

90. 2009—20th Century Fox launches a lawsuit against BR Films, the producer 

of Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai (This Guy is Fearless), claiming it to be 

an unauthorized remake of their 1992 film My Cousin Vinny. BR Films is 

ordered by the courts to pay $200,000 to 20th Century Fox for copyright 

infringement. 

91. 2009—In a first-of-its-kind partnership between Hollywood and 

Bollywood production companies, Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks 

Studios and Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group strike a threeyear, 

$825 million pact to fund up to six films a year. Indian billionaire 

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, of Reliance ADAG, picks up a 50 percent stake 

in Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG, starting with an initial investment of 

$325 million.


23 

92. 2009—Six decades after the global success of Awara (The Vagabond, 1951), 

Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots experiences similar box-office success outside 

of India, especially in Southeast Asia, South Korea, Japan, and China. The 

film’s hero, Aamir Khan, commands an instant following across China, 

where his subsequent releases only increase box-office records. It is 

ranked as the twelfth “All-Time Favorite” film of Chinese audiences on the 

popular review site Douban. In India, the film’s reformist message 

towards inculcating a competition-free education culture inspires a legislation 

towards an examination-free education system for upper primary 

level in schools. 3 Idiots makes history by becoming the first film to enter 

the 200-crore (2,000 million) rupee club of domestic box-office earners, 

ending with an overall global lifetime take of 5,000-million rupees. 

93. 2010—The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the 

University of Vienna, Austria, hosts “Shah Rukh Khan and Global 

“Superstar of the Millennium” Amitabh Bachchan on a promotional poster for 

his 2011 film Bbuddah . . .Hoga Terra Baap. 

Author’s collection

24 

Bollywood FAQ 

Bollywood,” the first-ever international conference dedicated to an Indian 

film star. The conference features more than forty speakers from more 

than twenty global universities. 

94. 2010—Dunno Y . . . Na Jaane Kyun becomes the first mainstream 

Bollywood film to show a kiss between two gay characters. The film is 

reflective of a more liberal attitude among Indian filmmakers towards 

same-sex relationships, following a temporary legalization of homosexuality 

in 2009. 

95. 2011—Playback singing legend Asha Bhosle enters The Guinness Book of 

World Records for having made the largest number of single studio recordings. 

The seventy-eight-year-old has sung over eleven thousand solos, 

duets, and chorus-backed songs in twenty Indian languages since 1947. 

96. 2011—A “making of” video of a yet-to-be-shot film song, “Why This 

Kolaveridi?,” goes viral on the YouTube, generating more than five million 

hits in a week and crossing the ten-million mark in a ten-day period! 

97. 2012—The Indian Censor Board passes the unedited, 3-D version of James 

Cameron’s Titanic. When originally released in late 1997, audiences were 

prevented from seeing Rose (Kate Winslet) posing in the nude for the 

film’s famous portrait-drawing scene. 

98. 2012—Walt Disney Pictures acquires one of the largest and most prolific 

modern Indian production companies, UTV, paying $454 million to 

expand its reach in the world’s fastest-growing film and television market. 

99. 2012—Canadian-born Indian-American actress Sunny Leone becomes the 

first-ever porn star to debut as a Bollywood heroine in writer-filmmaker 

Mahesh Bhatt’s erotic-thriller franchise Jism 2 (Body 2). The commercially 

successful film is critically panned, and Leone has to wait another five 

years to be featured in a film helmed by an A-lister star, when she gets 

to do a guest appearance in an item song sequence in Shah Rukh Khan’s 

Raees (2017). 

100. 2012—Bollywood’s Megastar of the Millennium, Amitabh Bachchan, 

finally succumbs to the Hollywood bait at age sixty-nine! He shoots 

a one-scene appearance in Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D adaptation of F. Scott 

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013) at Sydney “for free, as a friendly gesture.” 

Bachchan portrays one of literature’s most colorful Mafia characters, 

Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish figure from New York’s seedy underworld of 

organized crime, who helps Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) make his money.

Dadasaheb Phalke and 

the Birth of Indian Cinema 

2 

I will make films on selected portions from old Sanskrit plays and new 

Marathi plays, on manners and customs in different regions of India, 

on genuine Indian humor, on holy places and pilgrimages, on social 

functions as well as on scientific and educational subjects. . . . Moving 

pictures are a means of entertainment; but are in addition an excellent 

means for spreading knowledge. 

—Dadasaheb Phalke 

Cinema came to India within six months of its landmark first “paid” 

showcase in public with ten short films by Auguste Marie Louis 

Nicolas and Louis Jean Lumière at the Le Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris 

on December 28, 1895. On July 7, 1896, the Lumière Brothers screened six of 

those films at Bombay’s Watson Hotel. The films were subsequently shown 

in Calcutta and Madras, the largest metropolitan cities in the eastern and 

southern parts of the Indian subcontinent. 

Local creativity and entrepreneurship immediately engaged with the new 

opportunity, starting with Hiralal Sen in Calcutta (in 1898) and Harishchandra 

Sakharam Bhatwadekar in Mumbai, who made the first-ever Indian film, 

The Wrestlers (1899). This was a recording of a wrestling match in Mumbai. 

Documentary was therefore the first Indian movie genre—pioneered by the 

prolific Sen and Bhatwadekar, and nurtured by the contributions of their 

enterprising Indian successors, European professional filmmakers, and amateur 

British officials keen on recording their experiences of India. 

The Indian experience of movie making, as a recording-on-film activity, 

began almost coincidentally with the birth of world cinema. Its first feature— 

or story—film, Pundalik (Sage Pundalik), was released a decade later, on May 

18, 1912, made by Ramchandra Gopal Torney, who was from the western 

Indian state of Maharashtra. It gave birth to the Indian silent era’s second 

major film genre—the devotional film. These were primarily biographical 

films, usually about a local seer or a saint-poet. Pundalik’s pioneer status has 

been renegotiated over time, with critics and historians arguing that it was 

only a photographic recording of a stage play and not a properly shot film. The

26 

Bollywood FAQ 

film’s cameraman was an Englishman (named Johnson), and its processing had 

been outsourced to London. 

Made-in-India Swadeshi Films 

India in the early twentieth century was the jewel among the colonies in the 

crown of the British empire. It also was the period when the ideas of swaraj 

(self-rule) and swadeshi (made in India/one’s own country) first inspired 

popular motivations in the socio-political space of British India. The cultural 

space, too, was not alien to these ideas. The era’s most prolific and seminal 

genre, which went on to become one of Indian cinema’s signature genres—the 

mythological—was introduced a year later by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke. Also 

known as Dadasaheb Phalke or the “Father of Indian Cinema,” his debut, Raja 

Harishchandra (King Harishchandra), released in 1913, is considered Indian 

cinema’s first “truly indigenous” swadeshi film. Unlike Torney’s Pundalik, it 

was made with Indian capital by an Indian filmmaker, shot at Indian locations 

with an Indian-only cast and technicians, and told a very Indian story. 

Phalke proudly asserted in an article in 1918, “My films are swadeshi in 

the sense that the capital, ownership, employees and the stories are swadeshi.” 

It was no mere coincidence that the film’s choice of story affirmed another 

foundational element of Indian cinema—a conscious, convenient, and recurrent 

referencing of its two epic poems, the Ramayana (The Story of Rama) and 

the Mahabharata (The Great War), for ideas, stories, character reference, and 

drama. For a predominantly illiterate audience, the plot- and dialogue-description 

slides of silent films were meaningless. They had to be told a familiar 

story, and the epics were the Indian subcontinent’s most frequently told and 

known tales. 

Phalke’s Context and Concerns 

Phalke was a man of strong impulses and rigid convictions. He was not used 

to being dictated to and frequently left many a prosperous project, often after 

starting it, when his ideas and attitude towards his projects clashed with his 

colleagues, financiers, or co-entrepreneurs. Phalke’s great-grandniece Sharayu 

Phalke Summanwar in her biography of Phalke, The Silent Film (2012), writes, 

“His spirit always rebelled against being anyone’s slave; he was an artist and 

artists needed their freedom.” She traces this attitude to his being raised 

according to the traditions of orthodox Brahmins (upper-caste Hindus) from 

the Chitpavan community of Maharashtra, for whom an “uncompromised 

righteous living,” inspired by the Hindu scriptures, defined the way of life.

Dadasaheb Phalke and the Birth of Indian Cinema 

27 

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke. 


Phalke’s father, Dajishastri Phalke, was an equally inflexible man of principles. 

Summanwar writes: 

Daji was a renowned Sanskrit scholar. He was a puranic (a scholar 

of Indian history and religious myths) and a Vedasampana shastri 

(a master of the oldest Hindu religious texts, the Vedas). And it 

was because of this that Dhundiraj and his brother Bapu knew the 

Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita (one of the holiest 

Hindu scriptures) and the Vedas by heart—a fact that surprised his 

friends in later years. But for the Phalkes it was commonplace; their 

family performed all the Hindu rites except those connected with 

death. . . . The lullabies that Dhundiraj’s mother and grandmother 

sang to him were in fact musical narrations of the great Hindu epics. 

It was no wonder that by the age of seven he could recite good parts 

of them by heart, in Sanskrit. At some level, he seemed to interpret 

life itself through these epics, a fact that is almost incomprehensible 

to most people today. Lord Rama and Lord Krishna were not mere 

household names but dominant influences in Dhundiraj’s life. They 

were to greatly impact his work in later years.

28 

Bollywood FAQ 

The Role of Christ in the Birth of Bollywood 

Phalke’s first trigger to make movies came after a chance viewing of The Life of 

Christ during Christmas of 1910. He became obsessed with the idea of pioneering 

an Indian film industry. In a newspaper column in Kesari, on May 6, 1913, 

he writes: 

While The Life of Christ was rolling fast before my physical eyes I was 

mentally visualizing the Gods, Shri Krishna, Shri Ramachandra, their 

Gokul and Ayodhya. I was gripped by a strange spell . . . I felt my 

imagination taking shape on the screen. Could this really happen? 

Could we, the sons of India, ever be able to see Indian images on the 

screen? 

A Tool for Revolution Called Cinema 

The urge to show and see Indian images onscreen that would soon consume 

Phalke as a life obsession was no isolated articulation, but a product of the 

Indian identity-seeking, independence-minded spirit of his times. Phalke’s 

mythological films also helped stir submerged feelings of national pride and 

identity by reminding Indians of their glorious heritage. A review of Raja 

Harishchandra, published three days after the film’s release on May 6, 1913, in 

Kesari, a weekly paper founded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (also called the “Father 

of the Indian Unrest” by British authorities), celebrated Phalke’s arrival as a 

pioneering influence in Indian cinema. It reads: “Most of the films shown in 

the cinematographs in Bombay were foreign and they had foreign images in 

them. But Mr. Phalke has changed all this in making his films. The images in 

his films are Indian and are drawn from the Puranas and are thus familiar to 

us all.” 

When Phalke went through a crisis of resources and lack of funds in his 

filmmaking career during World War 1 (July 28, 1914–November 11, 1918), 

Tilak’s paper, Kesari, supported his pleas for public funding and the need for 

his continuance for the survival of swadeshi cinema, through liberal reviews, 

interviews, and printing of fundraising advertisements. For Phalke, Tilak, who 

was fourteen years older, remained a lifelong mentor, supporter, respected 

guide, and trusted critic of his films and plays. For Tilak, also a Sanskrit 

scholar, teacher, reformist, and journalist, Phalke was an Indian entrepreneur 

to be encouraged and enlisted. Tilak’s idea of swaraj (self-rule) was not limited 

to political freedom alone. It was conjoined to an overall revival of everything 

“made in India,” in every sphere of life—economic, social, religious, and cultural. 

To this end, his clarion calls were as much for young patriots as young


29 

entrepreneurs in all walks of life. It was in this climate of an all-inclusive 

swadeshi movement that inspired Phalke to make “films on Indian subjects by 

the Indians, for the Indians.” Phalke, in his forties, left a comfortable government 

job to attempt a new career of which he had no knowledge, beyond an 

all-consuming passion and a motivation reflective of the super-charged times. 

The self-taught Phalke even refused lucrative offers by London-based producers 

to work in the U.K., at a princely sum of 300 pounds a month, following 

the enthusiastic reception of his first set of films on a screening visit to London 

in 1917. He had instead opted to struggle with an unpredictable career at home, 

attempting to nurture and establish what he then saw as a still-fledgling 

swadeshi (Indian) film industry. Perhaps it was this uncompromising equating 

of swadeshi with Indian-only stories and storytelling styles that Phalke’s 

choice of feature film subjects never went beyond the epic and Sanskrit drama 

sources, even when popular taste had begun veering towards other themes 

and genres, like the Parsi theater-inspired fantasy films, or family socials 

and comedies inspired by Shakespearean dramas and European films, this 

despite the fact that Phalke had played few minor Shakespearean characters 

in his earlier tryst with professional theater as a student actor. Also, given 

the unavailability of female actors agreeing to act onscreen, Phalke preferred 

casting young Indian boys in women’s parts (as was prevalent in many local 

Indian dance and theater traditions), instead of casting British, Anglo-Indian, 

or Western actresses with Indian screen names as Indian characters, as was 

common in Indian films of the silent era. 

Phalke’s selections and motivations went far beyond the personal. He saw 

the establishment of an Indian film industry as a pioneer’s responsibility, 

even if it came at the cost of his survival, sanity, and financial security. He was 

driven by a firm and spirited conviction that “the Indian people would get an 

occasion to see Indian images on the screen and people abroad would get a 

true picture of India.” 

The Phalke Film Shastra 

Phalke’s idea of swadeshi was not limited to telling Indian stories with an 

Indian-only cast and crew. It was also about re-introducing his creative fraternity 

and successors to the traditional Indian style of storytelling and performance, 

and its appreciation as postulated in the Nātyaśāstra (the Indian 

classical Sanskrit text on drama). Despite a decline in public performances of 

Sanskrit-language dramas in the medieval century, critics and commentators 

consistently engaged with the Nātyaśāstra as a dramatic treatise. 

Phalke’s exhaustive oeuvre of more than one hundred films sourced all 

its stories from the puranas, the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Sanskrit

30 

Bollywood FAQ 

drama. Of the 138 silent films that were issued censor certificates for release in 

the first decade of Indian cinema (1913–1922), ninety-five were mythologicals, 

fourteen were devotionals, fourteen were socials (starting in 1920), eight were 

historicals (starting in 1915), five were classical or Sanskrit-drama adaptations 

(starting in 1920), and there was only one documentary (1918) and one fantasy 

film (1922). Among these, twenty-five mythologicals and four devotionals 

were made by Phalke; first under his debut company, Phalke & Company 

Ltd., and subsequently under the Hindustan Cinema Film Company. Phalke’s 

pioneering role was, thus, not only in initiating the film industry in India, but 

in setting the agenda for its narrative choices, style, and identity, especially in 

its first, formative decade. 

Based on genres, a breakdown of the 133 films released in 1929 indicates a 

decisive shift in trends from the 1913–1922 figures. Previously, mythologicals 

overwhelmingly led the tally, but by 1929 socials and fantasy/costume actioners 

led the list, with forty-plus releases in each category, followed by fourteen 

historicals, twelve mythologicals, three devotionals, and five classical-dramas. 

Barring two features—Raja Harishchandra (1913) and Kaliya Mardan (The 

Killing of Snake Kaliya, 1919) and a few scenes from other films—none of 

Phalke’s films survive today, but his four elaborate essays on the art and craft 

of cinema in the Kesari newspaper leave little doubt that the greatest influence 

on the “Phalke School of Filmmaking” was the classical Sanskrit drama and 

theater. 

The Méliès of Indian Cinema 

Phalke’s first film, Raja Harishchandra, contains a trick-based scene, where the 

hero, King Harishchandra, is conned into saving three vices being burned on 

a sacred altar of sacrifice by the sage Vishwamitra. The vices are interestingly 

portrayed as three hyperactive girls in flames from the waist-up, with the rest 

of their bodies strategically covered by the sage’s silhouette. The other “trick of 

camera” that can be seen in the salvaged remnants of the film is the sudden 

appearance and disappearance of Lord Shiva in the film’s climax. When Indian 

cinema’s first auteur took his films—especially scenes like these—to the United 

Kingdom as an international showcase, the foreign press in London noted that 

“from a technical point of view, Phalke’s films are excellent.” These special 

effects may not seem awe-inspiring today, but for audiences of the time these 

were the biggest attractions of a Phalke film. Prominent studio owner and the 

pioneer of the effects-driven “stunt” genre of action films, J. B. H. Wadia, recalls 

his own experience of watching Phalke’s first blockbuster, Lanka Dahan (The 

Destruction of Lanka, 1917): “Lanka Dahan was a minor masterpiece of its time. 

The spectacle of Hanuman’s figure becoming progressively diminutive as he


31 

Dadasaheb Phalke’s daughter Mandakini Phalke (center) plays baby Krishna in Kaliya Mardan. 

 


flew higher and higher in the clouds and the burning of the city of Lanka in 

table-top photography were simply awe-inspiring.” Thus, Phalke has also been 

called the Georges Méliès of Indian cinema. 

Georges Mêliés, the father of special effects in French cinema, had a studio 

and trained hands to aid him in realizing his vision; Phalke had just himself 

and his imagination. And yet, the real-life magician-turned-filmmaker never 

tired of introducing new “tricks,” as cinematic special effects were called then, 

bettering their promise and scale of ambition with every subsequent film. 

Phalke’s lifelong wish around his filmmaking journey was that he “remain 

a child forever!” In a 1918 column, he had written, “As I grow my beard and 

moustaches, let my inner heart always have the purity of a child!” A childlike 

wonder pervades Phalke’s films, in which the attraction of a spectacle often 

defines the climax or the core drama of a narrative (The Destruction of Lanka, 

The Killing of Snake Kaliya, The Killing of King Jarasandha, A Quarrel Game of 

Narada, The Fight Between Rama and Ravana, The Disrobing of Draupadi, etc.). 

The story thus becomes a vehicle for creating a sense of awe and wonder. This 

is quite evident in the delineation of the drama in both of his available films.

32 

Bollywood FAQ 

Even in a tale of loss and deep pathos like King Harishchandra, the focus is on 

the possibilities for adventure or surprise in the journey of the protagonists. 

A Talkie That Became a Talking Point 

Phalke’s filmmaking career was forever driven by an urge to create a bigger 

spectacle than before. His last two film projects—a sound film, Setu Bandhan 

(The Bridge on the Sea, 1932), and Phalke’s first talkie, Gangavataran (The Descent 

of Ganga, 1937)—both carved their drama around events of grand spectacle 

from the epics. They rode in on advertising that pitched them as “a spectacle 

to beat all spectacles.” For Gangavataran, Phalke famously got his art direction 

team to paint an entire existing hill in white to recreate the effect of the snowcapped 

Himalayan mountains on his tropical location backdrop of Kolhapur 

in western India. Ironically, it rained heavily all night, leaving the painted 

hill green again. Since, it was impossible to repaint the soaked backdrop, the 

Himalayas had to be recreated in the studio. 

The Father of Indian Cinema 

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke honed his cinema skills on a diet of Bioscope, but 

for his suggestions on filmmaking he referenced and contextualized the 

Nātyaśāstra. He learned his craft from the Western film, but used it to express 

Indian themes and impulses. He let himself be shaped in the interaction of the 

West and the East, but the values he sought to establish were of the classical 

Sanskrit theater. 

In his tone of assertive prescription and his inclination towards revelation 

and codification, it could well be argued that Phalke saw himself as the sage 

Bharata (the writer of Nātyaśāstra) of Indian cinema. A figure who, in the 

context of filmmaking in India, almost assigned to himself the responsibility 

of recording a film shastra (a guide text or book of codes) for his successors. 

His was a pioneer’s impact; he went on to become the box-office leader in the 

first decade of Indian cinema, while influencing most of the genre, plot, and 

performance style choices of the country’s silent era. Most actors and technicians 

in the early years of Indian cinema were discoveries or dropouts from 

the Phalke Film Factory, as noted by Phalke in his deposition to the Indian 

Cinematograph Enquiry Committee of 1927–1928. The “Father of South Indian 

Cinema,” J. C. Daniel, had sought guidance and training at Phalke’s Nasikbased 

studio before venturing out to make Vigathakumaran (The Lost Child, 

1928), just as Phalke had visited Cecil Hepworth’s studio near London for his 

education in filmmaking before making Raja Harishchandra.


33 

Phalke’s vision was achieved by his opting to re-engage and re-introduce 

his countrymen and fellow filmmakers to India’s continuing aesthetic traditions 

and postulates on performance, drama, and narration. He disseminated 

his ideas on the purpose and nature of film appreciation through extensive 

commentaries in the press and in public lectures. Simultaneously, he encouraged 

an entire generation of actors, technicians, and filmmakers to be mindful 

of “entertainment with enlightenment,” a tenet that would guide narrative 

concerns in popular Indian cinema. 

A grateful nation and the Indian film industry acknowledged Phalke’s 

contribution by naming its highest lifetime achievement honor for film personalities 

presented by the government of India after him: the Dadasaheb 

Phalke Award. This is presented every year by the president of India on the 

third of May, the date Phalke first screened his indigenous Indian film Raja 

Harishchandra at Bombay’s Coronation Cinematograph in 1913.

3 

The Rise of Bombay Cinema 

In a nation that’s home to a sixth of the global population, and has a culturolinguistic 

diversity equal to that of Europe, where each of the twenty-eight 

Indian states enjoy an ethno-religious regional identity as distinct—yet 

overlapping—as the communities within Asia, of one moviemaking center 

to emerge as a national cinema is one of the most intriguing industrial success 

stories of the modern era. Bombay may be known as Mumbai today, but 

the rise and consolidation of its movie industry as the most-watched cinema 

across the Indian subcontinent and beyond—and the most influential film 

industry, after Hollywood—is a story that Bollywood has never told. Indeed, it 

must be experienced to believe. 

The Phalke Effect on Movie Making in India 

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, or Dadasaheb Phalke, not only gave India its first 

“indigenous” feature film, Raja Harishchandra (King Harischandra, 1913), he 

also established a few stated and unstated templates for filmmaking practices 

in India. These could be broadly divided into three categories—creative, structural, 

and functional. 

On the creative front, the ancient Indian epics, Ramayana and the 

Mahabharata, were the sources for more than ninety of Phalke’s 100-plus 

films. These thematic influences defined India’s silent era. The plot of Raja 

Harishchandra, a mythological film, was derived from a side story in the 

Mahabharata. A mythological film usually features characters from the Hindu 

religion and its scriptures, subcontinental myths, stories, and histories featuring 

ancient Indian kings and “divine characters,” known as the puranas and the 

two epics known as itihasa (a form of recorded history where the writer is an 

integral part of the events unfolding in the narrative). The mythological genre, 

along with the devotional, which focuses primarily on seers and saint poets, 

became Indian cinema’s first and second-most popular genres, respectively.


35 

On the structural front, Phalke—a student, teacher, and performer of the 

Sanskrit drama, or the Nātyaśāstra—was heavily influenced by its guidelines 

regarding conception and presentation. These ranged from the choice of subjects, 

the look of the actors, and the nature of storytelling—and always with the 

intent of elevating film as an art form. The Sanskrit drama tradition is evident 

by the integral role of the song-and-dance interlude as a narrative tool; the 

need to evoke multiple emotions (or the navarasas); and the importance of the 

happy ending, wherein good always contains, reforms, or eliminates evil. Such 

“ideal” drama has, consciously and subconsciously, influenced Indian films 

to uphold moral virtues through righteous protagonists, conveying readily 

understood messages presented in an entertaining manner. 

The major difference between the Indian studio system and its Hollywood 

counterpart was its vertical line of decision making, with one person at the 

top, contrary to the latter’s horizontal approach. Even in the case of a “limited 

company” studio like Bombay Talkies, all decisions were made by its founder, 

Himanshu Rai. Film journalist and scriptwriter K. A. Abbas notes in the May 

1939 issue of FilmIndia: “Few persons have any idea of the amount of work 

he does—from the writing of the scenario and dialogue to the printing of 

publicity posters, there is nothing to which he does not give his personal attention. 

Indeed, I feel he does too much work and in his own interests and in the 

interests of the studio he should share it with others.” 

Thus, the Auteur Theory had arrived in Indian cinema decades before the 

debating of the term by critics André Bazin and Andrew Sarris in the 1940s 

in France and the United States, respectively. In the studio era (1913–1947), 

that auteur was the producer, who often doubled as the film’s director, not 

unlike Phalke and his immediate successors. As studio heads took a backseat 

creatively, and eminent directors started working for studios based on 

the individual appeal of projects, it was they who became the auteurs. By 

the end of the 1950s, following the closure of most early-talkie era studios, a 

star-driven filmmaking system financed by independent producers emerged, 

with film projects increasingly planned around the image and individual 

genre-specific appeal of its stars. That’s when the reign of the stars began to 

consolidate the role of a film’s hero (and, on fewer occasions, the heroine), as 

the film’s primary attraction. 

Pioneering Studios and Visionary Filmmakers 

Bombay became associated with the filmmaking destiny of the Indian nation 

when Phalke made his first film in the city in 1913, as a cottage industry venture 

under the Phalke Films Company. The film was literally made at home, 

with his kitchen doubling as his development lab, and his wife, Saraswatibai

36 

Bollywood FAQ 

Phalke, serving as the unofficial production manager, cook for the crew, and 

negative developer. Bombay, however, was accorded the status of India’s 

national cinema only three decades later, following the independence and 

partition of India in 1947, when it became home to most of it best cinema 

talents across movie-making disciples from all over the country and the Indian 

subcontinent. 

Phalke abandoned Bombay to begin a prolific filmmaking career in 

Nashik, 100 kilometers from Bombay, for its “cinematic outdoors and a less 

interfering environment far from his Mumbai-based financers,” in an all-purpose-fulfilling 

studio setup, the Hindustan Cinema Film Company (founded 

in 1918). The first Indian film was made on location in the present-day western 

Indian state of Maharashtra, and the first Indian actors acted in the region’s 

dominant local Marathi language. This act of providence adequately played 

out its potential in triggering the establishment of a plethora of movie studios 

across Maharashtra, especially in the silent era. Filmmaking blossomed into a 

full-fledged cinematic form under another visionary filmmaker of the era, 

Baburao Painter, also from western India, whose Maharashtra Film Company 

(founded in 1919) introduced indoor shooting with artificial lights, sets, and 

the use of in-camera optical effects. A generation of filmmakers trained under 

him, the most prominent being Vishnupant Damle, K. R. Dhaibar, S. Fatehlal, 

and Sitarambapu Kulkarni, who, along with actor-turned-director-producer V. 

Shantaram, launched the Prabhat Film Company in 1929, in the Maharashtrian 

town of Pune. Groomed in the studio tradition with no formal education, these 

filmmakers established the Marathi/Prabhat School of Filmmaking, credited 

for some of India’s first commendable attempts at making relatable slice-of-life 

social dramas. These films, while consistently pushing the boundaries of cinematic 

vision and realism, were primarily speaking in a language and a style 

understood in the (primarily) western part of India. Occasionally, when they 

did try to go national, with films made in Hindustani (a hybrid of the Hindu 

and Urdu languages, spoken and understood across central and northern 

India), the distinct Maharashtrian touch in their treatment, choice of stories, 

costumes, and accent limited their appeal in places outside western India. 

The East Side Story 

Parallel to the Maharashtra and the Prabhat companies’ debut in western 

India, the eastern part of India saw the launch of two studios from Calcutta, 

the first capital of British India (until 1911), in close competition to claiming 

the yet-to-be-declared title of the nation’s film capital with no less vision or 

ambition. The Madan Theatres, established in 1919 by J. F. Madan, owner of the 

largest and most powerful production-distribution-exhibition empires in the


37 

V. Shantaram (standing to the right) in a still from the ground-breaking 

silent-era social drama Savkari Pash, directed by Baburao Painter for his 

Maharashtra Film Company. 


early twentieth century, founded the Bengali film industry with Bilwamangal 

(1919). J. F. Madan was one of the first Indian studio owners to hire foreign 

directors, including Camille Legrand from the Pathé Frères Studios in Paris, 

Italian actor-director Eugenio de Liguoro, and Georgio Mannini to make biopics 

on Indian saints and screen adaptations of Sanskrit drama classics. The 

Mannini-Madan co-production Savitri (1923) featured Italian stars Angelo 

Ferrari and Rina De Liguoro in a “sensuous” adaptation of a legend from the 

Mahabharata. It was advertised as a “charming Hindu story . . . taken amidst 

the world-renowned Cascades of Tivoli in Rome.” Towards the end of the silent 

era, in 1931, Madan owned 126 theaters, thereby controlling half of the Indian

38 

Bollywood FAQ 

subcontinent’s box-office, and had on its payroll some of the biggest stars of 

the era, such as Patience Cooper. 

But it was the passionate engineer-turned-filmmaker and University of 

London graduate Birendra Nath Sircar and his New Theatres (established in 

1931) that brought Calcutta closest to becoming the cine-capital of India at the 

dawn of the talkie era. It became the nation’s foremost studio for qualitative 

and intellectually stimulating cinematic art that prized artistic freedom and 

embraced an aesthetic sense. Eminent film journalist and critic K. A. Abbas, 

in an elaborate review in the May 1939 issue of FilmIndia, discussed the three 

most important and influential studios of the 1930s: “The man who is at the 

head of the studio (New Theatres) is not primarily a film producer but an 

aristocrat, belonging to a family of lawyers and businessmen. I have an idea 

that Mr. B. N. Sircar is not much worried about his studio making money for 

him. He seems to treat film production as a hobby—an expensive hobby, but 

evidently, he can afford it!” 

Sircar’s motto for the company was Jivatang Jyotiretu Chhayam (“Light 

Infusing Shadows with Life”), and he consistently strove “to bring together all 

the great talents of cinema under one umbrella.” New Theatres soon became 

the best practical school to discover and nurture expertise for most film industry 

talents across India in the 1930s. Those who rose to eminence include such 

directors as Debaki Bose, Nitin Bose, and P. C. Barua; actors Prithviraj Kapoor 

and Pahari Sanyal; India’s first singing superstar K. L. Saigal; the first “melody 

queen” Kanan Devi; and the “Father of Indian Film Music,” R. C. Boral. New 

Theatres, unlike Prabhat, turned its regional (location and language) limitations, 

if any, to make “purposeful” pan-India-appealing films in Hindustani 

and the local language of Bengali, to establish a distinct cinematic appeal 

while exploring socially relevant dramas and literary adaptations set to music. 

The ultimate testament to New Theatres’ edge and commitment to high aesthetics 

came when Asia’s first Nobel Prize winner, the littérateur-philosophereducationist 

Rabindranath Tagore, referred to Sircar’s film company as “my 

second Shantiniketan (abode of peace).” 

Other Regional Studios 

While the studios in Maharashtra and Calcutta spearheaded filmmaking in 

India’s silent era, the arrival of talkies increased audience demand for more 

films in each of the prominent written and spoken languages of India. India 

has twenty-two official languages written in thirteen distinct scripts within 

multiple-language families, the major ones being the Indo-Aryan languages 

spoken by nearly 75 percent of the population spread across northern, western, 

and eastern India (led by Hindustani), and the four Dravidian languages


39 

spoken by 20 percent of those hailing from southern and southeastern India. 

The Indian nation’s subsequent political division into language-based states 

both facilitated and necessitated the growth of more regional language-based 

film industries from its various state capitals. Two Indian metros, beyond 

Calcutta and Bombay, with robust, regional identities and the wherewithal 

necessary to sustain a technology-intensive craft like filmmaking that emerged 

as prominent studios by the turn of the 1930s were Lahore in India’s northern 

state of Punjab, and Madras in south India. 

Lahore made a mark in the Indian filmmaking scene with Abdul Rashid 

Kardar’s United Players Corporation (est. 1928) production Husn Ka Daku 

(Mysterious Eagle, 1930), followed by other action-adventures. However, its 

impact on the national mainstream was felt only in the talkie era, with the 

establishment of Lahore’s largest film studio, Pancholi Arts Pictures (est. 1941), 

by Dalsukh M. Pancholi. Pancholi, a student of scriptwriting and cinematography 

from New York, was at that time the biggest importer and distributor 

of American films in northern and western India. With two back-to-back 

all-Indian box-office hits, Khazanchi (The Cashier, 1941) and Khandaan (The 

Family, 1942), Pancholi paved the way for the Lahore film industry to become 

a national filmmaking center. Its reputation was further consolidated in its 

discovery and launching of eminently appealing pan-India actors Pran and 

Noorjehan, music directors Ghulam Haider and O. P. Nayyar, and the star playback 

singers Shamshad Begum and Mohammad Rafi. The success of Pancholi’s 

Punjabi-Urdu–speaking films brought Punjab’s folk culture, music, dance, 

lingo, and lifestyle to Hindi cinema. Such integral elements were critical to the 

development of an “All-India Film” formula. 

At the largest metro in south India, Madras, another prolific regional 

cinema industry came up, one that catered exclusively to the entertainment 

needs of the 20 percent of its population that spoke the Dravidian languages 

of Telegu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada. These languages were made up of 

a vocabulary that was in complete contrast to the north’s Hindustani lingua 

franca. While its silent era commenced pretty much around the same time as 

rest of India—with automobile-spare-parts-dealer-turned-producer R. Nataraja 

Mudaliar’s Keechak Vadham (The Killing of Keechaka, 1917) and films based on 

legends and Indian epics—its movie industry courted national recognition 

with the making of independent India’s first Hindi-Tamil bilingual costumedrama, 

Chandralekha (1948). Made by journalist-businessman-turned-movie 

mogul S. S. Vasan’s Gemini Studio (est. 1940), the epic scale of the vision and 

realization of the film, advertised as a “pageant for peasants,” and featuring a 

cast of thousands, established Vasan as the Cecil B. DeMille of India.

40 

Bollywood FAQ 

The Early Studios of Bombay 

Bombay—unlike Calcutta, Lahore, Kolhapur, or Madras—was an emerging 

metropolis with a cosmopolitan ethos courtesy of its predominantly migrant 

population. Unlike the other above-mentioned cities, Bombay, which became 

a united entity by joining seven islands in the mid-eighteenth century, off the 

western coast of Maharashtra, had a relatively contemporary birth history. 

Bombay’s strategic commercial port location to the Middle East, Africa, and 

Europe, saw the emergence of a powerful economic class of trader-capitalists, 

the kind of entrepreneurs who invested in nascent theater and film industries, 

driven more by the profit potential of a new business than any major artistic 

concern. Being the base of colonial economy on India’s western coast, the city 

saw the rise of the first—and then, richest—industrial working class in India, 

who made for a committed audience of the All-India Film formula. In addition, 

Bombay’s “bridge-to-the-world” location made it an important distribution 

center for films made across India and Maharashtra’s other hinterland-based 

filmmaking towns, such as Pune, Kolhapur, and Nashik. 

Not surprisingly, Bombay’s most successful studio owner from the silent 

and early-talkie era happened to be Ardheshir Irani, a titan hailing from a 

production-distribution-exhibition background. Irani’s Imperial Films 

Company (est. 1926) famously employed the highest-paid star of the decade, 

Sulochana, who drew a salary greater than 

that earned by the governor of Bombay. A 

prolific filmmaker with visionary business 

acumen, Irani not only won the keenly 

competitive race by various studios to 

make India’s first sound (Alam Ara, 1931) 

and color (Kisan Kanya, 1937) films, but also 

made the first talkie films for such Asian 

countries as Burma, Indonesia, and Iran. 

Irani also holds the record as being the 

world’s greatest multilingual production 

company, making films in an assembly-like 

fashion in English, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, 

Burmese, Indonesian, and Pashto. Other 

prolific and successful filmmakers from 

1930s’ Bombay were Irani’s fellow Parsi duo 

of J. B. H. and Homi Wadia. Their Wadia 

Movietone (est. 1933) introduced the stunt 

genre with some swashbuckling action 

films featuring Fearless Nadia. 

Ardheshir Irani. Photo courtesy of NFAI.


41 

Another important Bombay-based studio was Ranjit Movietone (est. 1929), 

founded by writer-director Chandulal Shah and singer-actress Gohar Jaan. 

It was known for its mid-budget socials, satires, and mythologicals. Sohrab 

Modi’s Minerva Movietone (est. 1936) made its mark with grandiose theateron-cinema 

celebrating dialogue-driven, complex psychodramas and lavishly 

mounted historical epics. 

Bombay Talkies’ Perfecting of the “All-India Film” 

Formula 

Critical acclaim was lavished on Bombay cinema only after the arrival of 

Bombay Talkies (est. 1934) by the England-educated duo of actor-director 

Himanshu Rai and actress-producer Devika Rani. Their epic dramas were 

internationally well received, resulting in long ticket lines in Europe, while 

giving Indian cinema its first pan-Indian blockbuster, Kismet (Fate, 1943). 

Kismet played at a Calcutta theater continuously for a record-breaking three 

years. Its unexpected success skewed and firmly established the “All-India 

Film” template: simply told, breezy romances featuring meaningful dialogue 

that tackled socially relevant themes with consummate artistry. 

Film historians Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, in the 

Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, explain the All-India Film as “the outcome of 

aspects and approaches to storytelling, appropriated from popular local film 

and theater genres and Hollywood.” These are then subordinated within an allencompassing 

entertainment formula designed to overcome India’s regional 

and linguistic boundaries to emerge as a sort of cultural leader among its 

multiple cinemas. This unique template’s subsequent growth in universal 

appeal and exclusive association with Bollywood has come to differentiate 

and distinguish the term as a distinct style/genre of filmmaking and an independent 

national cinema nomenclature that commands global influence and 

recognition. 

The Big Five 

By the end of the 1940s, five major movie-making centers had emerged across 

the Indian subcontinent, each of equal import and influence, each defined by 

a studio and its signature style, evolved in accordance with a distinct vision 

and approach to the filmmaking craft most preferred by its founder or driverowner. 

If Bombay Talkies was known for its films with high technical standards, 

the Prabhat Picture Company stood out for its realistic devotional and 

social films shot on impeccably designed sets. And where Pancholi Arts stood

42 

Bollywood FAQ 

A poster of Bombay Talkies’ first “all-India blockbuster,” Kismet. 

 


out for its robust Punjabi-style music and dramatic performances, and Gemini 

Studios made a mark with grandiose costume-drama spectacles, New Theatres 

became renowned for its sensitive musical adaptations of literary classics. This 

was the era when a studio insignia usually guaranteed the nature or genre of 

a film—realistic, social, literary adaptation, musical, stunt-adventure, or an 

epic costume-drama—and the auteur producers rarely deviated from the genre 

with which they were most associated in the minds of the public. 

Between them—Lahore, Bombay, Kolhapur, Calcutta, and Madras—the five 

movie centers enjoyed a free-flowing exchange of talent, based on individual 

creative aspirations. If the realists headed to Prabhat, those seeking artistic 

freedom and intellectual satisfaction came to New Theatres, while Bombay


43 

Talkies became the destination for those wishing to hone technical efficiency. 

It was a purely opportunity-based reshuffling of employers by “success guaranteeing” 

talented employees in a subcontinent-sized nation under a single 

administration. Based on the box-office fate of their films, a center, or studio, 

would be the toast of national success in one year, followed by another in 

the next. No one center could be called India’s national cinema center—at 

least, not yet. For instance, if Zindagi (Life, 1940), made by Calcutta’s New 

Theatres, was the highest-grossing film of 1940, Pancholi Art’s Khazanchi (The 

Cashier), made by the Lahore film industry, took the honors in 1941, followed 

by Bombay Talkies’ Kismet (Fate) in 1943. 

The Partition of India and the Reshuffling of Talents 

India became independent from British rule in 1947, but two nations were 

carved out of the subcontinent, based along religious lines—a Muslim majority 

Pakistan on the fourteenth of August, and a Hindu-dominated Bharat or 

India on the fifteenth. This arbitrary method of segregation by an estimation 

of approximates, known as the partition of India, had triggered one of the largest 

mass migrations in the history of humankind. Sikhs and Hindus, leaving 

their ancestral homes in the newly formed state of Pakistan, came to India, 

while many Muslims relocated to Pakistan. According to partition casualty 

estimates, fourteen million people were displaced, over a million killed, and 

75,000 women were kidnapped, raped, or murdered. The event has been likened 

to the holocaust. 

Two of the undivided British India’s largest film industries were directly 

affected, as the states in which they were based were divided. Half of Bengal 

became east Pakistan, and half of Punjab went to west Pakistan. Calcutta, 

the administrative capital of undivided Bengal, remained with India, while 

Lahore, the cine-cum-literary and cultural hub of north India, went to 

Pakistan. The Calcutta-based film industry lost a large chunk of its market to 

east Pakistan and some of its production-exhibition properties to riot-induced 

damage. By the mid-1950s, that shining beacon in its cinematic oeuvre, New 

Theatres, had stopped making films. 

In Bombay, courtesy of its geographical distancing from the actual locations 

of partition, the damage to properties and people through violence and 

rioting was negligible compared to that of Lahore and Calcutta. Large parts of 

the latter two cities burned for days on end, experiencing a complete collapse 

of law and order. Barring the gutting of the studio of actor-producer-director 

Nazir Ahmed Khan’s Hind Pictures, there hadn’t been any major partitioninduced 

violence against a leading Muslim star in Bombay. Nazir, a popular 

hero with the record of having acted opposite thirty-five actresses, left Mumbai

44 

Bollywood FAQ 

with his actress-wife, Swarn Lata, to become a leading actor-filmmaker of the 

newly formed Pakistan nation’s nascent film industry. They were the lead 

pair of Pakistan’s first silver jubilee film, Pheray (Wedding Rites, 1949). Other 

Bombay-based, leading Muslim talents of the day who migrated to Pakistan 

included popular leading lady of the 1940s Noorjehan and her director-husband, 

Shaukat Hassan Rizvi, singer-actress Khurshid, music director Ghulam 

Haider, and writer Saadat Hassan Manto. 

Haider and Manto passed away within a decade of relocation, while Rizvi, 

who went on to become a pioneer filmmaker of the Pakistan film industry, 

along with actor-director Nazir, both in their forties, had already spent most 

of their career’s qualitative and quantitative years in India. Their actress wives, 

Noorjehan and Swarn Lata, had only a decade more to their performing years, 

at a time when most debuting leading ladies were still in their teens. Bombay 

cinema’s first singer-actress sensation from the late 1930s and early 1940s, 

Khurshid made only two films in Pakistan. They both were box-office failures, 

following which she left the film industry. 

A greater number of Muslim talents working in the Bombay film industry, 

however, opted to stay back in India. Many were young and talented actors, 

either just launched or trying to make a mark, including Dilip Kumar, Meena 

Kumari, Nargis, and Madhubala. They made the most of the vacancies left 

at the top. The above four, along with two “Hindu” star talents hailing from 

Pakistan, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor, were just entering the best years of 

their acting careers. Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, and Raj Kapoor were all in their 

early twenties, while Meena Kumari, Nargis, and Madhubala were still in their 

teens at the time of India’s independence. By the 1950s, they had become a formidable 

triumvirate of the finest and most influential stars of Indian cinema. 

A Wave of Intra-National Migrations to Bombay 

While the birth of Pakistani cinema happened with a talent pool already in 

its prime or beyond, Bombay cinema, post-1947, saw the rise of a new generation 

of talented filmmakers who became responsible for what, in retrospect, 

is known as the Golden Age of Indian Cinema. Further enriching this new 

era was a talent pool of uprooted writers, intellectuals, directors, technicians, 

and musicians from the partition-affected areas of eastern, northern, and 

northwestern India. Lahore’s biggest producer, Dalsukh M. Pancholi, and the 

maker of two of its biggest box-office hits, Khazanchi (1941) and Khandaan 

(1942), migrated to Bombay, along with the latter film’s hero, Pran, who become 

an icon of screen villainy in Bollywood, playing many memorable parts until 

the 1990s. Lahore-based journalist of Cine Herald, Baldev Raj Chopra, who was 

all set to launch his filmmaking career with Chandni Chowk in 1947, had to flee


45 

the city with his family just before the film was to be released, due to partitionrelated 

riots. He came first to Delhi and then Bombay, where his BR Films (est. 

1955) made a mark with hard-hitting social dramas and a refining of the courtroom 

drama genre. Chopra signed off a very prolific career with India’s mostwatched 

TV series, Mahabharat, based on the epic Mahabharata. Enjoying a 90 

percent pan-Indian viewership, the entire nation would reportedly undergo an 

“unofficial curfew” during the two years the ninety-four-episode TV series was 

telecast on Sunday mornings. Chopra’s other big contribution was launching 

and nurturing the career of younger brother Yash Chopra, also a partition 

migrant. Yash Chopra later launched his own production house under the 

banner of Yash Raj Films (est. 1970). It grew to become Bollywood’s largest 

privately owned, new-age studio in the twenty-first century. Actor-producerdirector-writer 

Manoj Kumar was another partition refugee from Abbottabad 

(in Pakistan), who pioneered and established independent India’s patriotic 

films genre through a series of blockbusters from the 1960s–1980s. 

A context in strife has always inspired great humanist art, but for that art 

to manifest itself a state of calm is equally necessary. The Bombay film industry’s 

inherent plurality make and a habitually practiced adherence to a secular, 

all-inclusive outlook as imagined in the “new and free” India Constitution, coupled 

with the city’s cosmopolitan ethos. Migrants from all over India—across 

region, class, caste, and religion—were now assured a comparatively freer 

work environment for all intellectuals, Muslims included. A case in point is 

the return to Bombay of one of the founders of the Lahore film industry in the 

pre-Independence era, producer-director A. R. Kardar and his brother-in-law 

Mehboob Khan. Kardar and Khan had both left for Pakistan during partition. 

While Khan went on to become one of the greatest filmmakers of independent 

India, making its first Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee, Mother India (1957), 

Kardar directed ten more movies based on English film and literary adaptations, 

peaking with the multi-star Dil Diya Dard Liya (Gave Love, Got Hurt, 

1966), inspired by Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. 

But while Kardar and Mehboob Khan managed a quick, quiet return, the 

more vocal artists and writers, like leftist poet-lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, who 

had been based in Lahore since 1943, had to flee to India in 1949 to avoid the 

restrictions on creativity imposed by a conservative Islamic state of Pakistan. 

Fellow left-leaning writer of immense literary merit and a post-partition 

migrant from Bombay, Saadat Hasan Manto, who opted to stay in Pakistan, 

spent most of his time in court, defending his freedom to write. Sahir, post 

return, became a beacon of the splurge in idealistic and iconoclastic writing of 

high literary value that was to shine in post-partition Bombay cinema.

46 

Bollywood FAQ 

The Rise and Consolidation of Bombay’s Hindustani 

Cinema 

The prospects of reaching a larger audience through the popular mass medium 

of cinema had inspired many literary figures to seek a full-fledged film career. 

This was a popular trend in the 1940s and ’50s, especially in Bombay and 

Madras. In Bengal, while Modern Theatres had courted an edge by acquiring 

the filmmaking rights of the works of nineteenth century litterateur 

Bankimchandra Chatterjee. Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath 

Tagore (New Theatres) let their stories be adapted for the cinema. The only film 

Tagore is credited with having directed, Natir Puja (The Dancing Girl’s Worship, 

1932), was for New Theatres. 

Bombay also attracted many Muslim literary writers/poets to join as 

scriptwriters and song lyricists. Notable Urdu writers who achieved a successful 

interaction between the pen and the camera include Aga Hashr 

Kashmiri, Narayan Prasad “Betaab,” Wali Mohammad Wali, Saadat Hasan 

Manto, Krishna Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Akhtar-ul Iman, Vajahat Mirza, 

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Abrar Alvi, and Ismat Chugtai. Urdu poets who made 

Bombay their professional address to become successful film lyricists include 

Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Shakeel Badayuni, Nakshab, Ehsan 

Rizvi, Arzoo Lakhnavi, Munshi Shams, Kamal Amrohi, Hasrat Jaipuri, Raja 

Mehdi Ali Khan, Qamar Jalabadi, Kaifi Azmi, and Jaan Nissar Akhtar. Poets 

known for their works in Hindi and Urdu who made a mark writing for the 

cinema include Mukand Lal “Seemab,” Gauri Shankarlal “Akhtar,” Pandit 

“Phani” and Gulzar, a victim of partition, who made his debut as a lyricist in 

the golden age. 

Compared to the Urdu stalwarts, the response of Hindi luminaries to writing 

for the cinema was marginal. Acclaimed Hindi writer Munshi Premchand 

worked for a year only at Ajanta Movietone, on the invitation of Mohan 

Bhavnani. Premchand scripted three films—The Mill (1934), Sherdil Aurat 

(1935), and Navjeevan (1935). He was soon disillusioned by the highly commercial 

milieu of the film world and quit Bombay for good in 1935. Other famous 

Hindi writers of the renaissance period, Bhagwati Charan Verma and Amritlal 

Nagar, had similar experiences. Some distinguished Hindi poets and writers 

who did become successful were Ramachandra Narayanji Dwivedi alias 

“kavi” Pradeep, Bharat Vyas, Pandit Mukhram Sharma “Ashant,” J. S. Kashyap 

(an early screenwriter with Bombay Talkies), Dr. Dhaniram “Prem,” Sambhal 

Lal Shrivastava “Anuj,” Pandit Indra, Pandit Sudarshan, Pandit Shiv Kumar, 

Pandit Naratom Vyas, Narendra, Pandit Bhushan, Gopal Singh Bhopali, and 

Shailendra. 

Thus, given the greater number of leading Urdu literary personalities offering 

their service to writing for the cinematic medium, in comparison to their


47 

doubtful and fleetingly interested 

Hindi counterparts, 

ensured that Hindustani (a 

mix of Hindi and Urdu languages), 

instead of pure Hindi, 

became the lingua franca of 

Bombay cinema. Most scripts 

of the post-Independence 

era—from India’s medieval 

century Mughal dynastyinspired, 

epic costume dramas 

were costume-dramas (K. 

Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, 1960) to 

luminous poetic laments 

(Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa, 1957), 

Kundan Lal Saigal and Jamuna in New Theatres’ 1930s’ classic, 

Devdas, which has been remade over fifteen times since 

in India’s various language cinemas, including Bollywood. 

 


comedies (Subodh 

Mukherjee’s Paying Guest, 1957), or social tragedies (Bimal Roy’s Devdas, 1955) 

were all written in the Urdu script. 

These writing opportunities induced the migration of Muslim litterateurs 

writing in Urdu, primarily from northern and central India. The cessation of 

filmmaking in the New Theatres by the mid-1950s saw some of its finest technical 

and directorial talents—Nitin Bose, Kidar Nath Sharma, and Bimal Roy— 

come to Bombay for better career prospects. Bimal Roy went on to become one 

of the most influential and critically acclaimed directors in Bombay cinema in 

the 1950s and ’60s, winning seven Best Director honors at the Filmfare Awards, 

instituted in the 1950s as a Bollywood equivalent of the Oscars. The “Bimal 

Roy School of Filmmaking,” continuing the sensibilities of New Theatres, gave 

rise to another generation of auteurs of “purposeful entertainment,” such as 

Asit Sen, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Gulzar—all of whom had started their 

careers as technicians in Roy’s films. 

Another Bombay cinema auteur of consequence who came from a premier 

talkie era studio was V. Shantaram, of the Prabhat Film Company, who started 

his own studio, Rajkamal Kalamandir (est. 1942). It set the template for socially 

relevant musicals, with strong regional folk and classical roots, presented in 

Hindustani and treated in a way that was universally acceptable. Prabhat 

had also been the training ground for Guru Dutt, the “Orson Welles of Indian 

cinema,” and the “evergreen” actor-director Dev Anand, a leading star from the 

1950s’ influential acting triumvirate and one of India’s all-time favorite style 

icons and romantic heroes. 

Meanwhile, the acting discoveries of Bombay Talkies—Ashok Kumar and, 

especially, Dilip Kumar—went on to become an acting reference for generations 

of subsequent actors. Another multi-tasking apprentice at the Bombay

48 

Bollywood FAQ 

Talkies, Raj Kapoor, went on to become Bollywood’s “most successful showman” 

of the studio’s All-India Film format, as an auteur adept in every discipline 

of the film craft: direction, production, acting, casting—even music. 

Bombay Cinema Becomes India’s National Cinema 

It can be argued that had the partition of India not happened in 1947, Bombay 

would have remained just another among the five-leading movie making centers 

in pre-partition India. While Calcutta had been steadily establishing itself 

as a center for cinematic excellence of international caliber (which it did eventually 

achieve through its Bengali film industry, post–Satyajit Ray’s Apu 

Trilogy, 1955–1959), Lahore, with its successful cracking of a template for a hit 

all-India musical, could have become a popular production hub for musical 

blockbusters. The influence of the Punjabi culture, especially on the music of 

Hindi cinema, continues undiminished in a plethora of actors and directors, 

from the Chopras (B. R. Chopra and Yash Chopra) and the Kapoors (Prithviraj 

Kapoor and his dynasty of actors), to the Deols (Dharmendra and sons), 

Kumars (Rajendra Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Akshay Kumar), and Singhs 

(Ranveer). 

Bimal Roy (left) on the set of Do Bigha Zameen. 



49 

Calcutta extended its creative influence not only through its bhadralok 

(gentleman) directors, but also by lending a refined sense of storytelling 

through the influx of Bengali producers (like Shashadhar Mukherjee, cofounder 

of Filmistan Studio, est. 1942), Bengali actors (like Ashok Kumar and 

Pradeep Kumar, who countered the Punjabi heroes’ machismo with their soft 

and sensitive romanticism), technicians, singers (Manna Dey, Kishore Kumar, 

and Geeta Dutt), choreographers, and some groundbreaking composers of film 

music, led by S. D. Burman, Salil Chowdhury, Hemant Kumar, and R. D. 

Burman. 

Initally, the influence of south India on Bombay cinema was comparatively 

less due to the language barrier and the former’s delayed emergence 

as an industry capable of making films with pan-Indian appeal. Talent 

contribution from the southern cinemas on the national scene hence, first 

happened onscreen through its actors with the debut of Vyjayanthimala 

in Bahar (The Spring, 1951), the Hindi remake of her debut in Madras-based 

AVM Productions’ Vaazhkai 

(Life, 1949). She became the 

first south Indian heroine 

to become a Bollywood star, 

paving the way for others. 

Her subsequent emergence as 

the leading female dancing 

star of Bombay cinema in the 

1950s–1960s made training in 

an Indian classical dance form 

de rigueur. Four of the five leading 

ladies who went on to rule 

the Bollywood box-office in subsequent 

decades—Hema Malini 

(1970s), Sridevi (1980s), Madhuri 

Dixit (1990s), Aishwarya Rai 

(2000s), and Deepika Padukone 

(2010s)—all (except Madhuri) 

hailed from south India, with 

Hema Malini and Sridevi also 

making their debuts in such 

southern Indian film industries 

as Vyjayanthimala. South India’s 

behind-the-screen contribution 

started with S. S. Vasan’s successful 

bilingual experiment, 

Chandralekha (1948), following 

Vyjayanthimala, a dancer-actress from south India, who 

became a successful Bollywood leading lady with her 

debut in Bahar. 


50 

Bollywood FAQ 

which, many leading Madras-based studios and filmmakers joined the trend 

of making Hindi-Tamil/Telegu bilinguals. These ranged from low-budget 

remakes of hit local socials to highly emotional, action spectacles. 

The regional but influential Marathi cinema shut down its scattered 

Maharashtra hinterland-based filmmaking centers in Nashik (after Phalke) 

and Pune (after Prabhat) to make Bombay its preferred production destination. 

Talented Marathi actors and technicians (Shobhana Samarth, Nutan, 

Dr. Shriram Lagoo, Vijay Tendulkar, Dr. Mohan Agashe, Nilu Phule, Vikram 

Gokhale, etc.), first through Shantaram’s Rajkamal Studios and subsequently 

independently, started making their mark in the national Hindi cinema. 

The pre-partition criss-crossing of film industry talents, especially between 

Lahore, Calcutta, and Bombay now had only one direction to take. 

India’s National Cinema Becomes Synonymous 

with Bollywood 

By the turn of the 1970s, Indian cinema had arrived on the world stage with 

an identity of its own. This was the decade India overtook the United States 

as the world’s largest producer of films, and the term Bollywood—combining 

the words Bombay and Hollywood—was coined. This had been the outcome of 

a steady increase in the popularity of its “song-dance-dialogue-and-emotion”– 

driven format that had been growing since the global success of Raj Kapoor’s 

Awara (The Vagabond, 1951), which became the first Indian film to achieve boxoffice 

success across the Middle East, the erstwhile USSR, China, and Eastern 

Europe. Critical acclaim, too, had started coming its way with Chetan Anand’s 

Neecha Nagar (Lowly City, 1946) winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film 

Festival in 1946, and the enthusiastic response to Satyajit Ray’s realistic Apu 

Trilogy (1955–1958) at various international film festivals, though made from 

the Bengali language cinema capital of Calcutta. 

Bollywood was now India’s most influential film industry and the host and 

aspiration destination for those in every field of cinematic creativity—direction, 

acting, music, storytelling, technical brilliance, and genre experimentation. 

With the arrival of the first pan-Indian superstar, Rajesh Khanna, at the 

cusp of the 1960s, the ascendancy and consolidation of Amitabh Bachchan, 

from the mid-1970s on, followed by Sholay, the single-biggest movie game 

changer and narrative influencer in the history of Indian cinema, Bollywood— 

or the Hindustani-speaking cinema made out of Bombay—overtook the simultaneously 

existing, ten distinct regional Indian movie industries, encompassing 

multiple languages, from Assamese to Marathi, Punjabi to Malayalam, 

to become the National Cinema of India, in numbers, resources, notion, and 

influence. Simultaneously, the box-office success and creative replication of the


51 

Bombay/Mumbai cinema’s now-perfected, signature All-India Film template as 

a distinct film genre and cinematic style known as Bollywood, had made the 

term both a noun and an adjective. 

The convergence of the best creative talents from every filmmaking discipline, 

which had its start in the first decade of India’s independence, continues 

undiminished in the twenty-first century, irrespective of the emergence of 

at least ten other regional language industries across India. That attraction 

now extends beyond the subcontinent in the plethora of technical talents 

from across the globe, including Pakistan, working in Bollywood today. But 

what was—a century ago—merely a curiosity has emerged as the world’s most 

prolific and most watched, second-most influential film industry.

4 

Breaking Ground 

Significant Firsts in the History 

of Indian Cinema 

The first in every sphere of life—public or personal—is a dearly held 

life note. We all remember our first encounters with a fondness that 

is unique to that experience—first ride, first home, first holiday, first job, first 

movie experience . . . In the context of an industry like filmmaking, whose 

existence is so integral to the beautiful and the aspirational in the human 

imagination, the “first,” is also a celebration of the daring and vision, the 

dreams and ambitions of not just those making that effort, but also the millions 

who benefit from every entrepreneurship in creativity. Here’s a listing 

of landmark first moments in the history of Bollywood, both the entertaining 

and the inspirational, which share a wealth of trivia and celebrate trailblazers 

who have shaped the growth and rise of the Bollywood story to that of a 

cherished world cinema saga. 

1896—The First Movie Advertisement for the First 

Film Screening 

Cinema is born on December 28, 1895, in the basement of the Grand Café in 

Paris. Ten films by the Lumière brothers, Louis and Auguste, are screened in a 

room, interestingly called the “Salon Indien,” thus indirectly connecting, almost 

in a tangential way, India to the moment of cinema’s birth. Six months later, the 

Lumière Cinématographe—a film camera which also serves as a projector and a 

printer—is brought to India, and on July 7, 1896, movies are viewed for the first 

time in south Bombay’s Watson Hotel by a group of people in a public place. 

Marius Sestier, a French chemist-turned-camera-operator who would become 

an agent for the Lumière brothers, showcases some of their first films: Entry 

of Cinematographe, Arrival of a Train, The Sea Bath, A Demolition, Leaving the 

Factory, and Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels. Four shows are organized every evening 

from July 6–10, for an admission fee of only one rupee.


53 

The first cinema advertisements appear on the morning of July 7, 1896, in 

the Bombay Gazette and the Times of India, with the headline, “The Marvel 

of the Century!” with a subheading, “The wonder of the world!!” It is an open 

invitation to come and experience “living photographic pictures in life-sized 

reproductions.” 

1898—First Films 

A year after the first movie showcase at Bombay’s Watson Hotel in 1896, India’s 

culturo-visual and geographical diversity become a buzzing inspirational 

backdrop for a number of showmen. Interestingly, academics are the first 

to experiment with the invention. A “Professor” Anderson, with assistance 

from his wife, “billed as Madamoiselle Blanche,” filmed A Train Arriving at 

Churchgate Station (in Bombay) and Poona Races sometime in 1898, presenting 

them at a Christmas show on his eponymous Andersonoscopograph Projector. 

(These remain the first documents of Indian life on celluloid.) Simultaneously, 

another professor, this one named Stevenson, shows films as part of his stage 

show at the other premier Indian metro, Calcutta’s Star Theatre. A thirty-twoyear-old 

villager, Hiralal Sen, who happens to be in the audience at one of 

Stevenson’s screenings, contacts the professor-turned-film-distributor and, 

under his guidance, becomes the first Indian to make celluloid recordings of 

real life: Scenes from the Flower of Persia and A Panorama of Indian Scenes and 

Processions. On April 4, 1898, he and a few members of his family establish the 

Royal Bioscope Company to become a pioneer film-show organizer in Calcutta 

and its surrounding regions. 

1899—First Use of the Cine-Camera 

Photographer Harishchandra Sakharam Bhadavdekar, who has had a photo 

studio in Bombay since 1880, imports a motion picture camera from London 

for twenty-one guineas. He films a wrestling match at Bombay’s Hanging 

Gardens. Processed in London, it becomes the first documentary film to be 

shot in India. Bhadavdekar goes on to make many more short films on various 

subjects, thus kicking off the filmmaking dream in India with gusto. 

1902—First Bioscope Show 

Producer-distributor J. F. Madan launches regular Bioscope showings in a tent 

in Calcutta’s maidan (fair grounds). His enterprise lays the foundation for an

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Bollywood FAQ 

extensive exhibition and distribution network that will dominate the silent era 

in the entire Indian subcontinent, along with Sri Lanka and Burma. Bombay in 

the west, and Madras in the south, become the next major Indian city destinations 

to screen short films in tent shows at fairs and theaters. 

1907—First Indian Cinema Hall 

The Elphistone Picture Palace is opened by J. F. Madan in Calcutta, the first in 

a chain of cinemas that will grow to more than a hundred by the dawn of the 

talkie era, two decades later. 

1912—First Indian Fiction Film 

Pundalik, based on a play by Ramrao Kirtikar of the life of an Indian saintpoet, 

and co-directed by Nanabhai Govind Chitre and Ramchandra Gopal 

Torney, is released on May 18, 1912, at the Coronation Cinematograph. The 

twenty-two-minute-long film features the recording of a theatrical performance, 

filmed with a Bourne & Shepherd camera, which was manufactured 

by a British national named Johnson. 

1913—The First Full-Length Indian Feature Film 

Dhundiraj Govind Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra) is unanimously 

acclaimed as the first feature film to be made by an all-Indian cast and 

crew out of India. Based on a subplot from the Indian epics, Ramayana and 

Mahabharata, the film launches the silent era in Indian cinema. The four-reel 

film, or approximately forty minutes in length, premieres on April 21, 1913, at 

the Olympia Theatre for a selective audience, including famous Bombay-based 

personalities and editors. Its first public showcase is held on May 3, 1913, at 

Coronation Cinema, with Phalke employing dancers to attract crowds. After 

a lukewarm beginning, the film picks up through positive word-of-mouth 

reviews and educative advertisements about the cinematic medium, drawing 

huge crowds. The film’s grand success paves the way for a prolific Indian 

film industry, with Phalke leading the creative burst by making more than a 

hundred feature films.


55 

1913—First Heroine 

A young boy, Salunkhe, plays the first heroine, Queen Taramati, in Dadasaheb 

Phalke’s Raja Harischandra. This casting choice was made by Phalke after 

being turned down repeatedly by girls—even the prostitutes of Bombay refuse 

to appear onscreen. In the early 1900s, to be captured on celluloid is considered 

to be a sacrilege for Indian women. However, when Harishchandra becomes a 

sensation, Phalke has no problem finding female actors. Two women, Durgabai 

Kamat and her daughter Kamlabai Gokhale, pave the way for actresses to join 

Indian cinema. Durgabai portrays Goddess Parvati, and Kamlabai is Mohini 

in Dadasaheb Phalke’s second film, Mohini Bhasmasur (1913). Thus, Kamlabai 

Gokhale is the first female heroine of Indian cinema. 

1913—First Hero 

Dattatraya Damodar Dabke becomes the first hero, playing the titlular role in 

India’s first full-length feature, Raja Harishchandra (1913). 

1915—First Animation Film 

Agkadyanchi Mouj, made by Phalke, is the first animation film after his earlier 

unreleased attempt, The Growth of the Pea Plant, in 1912. 

1916—First South Indian Film 

Keechak Vadha (The Killing of Keechak), by R. Nataraja Mudaliar, becomes the 

first full-length film to be made in south India. 

1917—First Double Role 

Dadasaheb Phalke casts Anna Salunke, the actor who had played Rani 

Taramati in Raja Harishchandra, in a double role in Lanka Dahan (Lanka 

Aflame). He plays both the lead parts of the hero and Hindu god, Lord Rama 

and his wife Sita. Reports of the day have noted that people remove their 

shoes as an act of sanctity, the way they would upon entering a temple, when 

Salunke’s Lord Rama appears on the screen.

56 

Bollywood FAQ 

Dattatraya Damodar Dabke (left) and Salunkhe in Raja Harishchandra. 

 


1918—First Hollywood-Trained Indian 

Suchet Singh trains in cinema techniques in the United States, working with 

Charlie Chaplin. 

1919—First Child Star 

Mandakini, daughter of Dadashaeb Phalke, becomes India’s first child star. She 

enacts the role of the young Krishna in Phalke’s Kaliya Mardan (The Killing of 

Snake Kaliya, 1917). 

1919—First Bengali Film 

The first Bengali feature film, Bilwa Mangal, directed by Jyotish Bannerjee for J. F. 

Madan’s Madan Theatres, is released. It lays the foundation for the (later) globally 

acclaimed Bengali-language cinema industry in the eastern part of India.


57 

1920—First Foreign Talent Collaborations 

Suchet Singh’s Shakuntala is the first Indian film to feature American actress 

Dorothy Kingdom as its leading lady. Nala Damayanti (The Love Story of Nala 

and Damayanti), India’s first international co-production (with Italy) made by 

Madan Theatres and directed by Italian director Eugenio De Liguoro, is also 

released. 

1921—First Social Film 

Bilet Pherat (The Foreign-Returned) is the first Indian film to be set in a contemporary 

setting at a time when costume dramas and mythological were the 

most commonly made genres. A satire and an early social-drama, it marks the 

directorial debut of silent era auteur Dhirendranath Ganguly. 

1921—First Censorship Controversy 

Kajibhai Rathod’s Bhakt Vidur (Devotee Vidur), released around the time of the 

imposition of the British government’s Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes 

Act of 1919 (popularly known as the Rowlatt Act or the Black Act), is banned in 

Madras and Karachi, citing some of the act’s restrictions on freedom of expression. 

The irony is that the saint depicted in this devotional film was perceived 

to be “politically subversive.” 

1923—First Film Poster 

Artist-turned-filmmaker Baburao Painter creates a poster for his film Maya 

Bazaar (A Market of Illusions). 

1926—First Female Producer and Director 

Fatma Begum starts her own production company, Fatma Films (which subsequently 

becomes the Victoria-Fatma Film), to become Indian cinema’s first 

female producer. She becomes its first female director with the release of 

Bulbul-e-Parastaan (The Nightingale from the Land of Fairies, 1926). A delightful 

big-budget fairy tale, Bulbul-e-Parastaan, was made in the style of oriental 

extravaganzas that remained popular until the 1960s. Fatma had started her

58 

Bollywood FAQ 

Fatma Begum. 


career acting in Urdu plays before joining the celluloid world in Ardheshir 

Irani’s Veer Abhimanyu (Brave Abhimanyu, 1922). She made the first of her eight 

silent films in 1926. Other popular films of her production house included Heer 

Ranjha, Shakuntala, and Naseeb Ka Devi (The Goddess of Fate). 

1928—First South Indian Social 

Vigathakumaran (The Lost Child) premieres in Trivandrum as the first South 

Indian social-drama feature. The film is not a success, and its director and 

leading actor, J. C. Daniel, never make another. Nevertheless, it marks the birth 

of India’s other critically acclaimed art-house cinema industry in Malayalam, 

after Bengal, in the southern state of Kerala.


59 

1929—First Lip-Lock 

Actress Seeta Devi (real name: Renee Smith) and Charu Roy enact the first 

on-camera kissing scene in a silent period-drama, Prapancha Pash (A Throw 

of Dice), directed by Germany’s Franz Osten. Some reports indicate that Lalita 

Pawar was the first leading lady to be on the receiving end of a kiss, in Pati 

Bhakti (Devotion to Husband), made in 1922. No visual or filmic evidence of 

the latter exists. 

1929—First Silver Jubilee at Box Office 

Priyanath Ganguly’s adaptation of revolutionary writer-poet Bankim Chandra 

Chattopadhyay’s romantic social-tragedy, Kapalkundala, is the first Indian film 

to achieve a “silver jubilee” run of twenty-five weeks. 

1930—First Film Society 

The first Indian film society, Punjab Cinema Art Society, is founded in Lahore 

(present-day Pakistan). 

1931—The First Sound Film and the First Film Song 

Alam Ara, meaning “Ornament of the World,” is the first Indian sound film, 

produced and directed by pioneer filmmaker-distributor Ardheshir Irani. 

Aware of the impact that sound would have on cinema, Irani, under his 

Imperial Films Company banner, pipped many prominent Indian filmmakers 

and studios of his time to not only make India’s first talking film, but also the 

first talkie films of other Asian countries, like Burma, Indonesia, and Iran. 

The film had a significant Hollywood connection: sound technician Wilford 

Deming started the film’s sound recording process, even though Irani eventually 

recorded most of the sound himself. Given the centrality of romance as a 

dominant recurring theme in Hindi cinema, Alam Ara (based on a Parsi play 

written by Joseph David), was, predictably, a love story between a gypsy girl 

and a prince. The highlight jewel of this Ornament of the World, advertised as 

India’s first “All-Talking, Singing and Dancing,” is the introduction of the song 

feature, which would become an integral embellishment in Indian cinematic 

storytelling. 

The film has seven songs, composed by Indian cinema’s first music director, 

Phiroz Shah Mistry; “De de khuda ke naam par . . .” (“Give alms in the name

60 

Bollywood FAQ 

of the Lord . . . ”) is the first to 

appear. It is sung and picturized 

by Wazir Mohammed 

Khan, who plays a fakir (a wandering 

mendicant) in the film. 

“De de khuda ke” can thus be 

considered the parent of the 

millions of songs that have 

been since strumming, shaping, 

and swaying the Indian 

musical consciousness. It was 

recorded live with the musical 

accompaniment of a harmonium 

and a tabla (an Indian 

hand drum). According to 

auteur-director Shyam Benegal, 

“Alam Ara was not just a talkie. 

It was a talking and singing 

film with more singing and less 

talking. It had a number of 

songs that actually set the template 

for the kind of films that 

An advertisement in Bombay Chronicle announcing the 

release of India’s first talkie, Alam Ara, in 1931. Photo were made later.” The film and 

its music became instant hits. 

Incidentally, the police had to 

be summoned to control crowds at the film’s premiere at Bombay’s Majestic 

Cinema on March 14, 1931. Unfortunately, no prints of the film are known to 

exist, though its plot has been retold onscreen multiple times since. 

courtesy of NFAI 

1928—First Film Family 

Prithviraj Kapoor joins the Imperial Films Company in Bombay in 1928. He 

debuts as an extra in Do Dhari Talwar (Two-Edged Sword, 1928), but is elevated 

to leading roles by his third film, Cinema Girl (1929). His ten-year-old son Raj 

Kapoor made his debut in an early talkie, Inquilab (Revolution, 1935). His first 

leading role was in the 1947 romance Neel Kamal (Blue Lotus). A year later, 

he debuted as a director with his own banner studio, RK Films. All films of 

the banner begin with a prelude video of the Kapoor family patriarch and 

founder, Prithviraj, reciting an invocation to Lord Shiva. Prithviraj’s other 

two sons, Shammi Kapoor and Shashi Kapoor, became leading stars of the 

1960s; their wives, Geeta Bali and Jennifer Kendal, were actresses. Raj Kapoor’s


61 

three sons—Randhir, Rishi, and Rajiv Kapoor—had independent careers as 

actor-directors, though Rishi Kapoor became the leading romantic star for 

two decades, the 1970s and ’80s; he is still going strong in character roles. 

Randhir’s wife, Babita, and Rishi’s wife, Neetu Singh, were leading heroines of 

the ’60s and the ’70s, respectively. Even Raj’s brothers-in-law, Prem Nath and 

Rajendranath, were successful character actors in the ’60s and ’70s. Randhir 

Kapoor and Babita’s daughters, Karishma and Kareena Kapoor, took the family’s 

acting legacy to new heights as Bollywood’s most successful heroines of 

the 1990s and 2000s, respectively, while Rishi Kapoor’s son, Ranbir Raj Kapoor, 

who made his debut with the Sony Pictures Entertainment co-production 

Saawariya (My Love) in 2007. Between them, the Kapoor family members have 

Prithviraj Kapoor’s youngest son, Shashi Kapoor (right), and grandsons 

Randhir (left) and Rishi Kapoor (middle) celebrate Holi, the Indian Festival 

of Colours. 


62 

Bollywood FAQ 

been featured in at least a quarter of the entire Bollywood film output since 

the rise of Prithviraj in the 1930s. No wonder they are referred to fondly as the 

industry’s “first family.” 

1931—First Regional Talkie Films 

Sound movies are released in India’s other leading regional-language cinema 

industries. H. M. Reddy’s historical Kalidas, in Tamil, and devotional Bhakta 

Prahlad (Devotee Prahlad), in Telegu, usher in south India’s talkie era. 

1931—The First Talking Star 

Zubeida Begum Dhanrajgir, heroine of Alam Ara (1931), becomes India’s first 

talking star. Though the film had other prominent newcomers, like Prithviraj 

Kapoor and Master Vithal, Zubeida was the first to court and experience 

instant stardom following the film’s release. Hailing from a royal family, 

Zubeida was a beautiful princess who opted to act in films when it was considered 

a social taboo and a profession of disrepute. She was the daughter of 

India’s first female producer-director, Fatma Begum and the Nawab of Sachin 

(a state in western India). 

Starting her career in silent films at the age of twelve, Zubeida shot to fame 

with Alam Ara, her biggest hit, wowing all with her singing, dancing, and 

speaking skills to command wages far above those of her contemporaries. 

Through the 1930s and into the 1940s, Zubeida made a hit with her onscreen 

partner, Jal Merchant, in a number of successful mythological and costumedrama 

fantasies. She was also successful in emotional vehicles like Ezra Mir’s 

Zarina (1932), wherein her character of a boisterous circus girl engages in some 

kissing scenes that were steamy enough to spark heated censorship debates. 

She later graduated to complex courtesan roles in stylized Urdu costume 

dramas, as well as more contemporary characters in social dramas. One of 

these, Balidan (Sacrifice, 1927) made a statement about the inhumane ritualistc 

animal sacrifice in certain temples. She also starred in one of the first screen 

adaptations of Saratchandra’s cult novel about a doomed lover, Devdas (1937). 

Zubeida eventually married Maharaj Narsingir Dhanrajgir Gyan Bahadur of 

Hyderabad and converted to Hinduism. She spent her last years in Dhanraj 

Mahal Palace among her children and grandchildren, some of whom went on 

to become prominent industrialists, celebrities, and socialites.


63 

Zubeida Begum Dhanrajgir with Master Vithal in Alam Ara. 

 


1933—First Film in English 

Bombay Talkies’ studio founder and actor-producer, Himanshu Rai, presents 

Karma (Destiny), the first Indian film to be made in English. It premieres in 

London to a favorable box-office reception. The film, directed by J. L. Freer 

Hunt, was a joint production involving India, Germany, and the United 

Kingdom. It also features the first-ever English-language song in an Indian 

film, “Now the moon her light has shed,” sung by Devika Rani. The Hindi version 

of Karma, despite a four-minute-long controversial kissing scene, fails to 

excite Indian audiences.

64 

Bollywood FAQ 

1933—First Color Film 

Rajaram V. Shantaram’s Sairandhri (The Cross Dresser), a costume-dramathriller 

sourced from the epic Mahabharata, is released. India’s first film with 

color sequences is processed and printed in Germany. 

1934—First International Recognitions 

Seeta, is the first Indian talkie to premiere at the Second Venice Film Festival. 

Featuring Durga Khote and Prithviraj Kapoor, it won an Honorary Diploma, 

making Debaki Bose the first Indian director, and Seeta the first Indian film 

to win international recognition. Three years later, Prabhat Film Company’s 

Sant Tukaram (Saint Tukaram, 1936) received a Special Jury mention at the 

Fifth Venice International Film Festival, becoming the first Indian film to 

be so honored. Based on the life and times of spiritual saint-poet Tukaram 

(1608–1650), the film is celebrated as a “human document of great value” in its 

international citation. In India, it becomes the first film to complete a Golden 

Jubilee box-office run, playing at a single theater for more than a year. 

1934—First Female Music Director 

Ishrat Sultana (a.k.a. Bibbo) becomes the first female music director by composing 

the music for the Mughal historical drama Adl-e-Jahangir (The Justice of 

Jehangir, 1934). The following year, actress-singer-producer Jaddan Bai serves 

as the music director of Talash-e-Haq (1935). 

1935—First Playback Film and Singers 

Bhagya Chakra (The Wheel of Fate, 1935) is the first Indian film to use playback 

singing. K. C. Dey, Parul Ghosh, and Suprabha Sarkar reprise their singing 

talents in the film’s Hindi remake, Dhoop Chhaon (Light and Shade). The 

“Father of Indian Film Music,” Raichand Boral, along with the sound recordist 

of Calcutta’s New Theatres studio, Mukul Bose, introduce and implement 

playback singing, which helps free studios and directors from the need to cast 

exclusively singing stars as actors. Playback singing soon becomes a standard 

practice, with actors lip-syncing the song sequences and showcasing their 

talents in other fields of acting and emoting. This widens the scope for talented 

actors to emerge, while playback singers become stars in their own right as the 

voices who keep intact the musical soul of Indian films.


65 

1935—First Stunt Film 

Hunterwali (The Lady with the Whip), starring “Fearless Nadia” (real name: 

Mary Ann Evans), is released to mass hysteria and instant box-office success, 

turning the “stunt film” into a respectable, big-budget genre. 

1936—First Odia-Language Film 

The Odia film industry, from eastern India, bypasses the silent era altogether 

to make its debut with a musical inspired by the epic Ramayana, called Sita 

Bibaha (Sita’s Marriage). It is directed by Mohan Sundar Dev Goswami, a 

Jagannath Temple priest-turned-poet-actor-singer-musician, who is proficient 

in twenty-seven instruments. 

1937—The First Hindi Color Film 

Using the Cinecolor process, whose processing rights were obtained from an 

American company, Ardheshir Irani achieved yet another milestone for Indian 

cinema by making its first color film, Kisan Kanya (The Daughter of a Farmer). 

Earlier, V. Shantaram had produced Sairandhri (1933), which had a few scenes 

in color that were processed and printed in Germany. Kisan Kanya, however, 

was India’s first indigenously made color film, shot and processed in India. 

Directed by Moti. B. Gidwani, the story of Kisan Kanya, based on a novel by 

left-leaning writer-journalist Saadat Hasan Manto, illustrates the plight of 

poor farmers. The story pivots around the life of Ram, a poor peasant who is 

mistreated by his landlord, Ghani. Eventually, Ghani is murdered, and Ram 

becomes the prime suspect. The film’s “relevant and responsible” narrative, told 

with a novel use of color, performs only moderately at the box office. Perhaps 

the film’s grim portrait of reality dissuaded entertainment-seeking audiences 

from making it a success like Irani’s earlier milestone, Alam Ara. 

1937—First Song-less Talkie 

The launch of the talkie era made songs an indispensable element of Indian 

films. However, one film that breaks the trend is J. B. H. Wadia’s Naujawan (The 

New Generation).

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Bollywood FAQ 

1938—First Use of a Camera Crane 

Bombay-based studio Wadia Movietone uses a camera crane, built in its own 

workshop under B. M. Tara’s supervision, to up the shooting quotient in its 

stunt films. 

1938—First Commercial 

Bombay Talkies makes the first officially commissioned advertisement film, 

for Lever’s Dalda cooking oil. The ad agency shaping the creative element is 

Lintas. 

1941—First Trilingual Film 

Modhu Bose’s Raj Nartaki (Court Dancer), made under the Wadia Movietone 

banner and starring classical dancer Sadhana Bose, is made simultaneously in 

English, Bengali, and Hindi. This is one of the first Indian films to be distributed 

in Europe and the United States. Raj Nartaki establishes stunt-filmmaker 

J. B. H. Wadia’s reputation as an intellectual filmmaker. Set in a Northeastern 

Indian hill kingdom in the early nineteenth century, the film explores the 

social barriers in the life of a court dancer. 

1943—First All-India Blockbuster 

The Gyan Mukherjee–directed Bombay Talkies’ social-thriller Kismet (Fate) 

has many “firsts” to its credit. It is the first social film with an anti-hero, the 

first to feature an actor in a dual role, and the first to successfully employ 

Bollywood’s famous “lost-and-found” narrative formula. The film also incorporates 

taboo topics, including pre-marital pregnancy. Kismet set the record 

for running uninterrupted for over three years in a single theater—the Roxy 

Cinema in Calcutta—to become one of the biggest hits in the history of Indian 

cinema. 

1946—First Cannes Winner 

Bollywood auteur Chetan Anand’s debut film as director, Neecha Nagar 

(loosely based on Russian writer Maxim Gorky’s Lower Depths), is the first 

Indian film to share the Grand Prix du Festival (Best Film) Award at the first


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Cannes Film Festival, in 1946. Written by journalist-screenwriter Khwaja 

Ahmed Abbas, Neecha Nagar is considered a pioneering effort in social realism 

in Indian cinema, one that would pave the way for more serious art-house films 

by other directors. The film stars Chetan Anand’s wife, Uma Anand, and Rafiq 

Ahmad, Zohra Sehgal, and introduces Kamini Kaushal. It also marks the debut 

of noted sitar maestro Ravi Shankar as a film music composer. Supported by 

the Indian People’s Theatre Association in its making, Neecha Nagar takes an 

expressionist look at the societal gulf between the rich and the poor. 

1947—First Indian Film Showing in the United States 

V. Shantaram’s Shakuntala (1943) becomes the first Indian feature film to 

be shown commercially in a U.S. theater. According to the New York Times 

review of the film dated December 26, 1947: “The story—call it fairy-tale or just 

plain Hollywood—is strictly boy-meets-girl, forest version, with the inevitable 

reunion. . . . It’s obvious, too, judging by the direction, that an unflinching 

Indian eye has been fixed on Hollywood. But the lovely backgrounds, the 

unabashed naïveté of acting of the entire cast, the crudely rich musical score 

and, above all, the expertly flavorsome English subtitles all blend together to 

make Shakuntala a sturdy screen promise from our Indian friends.” The best of 

Indian cinema continues its North American debut with Ram Rajya (Kingdom 

of Rama, 1943), Shahjehan (Emperor Shahjehan, 1946) and Dr. Kotnis ki Amar 

Kahani (The Immortal Life of Dr. Kotnis, 1946) being shown at the Canadian 

National Exhibition in Toronto. 

1948—First Matinee Idol 

Dev Anand, who had debuted two years earlier in Hum Ek Hain (We Are One, 

1946), becomes independent India’s first matinee idol with the super success 

of Ziddi (Stubborn). He reigns as Bollywood’s ultimate style icon and hero for 

five decades. 

1948—First All-India Hit from the South 

S. S. Vasan’s mammoth drums-and-swords costume-drama and adventureactioner 

Chandralekha is the first film from Madras (south India) to become 

an all-India hit. It establishes India’s south film industry as makers of opulent, 

technologically advanced films.

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Bollywood FAQ 

An elaborate court dance sequence from Sairandhiri. 


1950—First Feature Film Given an “A” Rating 

Akash Chitra’s Hanste Aansu (Smiling Tears), starring the “Venus of the Indian 

Screen,” Madhubala, is the first feature film to receive an “Adults Only” certificate 

in independent India. Social Evil, a docu-drama made in 1929, had been 

the first film to get such a rating. 

1951—First Comedy 

Bhagwan Dada’s Albela (The Unusual), a social-drama featuring many choreographed 

song-and-dance numbers with a comic actor in the lead, becomes the 

first comedy film to emerge as a major box-office hit. 

1951—The First Helen Song 

Cabaret queen Helen, Bollywood’s most iconic dancing star in Westernstyle 

song sequences and one of its most popular onscreen vamps, makes


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her screen debut as a chorus dancer in Awara (The Vagabond) and Shabistan 

(Underground). Seven years later, she would make her debut as a lead dancer 

in Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo (My Name is Chin Chin Choo) in the noir film 

Howrah Bridge (1958). 

1951—First Dream Sequence 

Who can forget Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the “Ghar aaya mera pardesi” (“My 

wandering lover has returned”) dream sequence in Awara (The Vagabond)? An 

ethereal-looking Nargis beckons Raj Kapoor, lying in the depths of hell (represented 

by large hideous mask cut-outs), onto the symbolic steps of heaven, 

unfolding within a sea of twirling clouds. The scene aims to portray the outcast 

hero’s conflicted feelings regarding the future of his class-crossed 

romance. Composer duo Shankar and Jaikishan’s rich orchestration, playback 

singer Lata Mangeshkar’s soothing vocals, and a dynamically changing backdrop 

driven by hordes of choreographed dancing extras combine to make an 

intensely dramatic scene. At nearly ten minutes running time, this remains 

Bollywood’s longest song scene. 

Raj Kapoor and Nargis in the “Ghar aaya mera pardesi” song from Awara. 

 


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Bollywood FAQ 

1952—The First International Film Festival of India 

The first Indian International Film Festival, organized by the Films Division, 

(est. 1949) of the government of India, is inaugurated by the first prime minister 

of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, on February 21, 1952. The festival, held 

initially in Bombay, has traveled to other Indian metros, including Madras, 

Delhi, Calcutta, Trivandrum, and finally to Goa, which has become its permanent 

destination. Forty feature-length films and one hundred short films 

from twenty-three countries were screened at what is the first international 

film festival to be held anywhere in an Asian country. Notable films shown 

during the festival are Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan, and Open City from 

Italy, Yukiwarisoo (Japan), The Dancing Fleece (U.K.), The River (U.S.), and The 

Fall of Berlin (USSR). The films of Italian neo-realist Vittorio De Sica screened 

at the festival make a huge impact on the narrative styles of emerging Indian 

filmmakers in the 1950s. The festival vison was inspired by an extract from 

an ancient Vedic scripture, the Maha Upanishad, stating, “This is for me and 

that is for other—is the thinking of a narrow-minded person. For those who 

are broad-minded, liberals, or noble people, the entire world is one big family.” 

1953—First Technicolor Film 

Independent India opts to make its first major biopic on a character from contemporary 

history. Titled Jhansi Ki Rani (The Queen of Jhansi), the film is based 

on the life story of a valiant female regent of a small kingdom, Rani Laxmibai 

(1828–1858), who rose to become one of the leaders in India’s first battle for 

independence against the British army in 1857. The first Indian film to be 

shot in technicolor, Jhansi Ki Rani was released in both Indian- and Englishlanguage 

versions. Technicians were flown in from Hollywood to make this 

lavish war drama, which was made at a whopping cost of nine million Indian 

rupees! 

1954—The First National and Filmfare Awards 

Indian cinema’s highest honor, the Indian National Film Awards, is introduced. 

The jury-based honors are presented by the president of India to entries 

from all Indian-language cinemas. The Marathi-language film Shyamachi 

Aai (Shyam’s Mother), directed by P. K. Atre, and Jagat Murali’s short film 

Mahabalipuram win the first national award for Best Feature and Best Short 

Film, respectively.


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Bollywood gets its Oscar equivalent in the Clare Awards, named after 

Clare Mendonca, an editor with the national English daily, The Times of India. 

Eventually, the Clares come to be known as the Filmfare Awards, for being 

organized and presented by Filmfare magazine, which was launched in 1953 

to promote serious film journalism. The first Filmfare Awards are presented 

in a short ceremony in five of the most influential categories—Best Film (Do 

Bigha Zameen, Two Acres of Land), Best Director (Bimal Roy), Best Actor (Dilip 

Kumar), Best Actress (Meena Kumari), and Best Music Director (Naushad). 

Held at the Metro Cinema in Bombay, the U.S. ambassador to India, George 

Allen, presides over the function as the chief guest. The post-award party is 

attended by American actor Gregory Peck. 

1957—First Indo-Soviet Co-Production 

Pardesi (Journey Beyond Three Seas), a biopic based on the India travelogues 

of fifteenth century Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin (Oleg Strizhenov), is 

made in association with Russia’s state-owned Mosfilm Studio and Abbas’s 

Naya Sansar International production house. The film depicts Nikitin’s years 

in India (1466–1472), and his falling in love with an Indian girl, Champa 

(Nargis, making her debut in a Russian film). 

1957—First “Best Foreign Film” Oscar Nomination 

Mother India, made by Mehboob Khan, also known as the “Father of Modern 

Indian Cinema,” is India’s first submission in the category of Best Foreign- 

Language Film at the Thirtieth Annual Academy Awards ceremony. Written 

and directed by Mehboob Khan, and starring Nargis, Sunil Dutt, Rajendra 

Kumar, and Raaj Kumar, the film is a remake of Khan’s Aurat (1940). The film 

revolves around the epic struggle of an abandoned farm woman, Radha, who 

single-handedly cultivates the land, raises her sons, and survives the evil 

machinations of a money lender, as well as other trials and tribulations. The 

film achieves a unique moral climax when Radha kills her dearly beloved 

younger rebel son Birju in order to save the honor of a village girl. Her refusal 

to compromise her morals, despite the harshest of challenges, makes Radha 

the onscreen epitome of the ideal Indian woman. 

The title of the film was chosen to counter American author Katherine 

Mayo’s polemical book Mother India (published in 1927) that vilified Indian 

society, religion, and culture. The interplay of various socio-cultural themes 

and its maker Mehboob Khan’s discernible socialist leanings have triggered 

much scholarly discourse. Allusions to Hindu mythology, too, abound in the

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Bollywood FAQ 

film, along with a strong sense of nationalism and nation-building. Released 

in the first decade of independent India, the film Mother India thus became a 

metaphoric representation of the imagined and aspired for ideas of the “ideal 

Indian citizen.” 

Mother India was shot in Bombay’s iconic Mehboob Studios, with location 

shooting in the villages of northern and western India. The film’s music, by 

Naushad, introduced Western classical music and Hollywood-styled orchestrations 

to Hindi cinema. Described by critics as “India’s most revered film,” 

Mother India is a cultural classic and cinematic icon, one that is always high on 

the list of Bollywood’s “all-time greatest films.” This watershed moment in the 

globally acclaimed story of Hindi cinema famously lost the Best Foreign Film 

Oscar—by only one vote—to Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. 

1959—First Cinemascope Film 

Auteur Guru Dutt pushes the envelope of cinematic technology to make the 

first Cinemascope film, Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers). India’s first widescreen 

offering features a rare “close-view” introspection of its own film industry, 

is shot with Cinemascope lenses from 20th Century-Fox. Dutt’s critical 

commentary on the fleeting loyalties of the film industry was rejected by the 

audience; in retrospect, it may have simply been ahead of its time. It is now 

recognized as a classic and a prime contribution to the limited self-reflective 

genre of “films on the movie industry.” The poignant musical score by S. D. 

Burman, the thought-provoking lyrics penned by Kaifi Azmi (the “Waqt ne kiya 

kya haseen situm . . . ” (“Oh what a beautiful tragedy time has wrought . . .”), 

play against the silhouettes and silent close-ups of its lead actors. The stunning 

visuals in black and white make Kaagaz Ke Phool the most profound cinematic 

achievement in the exquisite (but limited) filmography of the “Orson Welles of 

Bollywood,” Guru Dutt. The film tells, in flashback, the story of Suresh Sinha 

(Guru Dutt), a famous film director, his failed marriage, his romantic associations 

with a poor girl named Shanti (Waheeda Rahman), whom he grooms into 

a star. The two later separate, which leads to tragic consequences. 

1960—First Post-Independence Songless Film 

Post-Independence Indian cinema’s first talkie to eschew the use of songs, B. R. 

Chopra’s Kanoon (The Law), is a courtroom drama which tells the story of a 

defense lawyer in a murder case who suspects his would-be father-in-law (i.e., 

the judge himself) of being the culprit.


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1960—First Film Institute 

The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), an autonomous educational 

institution funded by the government of India, is established on the erstwhile 

Prabhat Film Company’s studio premises in Pune, to introduce trained actors 

and technicians into the film industry. Its alumni go on to play major roles in 

shaping and sustaining a “New Wave of Movie Making” that comes to dominate 

the space for critical acclaim and serious cinema in India’s post-1970s 

cinema. 

1961—First Wordless Film 

Ingeet (Gestures), the first wordless Indian film (since the silent era), is 

produced. 

1964—First Film in Switzerland 

The snowy slopes of Switzerland make their Bollywood debut in the song 

sequences of some of Raj Kapoor’s romantic blockbuster Sangam (The Union), 

revolving around two men who are in love with the same woman. The film’s 

success and visual appeal of its unfamiliar locations trigger a trend in the 

1960s to shoot song sequences, or entire films, depicting breezy romantic 

adventures—Love in Tokyo (1966), An Evening in Paris (1967), Night in London 

(1967), etc.—all set in foreign cities. 

1964—First Solo-Actor Film 

Yaadein (Memories), an experimental, psychological, black-and-white drama, 

is released. Directed, produced, and acted by Sunil Dutt, it enters the Guinness 

Book of World Records in the category “Fewest actors in a narrative film.” The 

only other actor in the film is Nargis, seen as a silhouette in the film’s final 

scene. Yaadein is structured as the soliloquy of a man who, on returning to an 

empty home, fears that his wife and child have left him. This triggers reminiscences 

about his life with them, along with admitted regrets of his past 

indiscretions.

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Bollywood FAQ 

1967—First 70mm Film 

Filmmaker Pachhi’s romcom Around the World is shot in 70mm and stereophonic 

sound. The first Bollywood film to be shot in multiple locations, it 

features Raj Kapoor as an Indian protagonist who travels around the world 

with just eight dollars. The sum is a reference to the number of dollars (or an 

equivalent in foreign currency) that Indian citizens were permitted by the 

government to carry with them while traveling out of the country. It is also a 

mild pun on the Jules Verne title Around the World in Eighty Days. 

1970—First Dadasaheb Phalke Award 

In the centennial anniversary of the “Father of Indian Cinema,” Dadasaheb 

Phalke (1870–1944), the Indian government institutes its most prestigious 

award for lifetime achievement for members of the film industry who have 

made an influential/pioneering contribution in one or multiple disciplines of 

the cinematic craft. The co-owner of Bombay Talkies, actress-turned-entrepreneur 

Devika Rani Roerich, also known as the “First Lady of Indian Cinema,” 

becomes the first recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 1969. 

1972—First Horror Film 

With the release of Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (Six Feet Underground), the 

Ramsay Brothers spearhead India’s answer to low-budget gore-and-horror 

films to become almost synonymous with the genre. Earlier films, dealing with 

themes of reincarnation and ghosts, were more accurately musical-thrillers 

than horror films. 

1977—First Actor to Become Chief Minister 

Tamil cinema superstar and matinee idol M. G. Ramachandran (1917–1987) is 

the first Indian actor to become a popularly elected head of an Indian state. 

In 1972, he starts his own political party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra 

Kazhagam (or AIADMK, an acronym for All India Anna Dravidian Progress 

Federation). Five years later (1977), he becomes the chief minister of the south 

Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He served in this capacity for ten years until his 

death, in 1987. The following year, Ramachandran was posthumously awarded 

India’s highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India), the first Indian 

film personality to be so honored.


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1983—First Indian Oscar Winner 

Veteran costume designer Bhanu Athaiya, who worked on more than a 

hundred films beginning in the 1950s, becomes the first Indian to win the 

Academy Award (in the category of Costume Design) for her work in Richard 

Attenbourgh’s Gandhi (1982). The biopic of the Mahatma, made in English and 

Hindi, becomes the most popular foreign film at the Indian box-office. 

1984—First 3-D Film 

Director Jijo Punnoose’s My Dear Kuttichathan (My Dear Little Ghost), a 

Malayalam-language film, achieves another technological leap by using 

3-D technology. Made under the Navodaya Films banner, its dubbed Hindi 

version, Chhota Chetan (Little Chetan), whips up a frenzy at the pan-Indian 

box-office, earning 600 million rupees (a rare feat for a children’s adventure 

film), between 1984–1985. The film would go on to win the President’s Gold 

Medal for Best Children’s Film, and was re-released with additional footage 

and a digital sound upgrade in 1998. The first Hindi 3-D movie, Shiva Ka Insaaf 

(Shiva’s Justice), was released in 1985 and featured then-leading Bollywood 

actor Jackie Shroff, but it couldn’t match up to the box-office success of Chhota 

Chetan, resulting in a gradual fade-out of the 3-D film genre until its post-2000s 

revival. 

1987—First Modern Silent Film 

Pushpaka Vimana (The Love Chariot, renamed as Pushpak in Hindi) reinvents 

the genre of the silent movie. Directed by experimental auteur Singeetam 

Srinivasa Rao, the black comedy has actor-director Kamal Haasan as the lead 

character of an unemployed young man who masquerades as a rich hotel 

guest. There are some bizarre consequences to his actions, such as when a 

hired assassin arrives to kill the guest he is impersonating. The film ran in a 

Bangalore theater for thirty-five record-breaking weeks. 

1994—First Dolby Sound Film 

Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s classic-style period romance, and music maestro R. D. 

Burman’s swan song, 1942—A Love Story (1994), is heralded for its advanced 

sound engineering, with the introduction of Dolby sound.

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Bollywood FAQ 

1996—First Film on Homosexuality 

Academy Award–nominated director Deepa Mehta’s Fire, the first film in her 

Elements Trilogy (Earth, 1998, and Water, 2005), creates a furor over its open 

depiction of a lesbian relationship between two bored and ignored housewives 

who also happen to be sisters-in-law, in a Delhi suburb. The film is 

initially passed, uncut, by India’s Censor Board (the Central Board of Film 

Certification) in May 1998 with an Adult rating and played to full houses in 

most metropolitan cities across India for almost three weeks, in November 

1998. However, following the vandalization of theaters in a few prominent 

cities by right-wing political groups who objected to the film’s subject matter, 

it was referred to the censor board for re-examination in December 1998. 

1997—First (and Only) Actor to Win a Best Actress 

Award 

Nirmal Pandey’s powerful portrayal of a transvestite in actor-director Amol 

Palekar’s Daayra (Limits, 1996) fetched him a Best Actress award, which he 

shared with the film’s female lead, Sonali Kulkarni, at the Valenciennes Film 

Festival in France in 1997. 

1997—First Multiplex 

PVR Anupam, with four screens, is the first multiplex to open in India’s 

national capital of New Delhi. 

1998—First Film to Enter U.K. Top-10 

Auteur Mani Ratnam’s complex, musical love story between a journalist and a 

terrorist (a female suicide bomber), Dil Se . . . (From the Heart) fails to impress 

audiences in India, becoming the first indigenous film to bomb at home but 

achieve critical and commercial success abroad. Screened at multiple international 

film festivals, Dil Se . . . won a “Special Mention” NETPAC (Network 

for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Award at the Berlin International Film 

Festival and became the first Indian film to enter the Top-10 box-office winners 

in the United Kingdom. Even two months after its release, in September 1998, 

the film was reportedly still being screened on five screens, five times a day, at 

the Cineworld complex in West London.


77 

Nandita Das (left) and Shabana Azmi on a poster of Deepa Mehta’s Fire. 

 


1999—First Film in U.S. Top-20 

Subhash Ghai’s Taal (Rhythm), a romantic musical featuring Miss World 

Aishwarya Rai and Anil Kapoor, of Slumdog Millionaire fame, and boasting one 

of A. R. Rahman’s finest scores, becomes the first Hindi motion picture to enter 

the U.S. Top 20 on Variety’s weekly domestic box-office report. It is also the 

first film for which producer-director Ghai’s banner, Mukta Arts, took out an 

insurance policy of eleven crore rupees against unforeseen shooting schedule 

disturbances or accidents. Thus, the film industry—almost eight decades since 

its first release—finally addressed the demand for risk cover against mishaps 

prior to release.

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Bollywood FAQ 

2000—First Indian International Film Awards 

The first Indian International Film Awards (IIFA) takes place in London’s 

Millennium Dome. Its voting academy is formed by leading members of 

Bollywood to promote Indian cinema globally and to capitalize on its popularity 

among the South Asian audiences in the Diaspora. From Toronto (2011) to 

Tampa Bay (2014), Macau (2009) to Madrid, (2016), Sun City (2001) and Dubai 

(2006), having been hosted in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, IIFA 

has emerged as the first and only film awards ceremony that is hosted annually 

across the globe in stadium-sized venues on the scale of a global sports 

extravaganza. The United Kingdom, the United States, and Malaysia are the 

three nations to have twice hosted the IIFA in its first two decades. 

2003—First Actress to Do Maximum Onscreen Kisses 

Mallika Sherawat made her lead heroine debut with a much-publicized seventeen 

kissing scenes in Khwahish (Desire). While it established her as the 

nation’s new sex symbol, it also made a new “Promotion USP” (Unique Selling 

Proposition) out of “the number of kisses in a film.” Though Mallika’s record 

was soon broken by Payal Rohatgi, the former kept on reaping the first mover’s 

advantage. 

2006—First Bollywood Film to be Screened 

at the U.N. 

Auteur Rajkumar Hirani’s tribute to Gandhian philosophies and way of 

life, Lage Raho Munnabhai (Carry-on Brother Munna) becomes the first 

Bollywood film to be screened (on November 10, 2006) at the United Nations 

building in New York City. Its successful attempt to evoke Gandhian values 

through dialogue between the Mahatma, who appears as a “friendly ghost,” 

and the film’s central character of an underworld don with a soft heart, Munna 

Bhai (Sunjay Dutt), takes the impact of its appeal beyond simple comedy. 

Through his interactions with the ghost of Gandhi, Munna begins to practice 

what he refers to as Gandhigiri to help ordinary people solve their day-to-day 

problems. Celebrated as a contemporary classic, the film would go on to win 

four Indian National Film Awards and was screened at the Tous Les Cinema du 

Monde section of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.


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2006—First Indian Superhero 

Indian fans of the superhero genre get their first “local superman,” in Krrish 

(2006, played by Hrithik Roshan), launching Bollywood’s first superhero movie 

series. Writer-director-producer Rakesh Roshan, says, 

In India we have many superheroes in our mythologies. But the 

modern generation doesn’t have any superhero from a contemporary 

setup. So, it took me one-and-a-half films to establish that character of 

Krrish. The first film (Koi Mil Gaya [I Found Someone ], 2003) was how 

supernatural powers came to Krrish’s father. The second film, Krrish, 

showed a mountain boy with those powers, who turns into a superhero 

only towards the end of the film. We had to do all of this because we 

never had any local superhero comics that people were aware of or had 

grown up with, like their American counterparts had with Spiderman, 

Superman, Iron man, or the X-men. 

However, it was only in the franchise’s third installment, Krissh 3 (2013), 

that Krrish got to truly showcase his special powers against a spectacular 

counter-force, led by India’s first “super villain,” Kaal, and his tribe of humananimal 

mutants. Made at a tenth of the production cost of Hollywood superhero 

films, according to director Roshan, the series’ real differential lay in the 

“Indianization” of the superhero concept, 

The film’s Indian-ness is in its emotions. It is in the bonds between 

a father and a child, a mother and her son, a husband and his wife. 

Our superhero has a family, a grandma, a father, a wife and a baby. 

Moreover, the way we express emotions is different. We sing a song 

when someone is born, is getting married and even in certain death 

rituals. 

Naturally, all the Krrish films have some foot-tapping song sequences to 

make its title character perhaps the first celluloid superhero to sing and dance! 

Incidentally, Krrish’s other uniqueness is in his faith in God. An Indian 

superhero is not positioned as an aid to the divine for safeguarding the rule of 

the right, but as a song in the film states, is indebted to the divine for creating 

him. “God, Allah or Bhagwan ne banaya ik insaan. . . .” (“Call him God, Allah 

or the Supreme Being, He is the creator of the human being . . .”), sings Krrish. 

The resurrection of Krrish from sure death in the pre-climax through his 

father, by the powers in the nature in a Christ-like manner (involving a father, 

a son, and some divine light à la the “holy spirit”), with a quote from the 

Bhagavad Gita (a holy text of the Hindus) on the “eternity of the soul,” reinforces 

the Indian idea of secularism about “the acceptance and equal respect

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Bollywood FAQ 

Hrithik Roshan as superhero Krrish. 


of religions.” By reiterating that Krrish is “because of God, not despite of God,” 

Roshan thus makes the Indian superhero a spiritually minded being. 

2007—First Film by a Hollywood Studio 

Sony Pictures Entertainment enters mainstream Bollywood production as a 

co-producer of “modern Indian auteur of visual spectacles,” Sanjay Leela 

Bhansali’s ode to young love, Saawariya (My Love). Inspired by Fyodor 

Dostoevsky’s short story, “White Nights,” Saawariya, is the first Bollywood 

movie to receive a North American release by a Hollywood studio. Every major 

Hollywood studio (Warner Bros., Fox Star, Disney, and Viacom 18) since Sony 

Pictures’ 2007 Diwali debut with Saawariya is now either making or


81 

(Left to right) Rishi Kapoor, with Saawariya’s debuting hero and his son, Ranbir Kapoor, actress Rani 

Mukherji, superstar Salman Khan, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and debuting heroine Sonam 

Kapoor with her dad, Anil Kapoor, at the film’s premiere. 

Author’s collection 

distributing films in the Hindi language with more than an office presence in 

Mumbai, the epicenter of India’s national language cinema in Hindi. 

2009—First Double Oscar 

Music composer and fusion sensation, A. R. Rahman becomes the first Indian 

to win two Academy Awards in a single ceremony, for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog 

Millionaire. Boyle’s British drama “film of hope told from an Indian slum,” 

swept the Eighty-first Academy Awards with eight wins out of ten nominations. 

Its uniquely conceived, climactic energetically choreographed dance 

scene shot on a railway platform in Bombay/Mumbai’s Chatrapati Shivaji 

Terminus station, to “Jai ho . . .” (“Let the victory prevail”) becomes an instant 

global rage. The Sufi-strums–inspired song was apparently planned by 

Rahman over a two-month period, and completed in two weeks. Rahman won 

the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and won two out of his 

three nominations at the Academy Awards, for Best Original Score and Best 

Original Song, which he shared with director-poet Gulzar.

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Bollywood FAQ 

2015—First Two-Part Film 

S. S. Rajamouli’s war-fantasy-drama, shot in epic proportions and inspired by 

some characters from the Mahabharata, Bahubali—The Beginning, becomes the 

first Indian film to be released in two parts, with its two-generation-spanning 

storyline about characters in a fictitious royal family in south India, culminating 

two years later, with Bahubali 2—The Conclusion. Both films are pan-Indian 

commercial successes, and are critically acclaimed for their use of state-of-theart 

CGI, comparable to those of Hollywood. Bahubali—The Beginning became 

the first fantasy-drama to win the President’s Best Film Gold Medal at the 

Sixty-third Indian National Film Awards (in a category normally favoring 

realistic art-house achievements). Made on a budget of 2.5 billion rupees, 

Bahubali—The Conclusion became the first Indian film to cross the 10 billionrupee 

mark at the domestic box office to become the highest all-time grosser. 

The film sold an estimated 105 million tickets through its box-office run. 

2016—First Largest Showcase of Indian Cinema 

in Europe 

The Edinburgh Indian Festival of Films and Documentaries (EFIFD), featuring 

more than ten feature films and thirty documentaries, takes place in the 

Scottish capital from September 7–11. It is the largest dedicated showcase of 

Indian films and documentaries from multiple venues in a single European 

film festival location. The festival’s star attraction is Om Puri, a leading star 

of India’s New Wave Cinema (1970s–1980s) and Bollywood’s most-acclaimed 

crossover star in British and American cinema. The OBE–winning legend is 

the focus of a retrospective, showcasing some of his critically acclaimed films 

from India’s art-house, middle-of-the-road, and commercial cinema categories.

5 

An Indian Way to Film 

Thinking . . . ! 

The question—Is there an Indian way to filmmaking?—is passé. It is 

an adequately argued and fundamentally accommodated truth. The 

need for exploration is, rather: is there an Indian way to film thinking? Which 

storytelling attributes have consciously and/or subconsciously seeped into 

and shaped its film writing and visualizing experiments and expectations? 

These might have contributed to certain clichés at the hands of unimaginative 

filmmakers, but under the baton of the best, they also have retained, refined, 

updated, and imbued an Indian movie-watching experience with some distinct 

characteristics to make it one of the world’s most popular and unique 

forms of entertainment. Here is a list of some of the expected tropes in an 

Indian film—the odd, the obvious, and the outstanding—with brief explorations 

around their origins, evolution, and continuing influence. 

Masala Mix 

Indian films, especially for the uninitiated, can be a rollercoaster ride of emotional 

highs and nightmarish lows. It is natural to have a comic scene preceded 

by a moment of heartbreaking drama, followed by some adrenaline-pumping 

action. A festive village’s all-singing, all-dancing moment is interrupted by a 

sadistic dacoit’s gang brutally attacking innocents, followed by a superherolike 

act of bravery by a comical lead who suddenly turns damn serious. The 

preceding events make up a famous sequence from Bollywood’s all-time great 

masala blockbuster, Sholay (Embers, 1975). Much of Indian cinema, especially 

its popular “all-India form,” known as Bollywood, continues to amuse and 

confuse first-time viewers with its “epico-mythico-tragico-comico-super-sexyhigh-masala-art 

form in which the unifying principle is a techni-colour-storyline,” 

as aptly summed up by Salman Rushdie. Critics often equate this kind of 

storytelling with the traditional Indian thali meal, where multiple food items

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Bollywood FAQ 

of widely disparate flavors—sweet, spicy, bitter—are simultaneously served 

and consumed. Similarly, the Indian film serves multiple flavors, primarily the 

nine rasas—permanent and universally recognized emotional states, including 

love, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, valour, fear, wonder, and calm—as recommended 

in its classical drama templates. This fundamental guideline, just as 

it applies to literature, poetry, dance, or drama, has been shaping all Indian 

performance traditions for over two millennia; its cinema continuing that 

narrative legacy was, therefore, inevitable. 

Epic Influence 

Just as the Greek epics have inspired Western drama, Indian cinema and its 

cherished ideals concerning narration, characterization, and their overall 

purpose, have been influenced by the ancient epics of the Ramayana (The Story 

of King Rama) and the Mahabharata (The Great War). These revolve primarily 

around “five choices and six fights, respectively,” according to mythologist 

Devdutt Pattanaik. Unlike Western civilization’s prioritization of tragedy over 

other narrative themes, no one genre is given precedence in the epic scheme 

of things, where the end must achieve equanimity in the plot/drama and emotional 

calm for its viewers. Hence, good should triumph over evil, often at great 

personal cost or sacrifice, usually illustrated by the death of at least one hero 

in most multi-hero stories. In most Indian films, the hero, the heroine, and the 

villain remain updated manifestations of the Ramayana’s ideal hero, Rama; 

the epitome of womanhood, Sita; and the ultimate villain, Ravana. And when 

the screenplay is a tad complex, especially in multi-character narratives, the 

more “complex and grey” characters of the other epic, Mahabharata, have often 

been the stated and the implied reference. 

Hindustani to Hinglish 

For centuries, India has been a melting pot of civilizations, religions, and ethnicities, 

hosting multiple nations in terms of its socio-cultural and linguistic 

diversity. Its inhabitants speak in over seven hundred dialects and twenty-two 

official languages written in thirteen scripts. Therefore, its national cinema, 

Bollywood, unlike any other, cannot speak in only one language. In its golden 

age (1948–1965), it spoke primarily in Hindustani, or Hindi-Urdu—drawing 

its vocabulary from a mix of Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic-linguistic ancestry. 

The post-Colonial ascendancy of English as a global language and an acceptable 

crossover lingua franca between the north and south of India (which does 

not speak Hindi), has resulted in modern Indian cinema (1990s onwards),

An Indian Way to Film Thinking . . . ! 

85 

frequently speaking in a curious mix of a half-English, half-Hindi lingo called 

Hinglish. What became a national habit with the immensely popular advertisement 

lines of two global cola giants—Pepsi’s “Yeh Hi Hai Right Choice, 

Baby!” and Coca-Cola’s “Life Ho Toh Aisi”—developed into an imaginative, 

trend-inspiring articulation for a whole new generation of songwriters. This 

unique expression template has been steadily evolving into a new poetic 

form, especially following the critical appreciation of Oscar-winning Gulzar’s 

modern film songs with Hinglish lyrics. Now, with overseas viewership commanding 

nearly a quarter of the Hindi film’s box-office earnings, Hinglish, 

too, has come to stay, except for an occasional historical or period outing. So, 

don’t be surprised if you hear songs like—Jab life ho out of control, hothon ko 

karke gol (“When life gets out of control, get your lips on a roll,” from 3 Idiots, 

2009); Rupmahal, prem gali, kholi no. 420, excuse me, please! (“Beauty palace, 

love lane, house no. 420, excuse me, please!” from Amar Akbar Anthony, 1977), 

or Raat chandni main aur tu, hello, mister, how do you do? (“It’s a moonlit night 

with you and me, so, tell me, mister, how do you do?” from Howrah Bridge, 

1958). 

The Interval 

Long before selling popcorn and soft drinks at the multiplex concession stand 

became an integral element of the modern cinema consumption system, the 

interval was one of Indian cinema’s decisive connections with its theatrical 

umbilical cord. The interval offers a break between drama, mood, audience 

expectation, and narrative progress. It implies the possibility of the pleasure 

of two completely different cinematic moods from a single film. Often, 

nothing really happens in the first half, until the dramatic pre-climax at the 

interval, which, in a good film, will leave you with a cliffhanger that could be 

anything from a few minutes in length to the film’s entire second half. Also, 

in the days when films were not just brilliant in parts but in total, intervals 

offered a necessary toilet break in the normally 150-minute-plus experiences. A 

more serious and credible explanation for the interval as a signature attribute 

and a valuable narrative tool is offered by scholar Lalitha Gopalan, who has 

argued in the Cinema of Interruptions (London: British Film Institute, 2002) 

that the mid-point break “defers resolutions, postpones endings and doubles 

beginnings.”

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Bollywood FAQ 

Ram, Lakshman, and Sita (Standing left to right), the three protagonists of the epic Ramayana in a still 

from Sampoorna Ramayana. 


Great Bromances 

The complexities of platonic love through extreme sacrifice have been explored 

in a plethora of tribute tales to male friendship. That the impact and import of 

“a good friendship can be no less than the greatest of love affairs” could well 

be the second-most popular and repeated narrative formula in Bollywood 

dramas after romantic love stories. No wonder the trigger for sacrifice in most 

Indian romance triangles has always been the intense platonic love between 

two male leads, from Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar in Sangam (The Union, 

1964) to Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt in Saajan (Beloved, 1991). Even in action 

flicks and comedies, the chemistry between its male leads has frequently 

overtaken the intensity of their romance tracks—be it Amitabh Bachchan- 

Dharmendra (Sholay [Embers], Chupke Chupke [Stealthily Silently, 1975], or 

Amitabh Bachchan-Shashi Kapoor (Do aur Do Paanch [Two and Two Make 

Five], 1980); Silsila [The Affair], 1991) to Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan (Main 

Khiladi tu Anari [Me Master You Beginner], 1994), or Aamir Khan and Akshaye 

Khanna (Dil Chahta Hai [What the Heart Desires], 2001). Incidentally, this 

intense male bonhomie, reflective of India’s culture as it pertains to public


87 

displays of affection between members of the same sex, has erroneously been 

interpreted as homosexual behavior. 

Exotic Locations 

A major alibi for the “escapist” accusation against popular Indian cinema 

has been one of its most recognized essentials—elaborate song-and-dance 

sequences shot across the world in locations ranging from the busy (streets of 

New York) to the bizarre (snow-capped peaks of Alaska); and the exotic (Machu 

Picchu) to the popular tourist destinations (Swiss Alps). Shankar’s bilingual 

film Jeans upped the extravagance quotient concerning musical numbers in 

an Indian film by shooting a song of seven-minutes duration across seven 

wonders of the world (the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning 

Tower of Pisa, the Empire State Building, the Pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel 

Tower of Paris, and the Collosseum of Rome) with the breathtakingly beautiful 

Aishwarya Rai, then Miss World, in the lead, advertised as the “eighth wonder 

on display.” It all started as a simple excuse to escape from the mundane, alltoo-familiar 

scenes of lovers dancing around the trees. First in flower-laden 

neighborhood parks with multi-colored roses and huge marigolds and dahlias, 

next in out-of-station grand vistas of green abandon in popular Indian hill station 

attractions, including Ootacamund (in south India) and Kashmir, to aweinspiring 

foreign locations (Iceland’s snow-capped peaks, to the tulip gardens 

of Netherlands), with increasing shooting budgets and the ever-growing scale 

of celluloid dreams. These grand visual distractions heighten the emotional 

impact of the film’s romantic songs, often making up for the limits imposed 

on depicting intimacy. The colorful backdrops, when aesthetically shot, also 

enhance the visual impact of a beautiful female form. This has often led to 

the heroines having to wear body-hugging saris or skimpy outfits in freezing 

environs, from Vaijayanthimala (Switzerland in Sangam [Union], 1964), Rekha 

(Netherlands in Silsila [The Affair], 1981), Madhuri Dixit (icy Alaska in Pukar 

[The Call, 2000], Sridevi (snow-capped Alps in Chandni [Moonlight], 1989), or 

Katrina Kaif (snowy Austria in Tiger Zinda Hai [The Tiger is Alive], 2017), while 

their male counterparts remain comfortably attired. 

Item Songs 

If the romantic songs have taken the shooting of Bollywood films and their 

heroines to some of the most visually stunning outdoor locations, the item 

song has achieved new heights in set design for the spectacularly choreographed 

indoor songs, shot on a studio set. The item, traditionally, has been

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Bollywood FAQ 

the highlight moment involving the vamp character in a thriller. Their favorite 

location—grandiose hotel-like sets glorifying “supposed” Western decadence 

represented by skimpily clad men and women, frequently led astray by a fair 

maiden, making erotic dance moves in a smoky cesspool of overflowing drinks 

and occasional debauchery. The item song is that moment when anything can 

happen, and the suggestion of immorality is pushed to its outermost limits in 

the otherwise puritanical context of a hero’s struggle. This was the only place 

of temptation to sway him from his moral high ground in many a black-andwhite 

classic from Bollywood’s golden age. With time, and keeping its den 

of vice appeal intact, the item song has shifted from the “white or foreigner 

woman, inviting to sin,” to now-skimpily clad voluptuous Indian village belles 

and irresistibly exotic courtesans singing the sin-song in what is a twisted 

acknowledgment of the empowerment of Indian women. Predictably, the 

venues for the compromise of onscreen morality have found more home-grown 

addresses from the private parties of corrupt politicians to hinterland traveling 

theater groups, beyond the stereotypical Western-influenced places of 

pubs, clubs, and five-star hotels. 

Singing Ghosts 

Haunted buildings, lonely lanes, creaking gates, ghoulish howls, moonless 

nights with a graveyard around the corner—these mandatory elements of 

a horror movie anywhere in the world can be seen in Bollywood, too. What 

separates a good Indian horror film from its global counterparts, however, is 

the driver of the menace—a beautiful woman (rarely a man) who clings to love 

and woos victims to her lair by way of a haunting melody. She can be seen 

singing the song as a spaceshifting apparition, a candle-holding shadow, or 

an eternally doomed enigma. These songs have voiced some of the most poignant 

odes to lost love and the futilities of the earthly existence. Clinging to 

a sad memory, often a betrayal, this female ghost refuses to “cross over to the 

other side” until she has settled matters in the present one! From Madhumati 

(1958) to Om Shanti Om (2007), the scale of a haunting spectacle might have 

undergone multiple manifestations in vision and realization, but a beautiful 

singing ghost remains a Bollywood attribute as exclusive and unique as that 

of a sword-swinging prima donna in a Chinese costume-adventure. 

Moms, Dads, and Grand Weddings 

Obstinately egoistical rich dads and silently suffering poor moms have been 

integral archetypes in most class-crossed romances within Bollywood’s social


89 

Dancing star Helen plays a “stereotypical-Anglicized” Hindi film vamp in the “Piya tu” song 

from Caravan. 


drama genre since its inception. The tables have only occasioned turned with 

an exploitive dominatrix mother-in-law wedded to a silent-by-choice-to-maintain-the-peace-of-the-house 

husband. The latter assert themselves only once, 

towards the end, thus inspiring a genuine change-of-heart in their vixen wives. 

Between these broad parental sterotypes, the most popular genre within social 

dramas—the romantic film—has revisited and resolved innumerable conflicts. 

The climax, always, is a grand wedding scene, followed by a “The End” 

proclamation. 

The dawn of the post-1991 liberalization era in India, for the first time, 

broke onscreen joint families with a surfeit of independent-spirited young and 

restless protagonists seeking their mouthful of sky in nuclear setups across the 

globe and various cities in urban India. Their conflicts were internal; battling 

intimate personal and psychological issues borne of loneliness and a “selfbefore-all” 

motto. The screen time of their parent characters was reduced, but 

in a predominantly family-oriented society, never really vanished. Instead, 

they were modernized from being inaccessible patriarchs and godly matriarchs 

to become dependable confidantes (if not the best of friends) to solve 

various challenges faced by their adult kids. Not surprisingly, Bollywood’s

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Bollywood FAQ 

first twenty-first century blockbuster was a tale about how the youngest son 

of a family scripts the reunion between a father and his estranged elder son. 

Through some emotive manipulations, unabashedly tugging at the heart in a 

drama unfolding across two continents, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham (Sometimes 

Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow, 2001) featured six leading stars from three generations. 

Its cross-national popularity played a pivotal role in the ascendance 

of one of its heroes, Shah Rukh Khan, as Germany’s most popular (and the 

world’s most recognized) star. Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Gham’s global and pan- 

Indian super success reinforced a time-tested hallmark of a good Indian 

drama film—the integral role of parents in a culture of multiple rituals and 

traditional festivities. Moreover, as long as grandiose weddings continue to 

drive the visual and musical high points in dramas, mothers and fathers can 

never become irrelevant as they are, after all, footing the bill, both on and 

offscreen! 

Double Roles 

All major Bollywood stars worth their mettle have at least one double-role to 

their credit. The genesis of such roles can be sourced to another formulaic 

Bollywood trope: “lost and found” siblings. A set of twins get separated in 

childhood due to a natural calamity or a man-made, villainous intervention. 

They grow to become diamtetrically opposed characters: one is meek and 

weak; the other, strong, a fighter. Circumstances lead to their being reunited, 

only to swap their positions. This results in comic confusion involving lovers 

and other intimates, and ends with their exploiters being exposed and receiving 

a well-deserved thrashing. 

Bollywood’s first acting legend, Dilip Kumar, played the double role of a 

meek Ram and a canny Shyam in Ram aur Shyam (Ram and Shyam, 1967). 

Hema Malini, the reigning female star of the 1970s, made her mark on the 

genre in Seeta aur Geeta (Seeta and Geeta, 1972). Since then, every actor wanting 

to prove their acting chops, from Sridevi (Chaalbaaz [Trickster], 1989) to 

Varun Dhawan (Judwaa, 2017), has taken on the prerequisite dual-role task. 

It’s a valuable investment towards courting critical acclaim, too; because just 

as playing a disabled protagonist well has been a safe guarantee for an acting 

Oscar, similarly in Bollywood, a double role well-played has always assured 

a Best Actor or Best Actress Filmfare nod. Some actors have also used the 

opportunity to explore the complex shadings of a hero and the villain, or a 

negative character like Rekha (Madam X, 1994), and Amitabh Bachchan (Don, 

1978). Bachchan has even attempted the triple role of a father and his twins in 

Mahaan (The Great One, 1983). However, the crown must be given to the supertalented 

Sanjeev Kumar, who played nine diverse and unrelated characters


91 

Hema Malini essayed a double role in Seeta Aur Geeta, to critical acclaim. 

 


across age groups, ranging from a “wrestling with a lion alpha male hunter to 

an effeminate stage comic” in Naya Din Nai Raat (New Day, New Night, 1974). 

. . . And the Cops Come Last! 

“. . . and the cops come last”—describes the formulaic resolution of most Indian 

cop-and-chase films. The police always arrive at the scene of a crime after the 

hero and his accomplices had vanquished the villains, to complete the formality 

of arresting the criminals. The maintenance of order and an equal access to 

law has always been a challenge in the world’s largest democracy, with decent

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Bollywood FAQ 

chunks of its population spread across inaccessible terrains. State-patronized 

corruption has been its other socio-political bane, where the law enforcers 

on the ground—i.e., the police force—have played both the redeemer and the 

exploiter of its poor and illiterate millions. 

When idealistic and non-conformist protagonists have pitted themselves 

against an exploitative system, the police force has been a logical villain. But, 

when the heroes and heroines have themselves played the cops, Bollywood 

has given them some of the most complex and challenging characters in their 

filmographies. Like the double roles, playing the righteous cop—a brave individual 

who stands up against the system at great personal sacrifice—has been 

the source of many memorable and/or larger-than-life characters in issuesbased 

cinema. Both art-house cinema’s poster actor, Om Puri (Ardha Satya 

[Half Truth], 1980) and popular cinema’s longest-ruling superstar, Amitabh 

Bachchan (Zanjeer [Chains], 1973), got their first career-defining roles as hotheaded 

“honest cops.” When they eventually came together in a film, Dev 

(2004), it was about a bad cop versus a good cop, friends turned foes in a battle 

of ideologies concerning the tackling of terror. 

Police force characters from the 1930s to the post-Independence era usually 

represented authority and continuity. In the 1970s–1980s, they started 

attempting nuance, while fighting inner demons to lead a good fight. That’s 

when ambitious heroines looking for meaty action-driven parts joined the 

on-screen police force to essay some memorable daredevil female cops. These 

parts provided them with a level playing field, either as avengers in uniform 

battling rape (Zakhmi Aurat, [Battered Women], 1988) and injustice (Phool Bane 

Angarey [When Flowers Become Flames], 1991) or inspiring officers upholding 

the law at tremendous personal cost (Andhaa Kanoon [The Law is Blind], 1983, 

and Jai Gangaajal [Hail Ganges], 2016). The post-1990s rise in acts of domestic 

terrorism, however, have shifted from the realistic to the spectacular, with 

action-adventures featuring the new-generation of cops as unbeatable vigilantes 

in uniform, killing gangsters outside the law, or Bond-like “patriot daredevils 

not in uniform” eliminating terrorists across the globe. With every major 

Bollywood star, both new and established, wanting to play these superhero 

cops, this is one genre that will likely stay around for a while.

6 

Music, Masala, 

and Melodrama 

An Introduction to Genres in Indian Cinema 

Genres, at least in terms of film, are categories that highlight and differentiate 

one kind of content from another on the basis of specific 

characteristic elements in their storytelling styles. The model of reference has 

been globally established Hollywood cinema categories like action, comedy, 

tragedy, musical, epic, sci-fi, etc. However, genre characteristics need not necessarily 

be absolute or universal. Bollywood is a testament to this. 

While the West prides itself in its linear adherence to one or a few dominant 

emotion triggers in its filmic telling, Bollywood has always opted for a 

riotous cocktail of emotive triggers, ranging from at least five to all the navarasas 

(i.e., the nine primary human emotions that Indian classicists believe are 

necessary to evoke drama). No wonder a good Bollywood horror film can have 

a fully developed comedy or tragedy subplot, with even a singing ghost or two 

belting out some exquisite melodies. Or the Bollywood musical, unlike its 

Western counterpart (in which a film is primarily sung throughout), can be 

like any other drama narrative, albeit one revolving around a character who is 

either a singer or hails from a musical profession. The following is an overview 

of distinct and emerging Bollywood genres and subgenres along with a list of 

three representative landmarks or iconic films of each category. 

Costume-Dramas 

Historical dramas have traditionally been a subset of the costume-drama, 

which has been in vogue since the birth of Indian cinema. This is due to a 

living, and continuously performed or sung, tradition around its two epics. 

Costume-dramas have given birth to three distinctly recognizable subgenres— 

the Devotional, the Mythological, and the Historical.

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Bollywood FAQ 

The Devotional 

The oldest Indian film genre—if one accepts Dadasaheb Torney’s recording 

of a stage play, Pundalik (1912), as India’s first film—revolves around a pious 

character from its myths and legends, who can be either saintly kids like Dhruv 

and Prahlad, or saint-poets. Being the birthplace of four world religions (Jainism, 

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism), and home to the second-largest Muslim 

population in the world within a single nation, along with a visible presence of 

other world religions like Christianity and Zoroastrianism, there is no dearth of 

saintly characters in India’s history. But what makes saint-poets ideal subjects 

for Bollywood’s songs-driven narrative format is their significant role in shaping 

vernacular singing traditions across the country. Most of the saint-poets, who 

were a creation of the Bhakti and Sufi reform movements in its medieval history, 

frequently propagated their teachings in verse form. And if the film is depicting 

a saint-poet like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534 CE), who started a trend for 

community chanting and dancing, or the beggar-princess Meerabai (1498–1546 

CE), who would lapse into a trance while dancing and singing her hymns to Lord 

Krishna, enough onscreen opportunities are created for some relevant dancing. 

Not surprisingly, the first hit talkie, Chandidas (1934), was a dramatization of the 

devout singer-poet, and the first Indian film to win an international award was 

Sant Tukaram (Saint Tukaram, 1936). The tradition of Sufi saints attracting followers 

from other faiths also made their life stories attractive subjects of pan-Indian 

interest. Songs and dances, which are an integral part of community worship in 

Hindu festivals, have also inspired some of the most elaborately choreographed 

screen musical moments. 

Must Watch: Sant Tukaram (Saint Tukaram, 1936), Jai Santoshi Maa (Hail 

Goddess Santoshi, 1975), Meera (1979) 

The Mythological 

India’s first feature-length film, Raja Harishchandra (1913), which came a year 

after Pundalik, established another exclusive Indian genre—the mythological 

film. This is a story normally based on characters from the Hindu religion and 

its scriptures, subcontinental myths, stories, and histories featuring ancient 

Indian kings and characters from the two grand epics, Ramayana and 

Mahabharata, also known as itihasa (a form of recorded history wherein the 

writers are an integral part of the events unfolding in their narratives). Closely 

integrated within the mythological is the Indian idea of an epic film, which 

has traditionally been more concerned with the source of its context than the 

scale of its spectacle. An Indian epic film primarily revolves around a summary 

narration or a secondary story about one of the leading characters from

Music, Masala, and Melodrama 

95 

A collage of posters featuring films from various Bollywood genres. 


its two epic sagas. The epic films based on the Ramayana have generally 

attempted a complete telling of its single-protagonist-driven narrative, revolving 

around the banishment and return of Prince Rama, who became the king 

of Ayodhya after defeating and killing the kidnapper of his wife, Sita. The 

other occasional Ramayana-inspired tales deal with the banishment of Sita, 

the birth of King Rama’s twins in exile, and their return as the successors of 

Rama, following the vindication of the “purity of their mother.” 

The Mahabharata, acknowledged as the world’s longest epic poem, tells 

the story of a royal family spread across six generations. It is a treasure trove 

of characters, representing every possible emotion. Its writer, Saint Ved Vyas, 

famously proclaimed that “what is not present in the Mahabharata, does not 

exist in the world. All the types of emotions, characters and characteristic 

nation types in the world are described in this story.” 

The epic has been the source of multiple narrative adaptations revolving 

around one of its many heroes and their adventures and experiences, or just a 

standalone dramatic event, like just the wedding ceremony of its fifth-generation 

archer-hero Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu. That event is the theme of a south 

Indian cult film, Mayabazaar (Market of Illusions, 1957), and its many spinoffs 

in Hindi and other languages. The influence of the epics as a fulsome source

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Bollywood FAQ 

for film plots is evident from the fact that of the 138 silent films made in the 

first decade of Indian cinema (1913–1922), ninety-five were mythologicals, 

fourteen were devotionals, fourteen were socials (starting in 1920), eight were 

historicals (starting in 1915), five were classical, or Sanskrit drama, adaptations 

(starting in 1920), one was a documentary (1918), and one was a fantasy (1922). 

A factor common to the mythological and devotional film is the presence, 

or influential role, of a godly or godlike character in their narratives. The 

denizens of the heavens have direct and influential roles to play in the these 

movies, whether a film’s story is set in the mythical ages or in ancient and 

medieval India. 

Must Watch: Shakuntala (1943), Sampoorna Ramayana (The Complete 

Ramayana, 1961), Agni Varsha (Rain of Fire, 2002) 

The Historical 

India’s rich and diverse history, with rulers hailing from multiple ethnicities 

and nationalities, has been a consistent source for new stories built around 

new characters. The Mughal Sultanate, which in the medieval century was 

one of the world’s largest and richest empires, became a fertile ground for 

sourcing historical narratives. However, typical of the Indian historical is 

its preoccupation with the love stories of, primarily, the royals. As a result, 

the much-marrying kings were portrayed as dedicated monogamous lovers, 

whose driver motivation in statecraft and wars always happened to a beautiful 

Wall art in Bandra (a Mumbai suburb) depicting one of Bollywood’s most loved historical 

characters—Anarkali—played by Madhubala (left) and Bina Rai (center). Author’s collection


97 

woman with whom they had fallen in love at first sight. Not surprisingly, two 

of Bollywood’s most-acclaimed and popular historical films have reduced one 

of India’s greatest emperors and nation builders, Akbar the Great, to a patriarchal 

villain in the fictitious romance of a lovesick prince in one (Mughale-Azam/The 

Great Emperor, 1960), and as a shy lover boy in another period 

romance, Jodhaa Akbar (2008). 

Must Watch: Sikandar (Alexander the Great, 1941), Mughal-e-Azam (The Great 

Emperor, 1960), Jodhaa Akbar (2008). 

Social-Dramas 

The coming of sound in cinema allowed filmmakers to attempt complex 

human drama, articulating multiple emotions. Simultaneously, the number 

of journalists and poets becoming screenwriters upped the value and impact 

of the spoken word. The first major subgenre within the socials were literary 

adaptations, pioneered by studios in Calcutta and Madras. The state of Bengal, 

in the eastern part of India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, became 

a vanguard for literature, led by novelists Bankimchandra and Saratchandra 

Chattopadhayay, and Asia’s first Nobel laureate, poet Rabindranath Tagore. 

An added attraction for filmmakers adapting their popular and critically 

acclaimed works was to lend some “respectability-by-default” to the medium, 

which was still being dismissed by purists as an inferior art form. The socialdrama 

genre grew under the skills of literate directors and activist filmmakers 

to critique social ills, including caste systems, untouchability, class barriers, 

corruption, gender inequality, disintegration of the joint family system, etc. 

Must Watch: Mother India (1957), Roti Kapda aur Makaan (Food, Cloth and 

Shelter, 1975), Swades (Homeland, 2004) 

It was from within the social-drama genre, when its guiding concerns veered 

away from enlightening and educating to primarily entertaining, that the 

Bollywood subgenre “double-role” and “lost-and-found” formulas emerged. 

(This subgenre is discussed in Chapter 5.) 

Must Watch: Kismet (Fate, 1943), Waqt (Time, 1965), Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) 

The Muslim Social 

Given the sizable number of Muslim moviegoers in India and the continuing 

popularity of Bollywood across the Indian subcontinent, the Muslim social 

emerged as a valuable subgenre. These films were predominantly spoken

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Bollywood FAQ 

in the Urdu language, in contrast to the social’s preference for Hindi and 

Hindustani. Their characters normally hail from aristocratic backgrounds, 

live in sumptuous homes, profess romance through ornate songs while the 

women indulge in some swooning romance, with their primary drama being 

centered around romantic entanglements or nostalgia for a vanishing world 

of grace and beauty. The men in these films are always literate and handsome; 

the women, beautiful, chaste, yet assertive. 

Two of the greatest, signature bequests of the Muslim social were the 

ghazal—a sophisticated form of emotionally sung music, articulating pathos or 

appreciating beauty through exquisite poetry; and the qawwali—a style of 

Muslim devotional worship associated with the Sufis, in which hymns are 

sung to the Almighty. In popular cinema, it has created many an unforgettable 

verbal battle between ideas in the verse form performed in two groups and 

often pitting a film’s hero against the heroine. The New Wave Cinema movement 

of the 1970s expanded the domain of the Muslim social beyond the privileged 

to the ordinary in revelatory commentaries on daily survival challenges 

of poor and marginalized Muslim families in “suspect” environments in a 

majority Hindu nation. 

Must Watch: Mere Mehboob (My Beloved, 1963), Garam Hava (Hot Winds, 1973), 

Nikaah (Marriage, 1982) 

Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman essay the lead parts in Chaudhvin Ka Chand, a classic film 

in the Muslim social genre. 



99 

Musicals 

Bollywood musicals can be broadly divided into two categories—social 

dramas with a contemporary singer/poet protagonist at its core, and costumedramas 

revolving around a musician or a courtesan artiste of graceful charm 

and intelligence. In each case, music is an integral element in the protagonist’s 

journey. These films may or may not have more songs than their non-musical 

social dramas with four to eight musical numbers. The song sequences often 

happen to be standalone music achievements that are enjoyed singularly out 

of the context of their onscreen placements through repeat viewings and independent 

listening. These happen to be spectacular achievements in singing, 

lyrics, choreography, and background scores, performed to complex, expressions-driven 

articulations, normally derived from a classical Indian dance 

form. The latter talent is an essential element of courtesan films, which have 

given Bollywood some of its most exquisitely performed dance numbers that 

happen to be commendable emoting achievements in films like Pakeezah (The 

Pure One, 1972) and Umrao Jaan (1981). Only recently have occasional experiments 

been made to replicate the experience of a sing-along Hollywood musical, 

but these films have been consistently rejected at the box office, whether 

it is a complex family drama like Khamoshi (Silence): The Musical (1996) or a 

modern, cross-country thriller, such as Jagga Jasoos (Detective Jagga, 2017). 

Must Watch: Baiju Bawra (Crazy Baiju, 1952), Umrao Jaan (Courtesan Umrao, 

1981), Rock On!! (2008) 

Romance 

Indisputably, this is Bollywood’s most prolific genre. Films of this type offer 

the universal formula of boy-meets-girl, along with reincarnation sagas or 

romantic-triangle entanglements. The first is either depicted through stories 

of young love separated by class-, region-, caste-, or religion-induced barriers 

(with the last two common to the Indian context). A love story is the most 

preferred film genre to launch new actors or second- and third- generation 

stars. While a “happily ever-after ending” has been a safe preference for the 

majority of stories in the romantic genre, there are instances when the lovers 

are doomed to death, à la Romeo and Juliet. With competent direction and 

fresh star pairings, this genre is often met with blockbuster success, as was the 

case with Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (From Doom till Doom, 1988) and Goliyon 

Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela (A Play of Bullets Ram-Leela, 2013). Taking the doomed 

love story to a positive denouement are those featuring themes of reincarnation. 

Drawing from the Hindu philosophy of life after death, the dead lovers 

return to avenge their tormentors, and are happily reunited.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Romantic-triangle tangles have given Bollywood some of its most memorable, 

mature love stories. Generally, these concern a girl who’s the object of 

affection of two best friends or brothers; or a married man torn between a 

wife and his mistress. In either case, these films are liberally endowed with 

romantic songs, whose popularity plays a valuable role in determining the 

film’s monetary success or failure. The songs also help to convey intimacy 

despite the censorship-driven restrictions on depictions of sex, with kissing 

considered taboo until the beginning of the twenty-first century. 

Must Watch: Bobby (1973), Ek Duje Ke Liye (Made for Each Other, 1981), Om 

Shanti Om (2008) 

Courtroom Dramas 

In a storytelling industry that prides itself on its ability to achieve dramatic 

flair, it isn’t surprising that most major performers have at least one courtroom 

drama to their credit. A good confrontation is a melodramatic highlight, assuring 

heightened audience delight. When pitched as the outcome of inspired 

writing featuring seething social critiques from the safe and civilized confrontation 

space of a courtroom and backed by spirited acts delivered with 

applause-worthy dialogue, the impact can be mesmerizing. Bollywood courtroom 

dramas have often been critiqued for existing in a parallel universe of 

their own, with long monologues, elaborate confrontations, and awe-inspiring 

superhuman lawyers who occasionally don the role of master detectives on 

Evergreen stars in the courtesan genre, with Rekha (left) and Meena Kumari. 



101 

valuable evidence-gathering missions for their helpless, righteous clients. The 

genre got its first hit franchise with Fox Star Studio’s Jolly LLB series—Jolly 

LLB (2013) and Jolly LLB 2 (2017)—directed by Subhash Kapoor. The judge, 

played by character actor Saurabh Shukla, and the only constant in the series, 

has emerged as its biggest star attraction, beating its “battling” lawyers played 

by leading Bollywood stars. 

Must Watch: Kanoon (The Law, 1960), Damini (Lightning, 1993), Pink (2016) 

Action-Based Genres 

Action, after romance and social dramas, is the third-most-popular Bollywood 

genre, and the one most likely to provide its actors with icon status. Starting as 

an attraction quotient in the climax scenes of early mythologicals and historicals, 

action became a full-fledged genre with the coming of the stunt films led 

by Indian cinema’s first action star in the 1930s, Mary Ann Evans, popularly 

known as Fearless Nadia. The pioneering of the action genre featuring a female 

action star established two distinct attributes to the Bollywood action film 

that are here to stay—a dramatic back story justifying a character’s opting for 

a career driven by fighting, and a decisive exchange of unnecessary brutality 

for stylish, choreographed fights with little use for onscreen gore. Filming 

graphic action sequences is primarily a post-1990s phenomenon. Following 

Nadia’s exit by the early 1950s, the stunt action genre saw a marked decline 

in quality, becoming vehicles primarily for musclemen heroes in low-budget 

Bollywood films. In the new millennium, the subgenre has had a revival of 

fortune through local superhero stories with globally comparable stunt action 

spectacles, aided by the CGI revolution. 

Must Watch: Hunterwali (The Lady with the Whip, 1935), Tarzan (1985), Krrish 

(2013) 

Dacoit Films 

The next-oldest subgenre within the action flick are the dacoit (bandit) films, 

arguably the closest Indian counterpart of the American western. These 

revolve around daredevil bandits who are a law unto themselves across the 

wild and inaccessible terrain of central and western Indian hinterlands. 

Portraying Robin Hood–like anti-heroes until their inevitable deaths at the 

film’s climax, the dacoit genre became an attractive dramatic differential for 

actors hoping to break from the image of romantic hero prototypes. The genre 

has given its fans some of Bollywood’s finest adventure epics with elaborately

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Bollywood FAQ 

choreographed chase and 

group fight sequences, with 

some spectacular performances 

from Dilip Kumar in 

Gunga Jumma to Bollywood’s 

most-loved villain, a dacoit 

called Gabbar Singh, who 

roamed the ravines in Fidel 

Castro–like pants. 

Must Watch: Mujhe Jeene Do 

(Let Me Live, 1963), Sholay 

(Embers, 1975), Bandit Queen 

(1994) 

A commemoration poster celebrating the ground-breaking 

role and success of Hunterwali. Photo courtesy of NFAI 

Mafia Films 

As the setting for action films 

shifted from rural to urban 

landscapes in the 1970s, the 

dacoit gave way to the urban 

gangster as the outsider-hero, 

leading into Bollywood’s 

Mafia film genre. Nearly 90 

percent of the films in this 

genre are set in Bombay, 

thus glorifying the Bombay 

underworld and elevating the 

urban lore around its small and big dons to the status of modern urban legends. 

Bollywood and the Mumbai Mafia have shared a complex relationship, starting 

from admiration to exploitation to a brief reign of fear before the Mafia’s violent 

riddance and the escape of its leaders to foreign shores throughout the 1990s. 

The urban outsider first surfaced as a stylish gangster in the noir films of 

the 1950s, featuring style icon Dev Anand. In the musical thrillers of the 1960s, 

the character was usually a suave smuggler or a high-society manipulator 

with skeletons in his closet. By the 1970s, the rise of the “angry young man” 

subgenre returned the gangster to the migrant urban working-class, who rose 

to rule his city within recurring rags-to-riches stories of derring-do. Amitabh 

Bachchan’s Deewar (The Wall, 1975) was the first Mafia movie to become a 

critically acclaimed blockbuster, believably making a high-society don out of a 

working-class gangster. Deewar also started a trend for Mafia films in general, 

openly hinting about their real-life inspirations as promotional gimmicks,


103 

starting with genre-establishing landmark films on Mumbai’s first big three 

twentieth-century dons—Karim Lala (Zanjeer, The Chain, 1973), Haji Mastaan 

(Deewar, 1975), and Vardarajan Mudaliar (Dayavan, The Compassionate, 1987). 

Like their Hollywood counterparts, these films glorify the gangster as a 

wronged urban underdog, forced by unfair circumstances to take the law 

into his hands. This remained a template in all gangster/Mafia-centric films 

to justify its protagonist’s emergence as a law-dispensing authority awarding 

instant justice to the helpless. The state asserted itself only in the end, as a 

villain killing the gangster-hero. 

This whitewashed look at the Mumbai Mafia had changed by the late 1980s 

and early 1990s, when its dons started directly interfering in film financing, 

making casting choices, as well as extorting money from private producers 

who had landed a big hit. Matters came to head with the Mafia’s murder, in 

broad daylight, of music baron Gulshan Kumar for refusing to pay, followed by 

assassination attempts on a few of the leading filmmakers. This was the time 

when the Mumbai police started a purgatory series of extra-judicial killings 

of gangster elements by a niche force of elite officers, called the encounter 

specialists, leading to the exodus to foreign shores of all the major secondgeneration 

dons (e.g., international terrorist and fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, 

Chota Rajan, Chota Shakeel, and Abu Salem), who had taken over from the big 

three, mentioned above. Bollywood got the cue, and the genre took a virtual 

U-turn with the protagonists in the post-1990s Mafia films, changing from the 

wronged gangster to daredevil cops who killed members of the Mafia with 

impunity. 

Must Watch: Satya (The Truth, 1998), Company (2002), Daddy (2017) 

Horror Films 

Horror films first emerged as an extension of dark thrillers with an implied 

supernatural twist. Such films usually had the hero chasing after a seeming 

apparition before it was revealed to be a ploy for hiding a larger, criminally 

intended secret. In the occasional horror film featuring supernatural elements, 

like the musical classic Madhumati (1958), the ghost is the bearer of a failed 

love story, awaiting her moment of vengeance. Meanwhile, she could be seen 

singing her tale of angst as a recurring theme song. (This has yielded some 

of Bollywood’s most haunting melodies.) The global success of The Exorcist 

(1973), and slasher movie series in general, inspired their Indian counterparts 

to generate wanton violence by killing or possessing innocent humans. But, 

by then, the genre had been downgraded to B-movie status, starting with the 

mildly promising Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche (Six Feet Underground, 1972), and 

peaking with the hideous “masks fest,” Purana Mandir (The Old Temple, 1984).

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Bollywood FAQ 

Must Watch: Woh Kaun Thi (Who Was She?, 1964), Raaz (The Secret, 2002), Bhoot 

(Ghost, 2003) 

Snake Films 

A subgenre exclusive to Bollywood horrors are the snake films, woven around 

local legends of the shapeshifting nagin, or the venomous “queen” cobra snake, 

with references to Hindu mythology. These films follow a predictable narrative, 

in which a female cobra with supernatural powers can change shape at 

will, oscillating between snake and human forms. When in the human form, 

she would fall in love with a human hero, but their union would be perpetually 

threatened by greedy snake charmers, power-hungry magicians, or smugglers 

in pursuit of rare jewels, famed to be owned or guarded by these shapeshifting 

snakes. The growing global appeal of the subgenre was evident in Jennifer 

Lynch’s use of the shapeshifting snake myth in Hisss (2010), the first major 

Hollywood horror film with an Indian leading lady (Mallika Sherawat), set in 

India. Academy Award–winning makeup artist and director Robert Kurtzman 

was responsible for the visually magnificent, elaborate shapeshifting scenes, 

the likes of which had never been seen in any Indian snake film. Still, Hisss 

bombed in India due to its “realistic” depiction of the silent, crawling snakewoman. 

How would she know to speak a human language? was a question 

that puzzled many. Lynch seemed to have forgotten that the real appeal of 

the Bollywood snake-woman lay as much as in her unique chameleon-like 

power to scare as it does in her ability to sing and perform to some complex 

dance songs. This was also the genre that gave Bollywood Nagina (part one) 

and Nigahen (part two), its first sequel in actress Sridevi’s snake-woman movie 

series of the 1980s. 

Must Watch: Nagin (The Snake Woman, 1976), Nagina (The Jewel, 1986), Nigahen 

(The Eyes, 1989) 

The War Film 

For a nation that has fought five major wars with its neighbors—four with 

Pakistan and one with China—the war film has been a relatively sporadic genre 

with barely a major film in any decade following Chetan Anand’s Haqeeqat 

(The Truth, 1964). Inspired by events in the Indo-China war of 1962, India’s first 

war film was the outcome of the need for an honest exploration and explanation 

of the causes leading to India’s defeat in its lone war with China. However, 

subsequent films have oscillated between extreme emotions of chest-thumping 

jingoism to genuine regret about the futility of war. Signature features include


105 

the assembling of a mammoth cast of star actors in a single film with ample 

opportunities to explore romantic back stories through some poignant songs 

of love and loss, and at least one patriotic ode to the sacrifice made by soldiers. 

Must Watch: Haqeeqat (The Truth, 1964), Border (1997), LOC: Kargil (2003) 

Neo-Millennial Genres 

In a constantly evolving narrative medium, genres are always in a mode of 

renewal and discovery, with some elements giving way to new interpretations. 

NRI Films 

The growth in numbers and influence of an affluent Indian diaspora in the 

new millennium, and the overseas ticket sales making up anywhere from 

a quarter to a third of the total box-office earnings of a film, Indians living 

abroad have become both a subject and a target for Bollywood films. Though 

occasional films had been made in the past, such as Purab or Paschim (East and 

West, 1970), NRI (non-resident Indian) cinema emerged as a leading Bollywood 

genre with the cult success of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted 

Will Take Away the Bride, 1995) in the mid-nineties. It was the first major 

Indian film to revolve around British-Indian protagonists, the second-generation 

progeny of migrant Indian parents born and raised in London. Oscillating 

between patriotism and nostalgia, the NRI films are either social dramas 

(revolving around intra-family clashes concerning tradition and modernity) 

or complex, modern love stories exploring themes of loyalty and commitment 

among single and financially independent protagonists working in foreign 

countries. The highlight of these films are elaborately choreographed music 

scenes celebrating Indian festivals and rituals in the West, with a liberal 

presence of white, foreign nationals seen singing and dancing in tandem. 

Balancing the aspirational at home with the nostalgic yearning of those settled 

abroad, the characters in these films, so far at least, are predominantly Indians 

settled in the English-speaking nations of U.K., the U.S., and Australia. 

Must Watch: Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the 

Bride, 1995), Kal Ho Naa Ho (If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come, 2003), Salaam Namaste 

(Hello Greetings, 2005).

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Bollywood FAQ 

The most popular pioneering film in the NRI genre—Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. The film has been 

running continuously (as a daily matinee show) at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir Theatre (which can be 

seen in the picture) since its release in October 1995. 


The Road Movie 

The rise in the number of urban singles, and the growing acceptance of selfdiscovering 

experiences among the financially secure “modern Indian” of both 

genders, has resulted in the emergence of the road movie. Its protagonists 

normally venture out from the urban clutter into inspiring short and long 

journeys, both in and out of India. A millennium pioneer in the genre is director 

Farhan Akhtar, whose urban coming-of-age classic Dil Chahta Hai (The 

Heart Desires, 2001) unfolds in Goa and Sydney. The Bollywood road movie, 

however, has yet to embrace the complete freedom as seen in its global counterparts. 

Often, the narratives relegate their travelers to clichés, venturing out 

to find love (primarily) and becoming even more tied down in the process, thus 

reducing the road movie to a subgenre of romance. 

Must Watch: Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You Only Live Once, 2011), Highway 

(2014), Bajrangi Bhaijaan (Brother Bajrangi, 2015)


107 

Terror Cinema 

Long before the events of 9/11, India has had its fair share of terror attacks and 

bomb blasts, the city of Bombay being a prime recurring target and victim 

of three major acts of violence against the public—the 1993 serial bombings 

across twelve locations on March 12, the 2006 train bombings on seven suburban 

trains on July 11, and the November 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred 

to as 26/11), during which a group of terrorists carried out a series of coordinated 

shooting and bombing attacks on civilians lasting over four days. 

Beyond Bombay, other Indian terror hotspots, especially in the Northeast and 

Kashmir, have been prone to kidnappings, mini-wars, and the assassinations 

of two prime ministers, culminating in the most daring of all: the terrorist 

attack on the Parliament of India on December 13, 2001. 

Predictably, the resultant feeling of anger and the demand for vengeance 

has inspired a series of 007-like Indian vigilante spy thrillers, traveling across 

the world to neutralize the enemies of the nation to humanist explorations 

pleading for amity between Hindu and Muslim communities. Of late, the 

distancing of the memories of acts of urban violence, and the advances in 

CGI technology, have led filmmakers to attempt an Argo-like retelling of contemporary 

terror tales, giving birth to a gripping, modern thriller genre of 

comparable might, action, and imagination to its global counterparts. 

Must Watch: Black Friday (2004), Mumbai Meri Jaan (Mumbai My Love, 2008), 

Baby (2015) 

Category-Based Genres 

Bollywood also has three distinct genres encompassing many elements of the 

above-mentioned categories, based on their respective choice of the techniques 

and fundamental structure, style, and modes of storytelling. 

The Masala Movie, or Popular Cinema 

This is the quintessential Bollywood film that has something for everyone. 

Since satisfying a billion-plus diverse moviegoers is no easy task, many 

filmmakers tend to follow a time-tested template of the “All-India Formula 

Film,” discovered and bettered over the years, with the emergence of every 

pan-Indian blockbuster film. A please-all narrative formula first used in the 

first all-India blockbuster, Bombay Talkies’ Kismet (Fate, 1943), was codified 

in Bollywood’s all-time great success story, Sholay (Embers, 1975). Broadly, 

the masala film intends to give pleasurable servings of all the major known 

genres—romance, tragedy, comedy, action, musical, horror, and awe—in a

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Bollywood FAQ 

single film. This is achieved through a sumptuous serving of situations, characters, 

and mini-plots, triggering each of the classically prescribed essential 

dramatic emotions—love, joy, courage/heroism, wonder, pathos, anger, fear, 

disgust, and calm. It ideally ends with the victory of good over evil to return 

the audience to a “fair world with moral beings.” The characters are either 

epitomes of virtues or vices, and acts of indecency are generally alluded to 

or avoided altogether so that three generations of a family—grandparents to 

grandchildren—can watch these films together without fear of embarrassment. 

Last, but hardly least, a good masala movie must have a hummable 

music score with memorable songs to help extend the memory of the movie 

experience. Often dismissed by critics as escapist and unreal, a well-made 

masala movie remains Bollywood’s most definitive, best-loved, and instantly 

recognizable global signature. 

Must Watch: Mother India (1957), Sholay (Embers, 1975), Lagaan (Land Tax, 

2001) 

Parallel Cinema 

The other major category within Indian films—and a distinct counter to the 

masala movie—is the parallel, offbeat, art-house cinema, attributed to the 

“understated, realistic, intellect-over-emotion appealing” films that took off 

following auteur Satyajit Ray’s successful international debut. Funded by the 

state (since the late 1960s), this genre’s greatest differential is its makers’ perceived 

(and often stated) total rejection of popular cinema’s filming codes. 

Predominantly located within Bengali and Malayalam cinema, its corpus of 

films within Bollywood or Hindi/Hindustani cinema have widened considerably 

since pioneering director Shyam Bengal’s Ankur (The Seedling, 1974) paved 

the way for new wave cinema. Professor Rosie Thomas, in her paper “Indian 

Cinema: Pleasures and Popularity,” writes: 

Indian art cinema is enthusiastically received in the West, [as it] much 

conforms to conventions [like concern for continuity and realism, 

focusing on non-spectacular, realistic stories with short narrative 

spans, unfolding at a slow pace and without songs and dances], made 

familiar within European art cinema, thus ensuring that Western audience 

assumptions about filmic form can remain unchallenged. . . . The 

Parallel Cinema’s most decisive differential—a complete doing away 

and sustained rejection of popular Indian cinema’s song-and-dance 

format—however, led to its nemesis within two decades, for being 

perceived to be “foreign or un-Indian” by majority Indian audiences. 

According to the Parallel Cinema movement’s poster actor Om Puri, 

“Indian art-house cinema directors made one mistake. They eschewed the


109 

song-and-dance format because they felt it was below them. I feel that they 

should not have resisted the format because we Indians have always used 

music to communicate—be it in the street theater, nautankis, and jatras. They 

should not have hesitated to use music as a tool to make the [Indian] audience 

understand and connect with their films. 

Must Watch: Ankur (The Seedling, 1974), Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players, 

1977), Ardh Satya (Half Truth, 1983) 

Middle Cinema 

Merging the popular-parallel cinema divide, this genre first appeared in 

the 1970s, led by a host of Bengali directors (Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu 

Chatterjee, et al.), or the Bengal School–influenced filmmakers (e. g., Gulzar, 

Sai Paranjpye) working from Bombay. Neither art-house, nor mainstream, 

but comfortably in-between, they married the song-driven format of the traditional, 

masala cinema with the realism-driven concerns of parallel cinema 

to tell slice-of-life tales revolving primarily around middle-class protagonists. 

Gently and wittily poking fun at middle-class moralities and hypocrisies, it 

was from this genre that most contemporary post-1970s Bollywood classics 

derived. Films in this genre are neither too serious nor are they larger than life. 

It has spawned the careers of several middle-of-the-road actors while accommodating 

popular stars who wish to exercise their acting skills. By the turn of 

the 1980s, most pioneer actor-directors of the parallel cinema movement found 

themselves making films in this more profitable genre as they realized the 

folly of completely ignoring the song-and-dance format, an integral reality of 

the Indian socio-cultural life. This also was the genre responsible for dedicated 

Bollywood comedies. A decade or more later, its practitioners continued to 

take a middle-of-the-road approach; some, however, went off-center to make 

crude slapstick films that pandered unimaginably to the gallery. 

Must Watch: Rajnigandha (Tuberose, 1974), Gol Maal (Mayhem, 1979), Katha (The 

Story, 1983)

7 

Trend-Spotting Down 

the Decades 

Raj Kapoor’s Chaplinesque hats from the 1950s . . . Sadhana’s Audrey 

Hepburn–inspired hairstyle in the 1960s . . . teen sensation Dimple 

Kapadia’s polka-dotted blouses and frocks from the 1970s . . . Sridevi’s “sexy” 

chiffon saris from the 1980s . . . Shakh Rukh Khan’s branded body-hugging 

polo tees from the 1990s—these are but some of the Bollywood stars whose 

personal style became the national passion for fashion. 

For a nation in which more than two-thirds of the population claim that 

watching movies is their only opportunity to dream, Bollywood stars have 

both consciously and unconsciously become the cultivators of trends in fashion, 

style, and grooming. Their inspirations may vary from the diversity of traditional 

Indian apparel to the latest fad from Hollywood, but the way in which 

their screen idols dress has always been a valuable indicator and categorical 

influence to any chronicler of fashion on the dominant sartorial trends and 

styles currently in vogue. 

The following is an overview of Bollywood’s changing fashion trends of the 

past century, inspired by its most influential style icons. 

The Silent Era (1910s–1920s) 

From the early 1900s until at least the end of the First World War (1918), many 

educated, middle-class Indians with aspirations for a better life looked to 

the British Raj for an uplifting worldview. Even Mahatma Gandhi believed 

in the fairness of the Empire, and had become reconciled to the idea of limited 

self-governance under a grand global power. Western ideas and inventions, 

English education, an ability to articulate well in the Queen’s English, 

and England-educated Indians were an inspiration. Not surprisingly, all 

the leaders of the Indian-Independence movement—Jawaharlal Nehru (the 

first prime minister of independent India), Mohammad Ali Jinnah (the first

Trend-Spotting Down the Decades 

111 

prime minister of independent 

Pakistan), and Mahatma 

Gandhi—were all U.K.–educated 

Indians who had opted to return 

to serve their motherland, while 

the first two even prided their 

“English” consciousness. 

Naturally, the Englandeducated 

Devika Rani, also 

known as the “first lady of Indian 

cinema,” for her elegant poise, 

impeccable manners, and her 

rejection of certain conventions 

(she once eloped with the hero of 

a film her husband Himanshu Rai 

was producing), stood out as the 

most fashionable, style-driving 

icon for nearly two decades. Her 

contemporaries, especially in the 

female category, mostly school 

dropouts hailing from economically 

disadvantaged or socially Sari style: Devika Rani. 

disreputable dancing girl backdrops, 

offered little to no competition. 

A London newspaper, The Star, in a review of Devika Rani’s Karma 

(Duty, 1933), a royal costume-drama romance, had noted: “Go and hear English 

spoken by Miss Devika Rani. You will never hear a lovelier voice or diction or 

see a lovelier face. Devika Rani has a singular beauty, which will dazzle all [of] 

London.” The lure of her face was attraction enough for her to do away with the 

elaborate ornamental adornments of an Indian lady, dismissing even the signature 

bindi (a red dot on the forehead). 

Rani’s style was minimalistic but classy—fusing the refined daring of 

Western elegance by opting for a sleeveless blouse with the restrained lure of 

an all-body-covering Indian sari. Her saris weren’t gaudy or print-laden, thus 

starting a trend for single shades. Colors, anyway, would have been a waste 

in a predominantly black-and-white era of moviemaking. With mythologicals 

inspired by the Indian epics and costume dramas dominating a majority of 

the films’ content, there was little scope for imagination or experimentation 

in daily dressing beyond the most common pan-Indian apparel for women, 

the sari. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icon—Devika Rani 

Apparel-in-vogue—Saris 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Early Talkies (1930s–1940s) 

The coming of the talkies, in 1931, and until the advent of the playback technique, 

gave singing heroes and dancing heroines an edge in the Indian acting 

scene. Physical appearance took a slight backseat to voice and diction, resulting 

in an entire generation of Anglo-American and white actresses who had 

dominated the silent era fading into obscurity because of their non-Indian 

accents. The only actor to buck, beat, and bend the trend was an Australian 

migrant of Scottish-Greek descent, Mary Ann Evans, popularly known as 

“Fearless Nadia,” of the stunt-and-adventure blockbusters of the 1930s. 

History celebrates her as Indian cinema’s first onscreen feminist, who 

championed women’s causes. She routinely beat up abusive males, fought 

with them on moving trains, literally lifting and throwing them onto the 

tracks. A lady who enjoyed a smoke, both onscreen and off, she made pipes 

and parallels look cool on women. The coming of sound also meant a possibility 

for articulating emotional turmoil and tensions borne of the ongoing clash 

between ideas, cultures, and rulers. As costume-fantasies gave way to more 

contemporary social-dramas, “suited and booted” (read: aping the West) male 

characters, depending on whether they played the hero or the villain, were 

loved or lampooned accordingly. 

India’s Independence movement entered its most decisive decade of action, 

the 1940s, leading to freedom in 1947, and the emergence of Gandhi and his 

ideas in the national consciousness. Predictably, a new fashion trend had 

begun. Gandhi’s decisive push for “Indian made” self-spun khadi (a home-spun 

cotton cloth) wear and his call for boycotting foreign goods (textiles and fashion 

from the West), saw the Gandhi topi (cap), single-bordered khadi sari and 

Nehru’s signature jacket on a kurta (a long-sleeved buttonless shirt, normally 

made of khadi) define the costume for every patriotic screen hero. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icon—Nadia 

Apparel-in-vogue—Parallels and khadis 

The Classic Age (1950s–1960s) 

Also known as the Golden Age of Indian Cinema, this was the era when fusion 

in film fashion attempted some of its most enriching and abiding sartorial 

experiments, as onscreen imaginations got a Technicolor boost, and romance 

became the voice of celebration for the young, in a newly independent nation. 

Men and women continued to be clad in traditional Indian outfits like dhotis 

(a traditional men’s garment made of a rectangular piece of unstitched cloth, 

which is wrapped around the waist and legs, and knotted at the waist, and 

ghagra-cholis (traditional Indian long skirt with blouse) in the rural settings,


113 

Bollywood’s Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn: Dev Anand and Sadhana in Hum Dono. 

 


but dapper suits inspired by European fashion and elegant saris with puffsleeved 

blouses became the signature attire for most urban male and female 

characters beginning in the 1950s. 

By the the end of the decade, style complemented substance to give 

Bollywood its first fashion-conscious heroes in Bollywood’s Gregory Peck, 

Dev Anand, and the desi Elvis Presley, Shammi Kapoor. While Dev Anand’s 

high-collared shirts and casually draped multi-colored scarves, topped with 

a checked hat on puffed hair, defined the swagger quotient in his early noir 

films, Shammi Kapoor gyrated his way to many a maiden’s heart through his 

vigorous dancing in psychedelic outfits in lavishly mounted studio musicals. 

The turn of the sixties, saw noir giving way to Technicolor musical thrillers 

with a romantic angle, introducing a new generation of free-spirited heroines 

demanding equal screen time. Fit and young, they opted for figure-hugging 

outfits, unlike their pristine, sari-clad predecessors of the fifties. While dancing 

around the trees seemed easier in the fashion discovery of the decade— 

tight churidars—the Hollywood influence on Bollywood dressing had never 

been more obvious. Whether it was Shammi Kapoor and his ilk’s psychedelic 

rock ’n’ roll tights, the body-hugging lace outfits of reigning vamp Helen, or 

Sadhana’s Audrey Hepburn–inspired forehead frills. 

The good girls’ bouffants became enlarged; the bad girls showed their 

legs in short skirts and hid their eyes under black eyeliner with blue-andgold 

eye shadow. But it was the “grey and the chic” who stole the highlight. 

Sharmila Tagore’s two-piece bikini (which sparked a national debate on the 

morality of the Indian woman in Parliament) and Sadhana’s turning of a 

loose regional dress, the salwar kameez, into chic attire with complementing

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Bollywood FAQ 

color-coordinated mojris (open-toed shoes) remain Bollywood’s ultimate, stillin-fashion 

bequest from the sixties. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icons—Dev Anand, Sadhana, and Shammi Kapoor 

Apparel-in-vogue—Scarves, caps, and churidars 

Rebel Years (1970s) 

As bell-bottoms and “flower power” shaped global fashion, Bollywood was not 

far behind. Fitter, younger stars meant costumes that revealed as much sex 

appeal as attitude! Teenage sensation Dimple Kapadia’s hot pants and polkadotted 

tie-knot blouses from Bollywood’s biggest romantic blockbuster, Bobby 

(1973), became an instant fashion trend among women. Zeenat Aman’s oversized 

tinted glasses, hippie-chic bell-bottoms, and bright flowery tops with a 

yellow marigold garland as seen 

in the hippie flick Hare Rama 

Hare Krishna (1971), paved the 

way for a national boho-chic 

trend. 

Saris took a backseat as the 

“model looking” Miss Asia Zeenat 

Aman and to-the-manor-born 

Parveen Babi made “skin-show” 

look classy, blurring the lines 

between the righteous heroine 

and the licentious vamp. Their 

characters drank, smoked, and 

wooed men with their unabashed 

sex appeal, paving the way for 

subsequent heroines to attempt 

more layered roles. Their comfortable 

carrying off of Western 

outfits opened women’s fashion 

to new inspirations. And when 

they donned the traditional sari, 

they were often drenched, leaving 

little to the imagination. 

For men, masculinity finally 

In Bobby, teen sensations Rishi Kapoor and Dimple 

Kapadia usher in bell-bottoms for boys, and tie-knot 

blouses for girls. 


came to the fore—all grit and 

rawness—in the rise of “the angry 

young man,” courting initial


115 

Flower power, floral prints, and fusion costumes to the fore: 1970s style icon Zeenat Aman 

(left) dances to the “hip and hippie” “Dum Maro Dum” song in Hare Rama Hare Krishna. 

 


success in working-class-protagonist parts. Tall, lanky, and smouldering in his 

bell-buttons, Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood’s “superstar of the twentieth century,” 

wowed critics and audiences alike in some spectacular acts in every 

genre. However, it was his challenging of the image of the blue-collared worker 

in a chest-revealing half-unbuttoned shirt knotted at the waist, all the while 

puffing on a bidi (cheap cigarette) in the rags-to-riches Mumbai Mafia story 

Deewar (The Wall, 1975) that was to be the “hit look” of the seventies. 

Casual middle-class fashion found its reference dress in Bollywood’s mostloved 

romantic hero, the boy-next-door-looking charmer Rajesh Khanna, and 

his fusion apparel of a guru kurta. The long, knee-length Indian kurta was cut, 

just a little above the thighs, to be worn over either trousers or pajamas, to 

finally make khadi a non-political item and more of a fashion statement. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icons—Zeenat Aman and Amitabh Bachchan 

Fashion-in-vogue—Shorts, shirts, and kurtas

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Bollywood FAQ 

Bling is in, albeit “momentarily,” courtesy of Bollywood’s 

“Garbo,” Rekha. 


Binging on Bling 

(1980s) 

Not just cinematically but sartorially, 

the eighties remain a 

nightmare decade for 

Bollywood, when anything could 

be part of an outfit, from metallic 

jewelery to glowing light 

bulbs, topped with consistently 

unruly hair for both men and 

women. Little wonder, then, that 

horror and cheap thrillers were 

the ruling genres of the decade. 

It was the age of disco and all 

the “leading men in Bollywood,” 

new or veteran, had to dance to 

survive! The choreography 

being routine and repetitious, 

the costumes and the sets had to 

go “over the top” to attract attention 

by being “shockingly different” 

over style. 

Popular moments ranged 

from Rishi Kapoor gyrating on a revolving disc prototype in a smouldering 

golden outfit to disco king Mithun Chakraborty’s bling-and-white dresses, and 

Amitabh Bachchan’s disco dancing in a costume made of glowing bulbs. The 

“cake of cacophony,” however, belonged singularly to a star from a generation 

before, “Jumping Jack” Jeetendra, on a surprise comeback dance opposite heroines 

half his age. His pelvic gyrations in crisply ironed tight white pants with 

complementing sparkling white shoes became a popular fashion trend for men. 

But the most enduring shocker of the decade has to be the “Greta Garbo 

of Bollywood,” and its most enduring fashion icon, Rekha, who famously 

designed her own outfits. While her choice in elegant saris and classy salwar 

suits were above reproach, it was in her curious East-West fusion experiments, 

featuring shoulder pads and chunky accessories with an overdose of metals 

and metallic colors, which continue to beguile as much as they shock. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icon—Rekha 

Apparel-in-vogue—Shines and tights


117 

Branding Style (1990s–2010s) 

The nineties was the decade when designers officially started taking credit for 

star outfits not just within, but outside of, a film. Short and showy became a 

trend, from Juhi Chawla’s off-the-shoulder frocks in Darr (Fear, 1993), to Miss 

World Aishwarya Rai’s midriff-revealing short skirt and top in Dhoom 2 (Blast 

2, 2006), which became a surprise rage among the tiny tots. 

Urmila Matondkar’s ankle-length boots, skinny-fit denims and short skirts 

in Rangeela (Colorful, 1995), still remain the era’s most influential trendsetter 

look. A rare blockbuster tribute to filmmaking in Bollywood, Rangeela, stood 

out as much for its raw retelling of an often-seen romantic-triangle tangle, as 

for its riotous yet relevant, cool, comfortable, and replicable fashions (in 

myriad pastel shades) by ace Bollywood designer-to-be Manish Malhotra. 

The rise of Bollywood’s best-known global superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, in 

some moving romances featuring “global Indian” characters based on foreign 

shores, warranted complementary 

costuming. The 

metrosexual star made soft 

shades cool for a lead actor 

to sport, as a romantic hero 

once again captured the 

Indian imagination after 

a nearly three-decade lull. 

Khan’s Kuch Kuch Hota 

Hai (Something Something 

Happens, 1998), incidentally, 

started a debatable 

trend of displaying brand 

labels on characters, which 

by the 2000s had become 

a tad vulgar, with brand 

names brazenly mentioned 

in the dialogue, making 

films look and sound like a 

long commercial. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icons—Urmila 

Matondkar and Shah 

Rukh Khan 

Apparel-in-vogue— 

Designer brands 

Urmila Matondkar (in the poster) and the film Rangeela trigger a 

“cool and colourful” fashion revolution both on and off screen in 

the 1990s. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Fusion/Tradition Once Again (2010s– ) 

With nearly a quarter of Bollywood’s box-office earnings coming from overseas 

territories (with a distribution reach of over a hundred countries), Bollywood 

fashion—particularly through the route of Bollywood dancing classes across 

the globe—now influences international fashion. Naturally, it has also been 

open to an equal, if not greater, extent of reverse influencing. 

As the Indian nation comes into its own, in terms of identity and newer 

attributes of signature recognition beyond yoga and the Taj Mahal, Bollywood 

Rajesh Khanna sports his signature guru-kurta in Anand. The film and the 

costume continue to inspire. 


Nanda makes a “fit” fashion statement in tight churidars. 

 



119 

fashion has moved towards creating a sartorial climate that merges the cool 

and the comfort of Western wear with the enduring, classic appeal of its traditional 

best to make an eclectic and accessible wardrobe for Bollywood’s 

new-age “global Indian” characters. 

So, while the heroines vary comfortably between a sari and shorts in the 

span of a single film, Bollywood’s chiseled new generation of heroes no longer 

shy away from outfits and colors that also reflect the attitudes of their wearers—from 

the casual and the ordinary, to the daring and the proud. 

■■ 

■■ 

Style icon—Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone 

Apparel-in-vogue—Cool and comfortable! 

Fashionable Stars and Their “Cool Costumes” 

Top Icons of Men’s Fashion 

1950s–1960s Dev Anand’s scarf and checkered cap 

1970s 

Rajesh Khanna’s guru kurtas 

1970s 

Amitabh Bachchan’s knotted shirts and bell bottoms 

1980s Jeetendra’s tight white pants 

1980s–1990s Rishi Kapoor’s all-season sweaters 

Top Icons of Women’s Fashion 

1920s 

1960s 

1980s 

1990s 

2010s 

Devika Rani’s saris with sleeveless blouses 

Nanda’s body-hugging churidars 

Rekha’s Anarkalis and Kanjeevaram saris 

Madhuri Dixit’s backless cholis 

Deepika Padukone’s short pants

Section 2 

Stars from Another Sky

8 

The First Lady of Indian 

Cinema 

You must know what you want. I come from East Bengal and if anybody 

interferes with my life, they may have a hard time of it. My life is so 

complicated, it is impossible to describe it. Long life . . . too long! One 

shouldn’t live too long. 

—Devika Rani (1908–1994) 

Devika Rani’s life, if made into a biopic, could well unfold like auteur 

Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese classic, Rashomon (1950). A truth with multiple 

perspectives, all equally intriguing, and revealing a totally different attribute 

of the subject’s personality, depending on the nature of the raconteur’s 

take—subjective, alternative, self-serving, or celebratory! 

To the Manor Born 

Devika Rani was that rare silent era female star who, true to the meaning of 

her surname Rani (meaning queen), hailed from an elite high-society background. 

She was related, through both of her parents, to the poet and Nobel 

laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Her father, Manmathnath Choudhary, was the 

son of Sukumari Devi Choudhary, the sister of Tagore. Devika’s mother, Leela 

Devi Chaudhuri, was the first surgeon general of Chennai, and the daughter 

of Indumati Devi Chattopadhyay, whose mother was yet another sister of the 

Nobel laureate. 

The illustrious family members of the Tagore family, were not only leading 

patrons of the Indian cultural renaissance in the early twentieth century, they 

were integral participants in the shaping of many of its artistic experiments. 

The family’s talent pool made its mark across the fine arts of literature, painting, 

singing, and dancing. Rani added film acting to that overflowing kitty of

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Bollywood FAQ 

pioneer culturatti, after a chance, lifechanging 

meeting in London. As was the 

custom in the Indian privileged class, 

Rani was sent to a boarding school in 

England at the age of nine. After completing 

her schooling in the mid-1920s, she 

received a scholarship to study at the 

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and 

subsequently joined the Royal Academy 

of Music in London. 

She also enrolled for courses in textile, 

architecture, and décor design, and 

apprenticed under Elizabeth Arden, 

a Canadian-born American businesswoman 

who founded a cosmetics empire 

in the United States. Fleeting between 

courses and dreams, purpose came in the 

form of a chance meeting with the handsome 

Bengali barrister-turned-filmmaker 

Himanshu Rai at a party in London 

A portrait of Devika Rani. Photo courtesy of NFAI 

in 1928. Hailing from an aristocratic 

family, Rai was in London preparing for 

the shoot of his silent costume-drama A 

Throw of Dice (1928). He invited Rani to join his international cast and crew as 

an assistant set designer, and thus began her tryst with cinema. The film, an 

Indo-German production, was being directed by Franz Osten. Rani joined its 

crew and went to Germany to receive training in filmmaking at Berlin’s UFA 

Studios (UFA being an acronym for Universum Film Akitiengessellschaft). 

Following the film’s completion, Rai proposed marriage, and Devika agreed, 

but theirs remained more of a mentor-colleague equation than of husband-wife 

as equals. Rani, though impressed by Rai, sixteen years her senior, regarded 

him more as a mentor than a lover, and had even stated, “He was really like 

my father.” 

The Longest Kiss 

Rai’s next major production was a bilingual romance, Karma (Duty, 1933), a 

costume-drama love story of a prince and princess negotiating parental opposition. 

It was Rai’s first talkie, and an Indo-German-U.K. joint production with 

him in the lead, and Rani making her acting debut as the lovesick princess. 

While there was nothing novel about the film’s plot, it generated headlines for

The First Lady of Indian Cinema 

125 

Rani and Rai’s four-minute-long kissing scene, which remains the longest in 

Indian cinema to date. Rani also sang Bollywood’s first English-language song, 

“Now the moon her light has shed,” in the film. 

Made simultaneously in English and Hindi, Karma premiered in London 

in May 1933 to a rousing media reception, with a special screening for the 

British royal family. A critic for the London newspaper The Star gushingly 

wrote, “Go and hear English spoken by Miss Devika Rani. You will never 

hear a lovelier voice or diction or see a lovelier face . . . ”; while Manchester’s 

Daily Despatch declared, “Devika Rani . . . puts the stereotyped charms of 

Hollywood blondes completely in the shade.” A critic from The Daily Star 

even proclaimed her a “potential star of the first magnitude.” Rani was 

invited by the BBC to enact a role in their first-ever television broadcast, in 

1933. She next inaugurated the company’s first short-wave radio transmission 

to India. Despite its critical and commercial success in the U.K., Karma, 

released as Nagin Ki Ragini (The Music of the Snake-Woman, 1934) in India, 

failed to excite local audiences. 

But Devika Rani became an instantaneously popular celluloid face on 

her subsequent return to India with Rai. She established herself as a leading 

actress of the talkie era, as heroine of India’s “best-equipped” film studio, 

Bombay Talkies. The couple’s flight from Germany had been induced by 

drastic social changes in Europe, fueled by the rise of the Nazi Party. Rani, 

whose career in German cinema was just underway at UFA—which at that time 

boasted Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg and his protégée Marlene Dietrich— 

could have become an even bigger international star had the return to India 

not occurred. But, then, her destiny was linked to becoming a pioneer star in 

a global film industry-to-be, instead of just another star in the biggest one at 

the time. Rai and Rani never had a child, but they gave birth to a pioneering 

Indian filmmaking institution, Bombay Talkies, in 1934. 

A Studio Scandal 

Bombay Talkies’ first film, Jawani Ki Hawa (The Passion of Youth, 1935), was a 

crime-thriller shot on a train, and starring Devika Rani and the tall and handsome 

Najmul Hassan. Sparks flew between the young hero and the “rebellious” 

beauty during the shooting of their subsequent film for the studio, Jeevan 

Naiya (The Boat of Life, 1936). Leaving the fate of the project hanging in mid-air, 

Rani eloped to Calcutta with Hassan. Her husband was furious, but the distraught 

producer in Rai had to be accommodating. After all, Rani was Bombay 

Talkies’ biggest star, and without her, the film’s production was stalled. A 

significant portion of the movie had been shot, and a large sum of money, 

taken as credit from financers, had been spent. Rai asked his senior technician,

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Bollywood FAQ 

Sashadhar Mukherjee, an assistant sound-engineer at the studio who shared a 

brotherly bond with Rani, to convince her to return to the set. Mukherjee did 

so, playing the “reputation” card well against the interfaith love story. Divorce 

was almost legally impossible in India at the time, and women who eloped 

had their reputations forever sullied, and were often shunned by their own 

families. Devika Rani was made to realize that she could not secure a divorce, 

nor could she marry Hassan, not under any circumstances. She returned to her 

husband, but their marriage was never the same again. 

The practical side to Rani won over the romantic as hers became the industry’s 

first instance of a high-profile separation, without divorce. Through the 

good offices of Mukherjee, she negotiated a separation of her finances from 

her husband as a condition for her return. Thenceforth, she would be paid 

separately for working in his films, but he would be solely responsible for 

household expenses in the home, where both would continue living together, 

albeit platonically. Her cold, calculated negotiations earned her the reputation 

of the dragon lady, but Rai had little choice—this was the best way for him to 

save face and prevent his studio from going bankrupt. 

Devika Rani returned to Rai’s residence while Rai made Bombay Talkies 

his home, feverishly making critically acclaimed films as well as box-office 

hits. He died from a stress-related illness a few years later, at the untimely age 

of forty-two. 

Bollywood’s First Feminist Star 

Following her return, Devika Rani became the focal point of several womencentric 

modern social-dramas produced by Bombay Talkies and directed by 

Franz Osten. In most of these films, she was paired opposite a studio discovery, 

the lab technician-turned-actor Ashok Kumar, whom Rai had handpicked 

as a replacement for Najmul Hasan in order to complete Jeevan Naiya. Rani’s 

personality completely upstaged her leading men; she was even the driving 

force in her own publicity. Jeevan Naiya (1935) and Jeevan Prabhat (The Promise 

of Life, 1937) explored the consequences of caste-crossed romances, with Acchut 

Kanya (Untouchable Girl, 1936) becoming one of the first films to critique the 

scourge of “untouchability.” Untouchability is an extreme kind of social racism 

prevalent in India, where those born to a higher caste despise and even consider 

unholy the touch of a lower-caste individual’s shadow. In Acchut Kanya, 

Rani played a girl from the untouchable community who falls in love with an 

upper-caste boy; in Jeevan Prabhat, she plays a high-caste Brahmin woman who 

is mistaken by members of society to be having an extramarital affair with an 

untouchable man. Her next feature, Izzat (Honor, 1937), was a Rome and Juliet– 

style costume-drama about two lovers from warring Maratha clans, set in


127 

Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar sing the “Main ban ki chidiya” song in 

Acchut Kanya. 


medieval times. Nirmala (1938) deals with the plight of a childless woman in a 

curious bind: An astrologer advises her to abandon her husband to ensure that 

her pregnancy comes to term. Durga (1939) is a romantic love story of an 

orphaned girl (Rani) and a village doctor (Ashok Kumar). These films, especially 

those made subsequent to the talkie era’s first blockbuster, Acchut Kanya, 

made Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani the most popular screen pair of the 

1930s. 

The Fall of the “Dragon Lady” 

Following the death of Rai in 1940, Devika Rani, a co-founder of Bombay 

Talkies, took over its ownership and the managing of its day-to-day affairs.

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Bollywood FAQ 

But differences in the working style and the future roadmap as envisioned by 

Rani and Rai’s second-in-command, Sashadhar Mukherjee, led to a pattern of 

rotation whereby Rani and Mukherjee helmed alternate studio releases. The 

success of Kismet (Fate, 1943), the first pan-Indian blockbuster film, under 

Rani, established her as one of the most influential female owners of a big 

studio anywhere in the world at that time. Kismet (1943) contained subtle 

anti-imperialist messages (India was under British rule at that time), thus 

making it an early reflector of the mood of the nation in popular cinema. 

These successes, however, did not sit well with the men of Bombay Talkies. 

Sashadhar Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar, who had finally come out of the 

shadow of his boss and co-star, decided to venture out on their own. They 

established a new studio, Filmistan, and took with them the bulk of Bombay 

Talkies’ talent pool, including Gyan Mukherjee, the director of Kismet. 

Devika Rani’s “dragon lady” reputation, based on her “smoking, drinking, 

cursing and hot temper,” was evidently too much for a patriarchy-minded 

outfit to continue indulging. 

Rani tried to cope with the changes and challenges by investing in a new 

roster of actors, talented newcomers Dilip Kumar and Madhubala prominent 

among them. But by the time these unpolished gems would shine in the film 

firmament, Rani had already said adieu. Her increasing involvement in production 

following her husband’s death left her little opportunity to cash in on 

her signature attraction. Her popularity as a leading lady had begun to decline 

and she quit acting following Hamari Baat (Our Tale, 1943). Rani’s pushing 

for unconventional ideas and her unwillingness to compromise on “artistic 

values,” scared away potential backers in an increasingly commercial industry. 

Disillusioned by this turn of events, she may have had the last laugh when 

her “much-doubted, hand-picked” discoveries Dilip Kumar and Madhubala 

emerged as two of the biggest stars in post-Independence cinema. 

Retiring to Love 

Retiring from films in her mid-thirties, Rani finally found love and peace 

with Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich, son of the celebrated Russian artist 

Nicholas Roerich. After their 1945 wedding, the couple moved away from the 

din and bustle of Bombay’s city life to the north-Indian hill station of Manali, 

overlooking the Himalayas. There, she made a few documentaries on wildlife. 

The duo then shifted to a garden city, Bangalore in South India, where they led 

a solitary existence on a 450-acre (1,800,000 m.) estate. Rani made headlines 

one last time when the aged Roerich couple was dragged into a property dispute. 

Their huge estate had become the subject of ownership-related litigations 

involving their caretakers, the state, and other stakeholders.


129 

Devika Rani died on March 9, 1994, a year after her husband’s death in 

Bangalore, where she was given a funeral with full state honors. She may 

have distanced herself from the film industry in her later years, but a grateful 

nation never forgot her, choosing her as the first recipient of the prestigious 

Dadasaheb Phalke Award for Lifetime Achievement—the Indian state’s highest 

honor for distinguished service to the cause of cinema.

9 

The “Fearless” Woman 

with the Whip! 

In the third reel of my first film . . . I swear I’ll avenge my father’s abduction 

and free him from the clutches of the evil minister. Then I crack the 

whip and say: “From this day forth, call me Hunterwali!” At that point, 

the audience went wild. They just didn’t stop whistling and applauding. 

—Mary Ann Evans (1908–1996) 

She came, the audiences saw, and a nation was conquered! This sums up 

the spectacular career of Mary Ann Evans (1908–1996) as Fearless Nadia, 

following the release of the genre-defining action film Hunterwali (The Lady 

with the Whip, 1935). For generations since, depending on when one was born, 

such an impact on Indian cinema occurred only twice—once, in the 1970s, 

with the arrival of its first “superstar sensation,” Rajesh Khanna, and again, at 

the turn of the millennium, with the “Greek God–looking hunk with a heart,” 

Hrithik Roshan. But for an actress to be the focus of such hysteria, Nadia 

remains a solitary exception in the history of Indian cinema. 

It’s a pity that very few of her hit films can be accessed today, and what’s 

available of Hunterwali, through chunks of missing soundtrack and faded 

scenes at India’s National Film Archives, cannot measure up to the original 

release. 

Making her debut at the age of twenty-five, Nadia was several years older 

than the average teenage newcomer. Moreover, casting the half-Scottish, half- 

Greek blonde lady with little knowledge of Hindi and an awkward accent was 

sheer hara-kiri for any producer at the dawn of the talkie era. Filmindia’s July 

1935 review of Hunterwali refers to it as “an ordinary stunt story with some 

gripping situations.” As for its star: 

Nadia’s work as Madhuri stands out prominently, though she lacks 

expression. She will improve a lot if she looks after her language. . . .

The “Fearless” Woman with the Whip! 

131 

Direction is hopeful and promising. Songs are not good, though 

background music [in] places is happy. . . . On the whole, the picture 

is entertaining. From the box-office viewpoint, it can go down as one 

of [director] Homi Wadia’s successes and will play well in provinces 

where stunt stories are appreciated. 

The film became more than a pan-Indian success, playing all over the country 

for more than twenty-five consecutive weeks, outstripping the wildest 

expectations of its ambitious makers, Jamshed and Homi Wadia, owners of 

one of Bollywood’s foremost early studios, the Wadia Movietone. 

The First Adventure 

Loosely based on the popular American series The Perils of Pauline, and 

inspired by the action sequences of the daring Hollywood star Douglas 

Fairbanks, the story of Hunterwali revolves around the royal family of a 

fictional modern Indian kingdom. Nadia, as Madhuri, is the daughter of its 

righteous and generous, but weak and aging, king. Early in the film, we see the 

king’s cavalcade of cars accidentally hit a “handsome” street beggar named 

Jaswant (Boman Shroff). The cause for his unusual good looks can be sourced 

to a prelude scene set twenty years earlier, in which it had been revealed that 

he hailed from a prosperous family. The kind-hearted princess rushes to the 

beggar’s aid but is held back by her prime minister, Ranamal (Sayani, a regular 

villain in all the Nadia films), who is soon revealed to have a sinister purpose 

of his own. The beggar is treated and brought before the king, who offers him 

money as compensation. He refuses, thereby winning the admiration of the 

princess. The stage is seemingly set for the two to fall in love. But developing a 

romance was never the film’s prerogative. 

In a quick coup undertaken during a hunting expedition, Ranamal kidnaps 

the king and officiates as the ruler. Madhuri is allowed to remain a figurehead 

sovereign as Ranamal pursues his ambitions of marrying her to naturally succeed 

to the throne. His every proposal of marriage, however, is rebuffed by the 

princess with a laugh, hinting at the disparity in their ages and outlook on life. 

But once she is made aware of the growing incompetence and injustice 

of the new regime, she resolves to safeguard the rights of her citizens and 

assumes the role of “benefactor in disguise.” Visibly moved by accounts of 

torture and other atrocities being heaped on her people, she exits the antechamber 

and returns, whip in hand. 

She asks, “Yeh kya hai?” (“What is this?”) 

They reply, “Hunter!” (“A whip!”) 

She then asks, “Aur main kaun hoon?” (“And, who am I?”)

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Bollywood FAQ 

“Fearless Nadia” Mary Ann Evans poses for a photoshoot. 

 


They exalt, in unison, “Hunterwali?” (“The lady with the whip!”) 

Her first target is Ranamal’s bumbling, boozing commander. A haughty 

and rotund man, he is introduced with his soldiers in a pub, singing paeans to 

drinking—“Hamein pilaye jaa pyali pe pyali” (“Keep offering me drinks, glass 

after glass . . .”)—in an innovative mix of a song peppered with shayaris, or 

recited couplets of short, rhyming poetry. 

The pub’s harassed young waiter warns them to beware of the famed justice 

of the Hunterwali, who will punish them for their inaction. Bragging and 

jeering, the commander challenges, “Where is the Hunterwali?” As his men 

start taunting and challenging the boy to call his Hunterwali for help, she 

suddenly materializes and asserts: ‘I have come to show you all who I really 

am.” Laughing provocatively, she throws a barrel at the inebriated soldiers and 

starts fighting them—sometimes ten at a time!


133 

The sari wardrobe of the demure princess is daringly exchanged for erotically 

tight-fitting Western-style shorts revealing muscular thighs above kneelength 

boots. A sleeveless blouse with a jaunty fluttering cape, topped with 

a black eye-mask under a Russian fur cap, complete her no-nonsense femme 

fatale persona. The sight of this Hunterwali was enough to leave conservative 

audiences of the 1930s gasping for air. But, then, she was challenging virtually 

every convention, driving the onscreen action by whipping, wrestling, lifting, 

and throwing ever-stouter men all the time. Her swift fights are a fantasy to 

behold, with Nadia’s gymnast-like agility and sturdy physique lending believability 

to her prowess. 

Birth of an Icon 

And so began a series of surprising adventures highlighting the one-time 

circus performer’s myriad stunt skills. Hunting antagonists from pub to forest, 

from the palace to the village, vaulting across high walls and jumping from 

rooftops, racing wild horses, or swinging, Tarzan-like, across branches, she 

fights with anything at hand—swords, sticks, pole vaults, even bare fists— 

embodying the adjective chosen by director Homi Wadia to describe 

her—fearless! 

Escaping from one such onscreen adventure with the commander in 

pursuit, she steals Jaswant’s wandering horse, inadvertantly bringing about 

another meeting. In a romantic setup straight out of Lord Krishna’s romantic 

trysts in the enchanted forests of Vrindavan, Jaswant teasingly sings to 

the Hunterwali as he chances upon her bathing mask-less (but wearing a bra 

and a small slip), in the film’s lone showcase moment of its heroine’s feminine 

charms. Learning 

the Hunterwali’s true 

identity, he pledges 

allegiance to her cause 

and rescues her kidnapped 

father from 

a dungeon, where 

he had been imprisoned 

by Ranamal. 

In a thrilling, elaborate 

climactic battle 

between Hunterwali’s 

motley group of civilian 

bravehearts and 

Ranamal and his men, 

The “Hunterwali,” in her signature “masked” costume, prepares to 

perform an onscreen stunt. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

the Machiavellian prime minister is defeated and the old king is reinstated 

on his throne. 

Incidentally, despite all the whips and sword-play, there is no bloodshed, 

with the exception of Ranamal’s murder scene, and this is brought about, not 

by Hunterwali or her cohorts, but by a betrayed ex-lover. The fight scenes might 

strike us as hilarious today, but their intentionally Chaplinesque approach is 

meant to make the action palatable to a wide range of audiences, from children 

to grandparents. This applies to the film’s funny, lyrical dialogue as well. Even 

the villainous prime minister speaks in a singsong manner, which hints at the 

concern for melody in an action film. 

A Hysteria Called Hunterwali! 

Merging the noble intentions of Robin Hood with the bravado and costuming 

of Zorro, Indian cinema’s first super woman, Hunterwali, remained a hysteriagenerating 

phenomena for as long as the character’s attributes were showcased 

by director Homi Wadia. Nadia, who married her director in real life, was 

Indian cinema’s biggest stunt star between the 1930s and 1950s, appearing 

in nearly fifty films, among them: Pahadi Kanya (Daughter of the Hills) and 

Miss Frontier Mail (both 1936), Hurricane Hansa (1937), Diamond Queen (1940), 

Bambaiwali (The Bombay Girl, 1941), Jungle Princess and Muqabla (The Challenge, 

1942), Hunterwali Ki Beti (Daughter of the Hunterwali, 1943), Stunt Queen and 

Himmatwali (The Lady Braveheart, 1945), Toofani Tirandaz (The Swift Archer) 

and Lady Robin Hood (both 1946), Tigress (1947), Carnival Queen (1955), Circus 

Queen (1959), and Khiladi (The Player, 1968). 

Recalling her experience at the premiere screening of Hunterwali at 

Bombay’s Super Cinema theater, Nadia had said, “My first appearance was in 

the second reel, fifteen minutes into the film. . . . In the third reel, I swear I’ll 

avenge my father’s abduction and free him from the clutches of the evil minister. 

Then I crack the whip and say: ‘From this day forth call me Hunterwali!’ 

At that point, the audience went wild. They just didn’t stop whistling and 

applauding.” The risky film about a scantily clad blonde heroine that had been 

turned down by so many theaters for being too radical had been accepted. 

And how. 

According to Fearless Nadia: The True Story of Bollywood’s Original Stunt 

Queen: 

Hunterwali rapidly became the most successful film of the season and 

was shown all over the country for more than twenty-five weeks. The 

production house of her films, Wadia Movietone, no longer had to 

bother with advertising. Hunterwali fever gripped the whole of India. 

In every market and bazaar there were whips, masks, and miniature


135 

A media advertisement highlighting the post-release hysteria of 

Hunterwali. 


Hunterwali pictures on sale. Through Hunterwali, Wadia Movietone 

had gained a clear profile. The experimental phase of early days of 

sound film was over for the time being. Nadia’s monthly wage was 

most generously increased—while many of her acting colleagues of the 

traditional school were dismissed with a few kind words. The Wadia 

brothers had to build a new ensemble around the new star. And thus 

began a fevered search for bodybuilders with acting talent and trained 

real animals that too went on to become stars . . . 

Nadia was unlike any actress or heroine the audience had seen thus far. As 

her biographer Dorothee Wenner writes: “Nadia didn’t only look completely 

different to the dark-haired, meek beauties, her behavior on-screen was also 

in complete contrast to the submissive, weak, dependent-on-men ladies on the 

screen.” 

Decades later, Fearless—The Hunterwali Story, a documentary by her 

nephew Riyad Wadia, made its premiere at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival. The 

predominantly European audience was awestruck by this brazen celebration 

of fun and feminism, eroticism, and progressive characterization in Indian 

cinema, which were in vogue long before the feminist and women suffrage 

movements had even been conceived in the West. They shouldn’t have been 

surprised: such an experiment was hardly an oddity in a culture that had 

been celebrating “the evil vanquishing” Shakti form of the Mother Goddess 

for centuries.

10 

The Thespian of Good 

Acting 

I don’t like doing retakes of very intense shots. Normally, when I do 

important things, I do it at one go so that if an emotion clicks you lead 

on with it to the point of orgasm, as they say. . . . Learning the lines 

or committing them to memory is one thing. And “owning” them is 

another. It’s got to go into the third layer of memory, so that you can 

“own” the words rather than remember them. 

—Dilip Kumar (1922– ) 

Bollywood film lore has a popular anecdote that reveals as much about an 

era as it inspires about its character. The legendary actor Dilip Kumar 

(b. 1922) had taken that decisive five-year break in the late 1970s, between 

his lead role signoff in Bairaag (Asceticism, 1976) and subsequent return in 

powerful character roles in Hindi cinema’s last multi-star blockbuster, Kranti 

(The Revolution, 1981). By that time, the Indian film industry had witnessed 

the consolidation of its biggest superstar of all time, Amitabh Bachchan, and 

the fall of another, Rajesh Khanna, both of whom were two decades younger 

than Kumar. His illustrious contemporaries, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, the 

other two big star influences from “The Golden Triumvirate” of Indian cinema’s 

golden age, the 1950s, had long since left acting to pursue directing. 

Times were changing. Endorsements and advertisements were fast emerging 

as windfall lucrative assignments for stars, old and new. The greatest of them, 

Dilip Kumar, was one of those who was approached. Pushing sixty, and four 

years unemployed, Kumar had famously retorted in his signature soft-spoken 

voice: “Hum ishtahaar ke liye nahi bane hain.” (“I was never meant to be for 

advertisements.”) 

Once again, Dilip Kumar represented the legacy, the values, the style, and 

the aura of a generation of great actors—and greater individuals—who had 

been the source of some timeless and cherished moments in Indian cinema.

The Thespian of Good Acting 

137 

Dilip Kumar (right), with actor-director Manoj Kumar on the set of revolutionary period drama Kranti, 

which launched his second career run as a successful character actor. 


Kumar was that rare actor who happened to be acknowledged while still working, 

by both the film industry and the critics as an artiste nonpareil—an institution 

of acting for generations of subsequent actors in his country; an inspiration 

who became a legend in his lifetime. 

Preferring Bollywood to Hollywood 

Kumar lived up to that reputation, almost diligently, through actions that 

rarely compromised that halo. This also had been one of the major holdouts 

for Kumar to refuse David Lean when he approached him for a stellar role 

in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). He was unsure about the eventual character 

graph and the meatiness of his part, wary that he might be compromising 

the aspirations of an entire subcontinent. He had later explained, “Going to 

the West might have had a novelty value, but an Indian star cannot think of 

a permanent career in Hollywood. If the whole thing had turned out slightly 

different, as with most Asian actors in the West and Hollywood, I feared it

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Bollywood FAQ 

would affect my own standing among my own people, my permanent market.” 

That role eventually went to Omar Sharif. 

Similarly, it was not easy for him to accept the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, the highest 

civilian honor from Pakistan, a nation that had fought three wars with India. 

When Shiv Sena, a local political party from his home state Maharashtra, 

started pressuring him to return the award, Kumar had sought the counsel of 

then-Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and kept the award as “his patriotism 

and commitment to the nation,” the PM had maintained, “was never 

suspect,” and artists like him inspired and belonged to all of mankind. After 

all, “a king is worshipped within the boundaries of his land, but an artiste is 

celebrated beyond the boundaries of any land.” 

It’s been nearly two decades since the release of his last film, Qila (The Fort, 

1998), wherein he plays both the hero and the villain for the first time in his 

career. Yet the mystique of Dilip Kumar remains; indeed, he is more alluring 

than any current superstar. His is, admittedly, a small filmography, with just 

sixty-two films in an career spanning five decades. But what a rich repertoire 

it is! Be it the sheer diversity of parts (from a blind beggar to a handsome 

prince, a rapist to a judge, a vigilante, a Mafia don, a bandit, buffoon, horsecart 

driver, farmer, aristocrat, activist, mill worker, trade union leader, politician, 

etc.); the number of literary adaptations, East or West (Devdas to 

Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre); and at least one class act in every genre— 

social-drama (Ganga Jumna [Gunga and Jumna], 1961; Shakti [Power], 1982; 

Mashaal [The Flame], 1984); supernatural-thriller (Madhumati, 1958); historical 

(Mughal-e-Azam [The Great Mughal], 1960); gangster (Vidhaata [The Destiny 

Maker], 1982); costume-adventure (Aan [Pride], 1952; Kohinoor, 1960), grand 

romance (Andaz [Style], 1949; Aadmi [Man], 1968); comedy (Azaad [Free], 1955); 

tragedy (Deedar, [The Glance], 1951; Devdas, 1955); and masala fare (Ram aur 

Shyam [Ram and Shyam], 1967). Just when the media had anointed him Indian 

cinema’s “ultimate tragedy king” for his memorable onscreen suffering in 

Devdas, Kumar not only changed tracks, he also won a Best Actor award for his 

comic timing in Azaad (1955). 

An Actor Nonpareil 

Dilip Kumar is the only Indian actor to have three consecutive wins as Best 

Actor (Azaad, Devdas, and Naya Daur [New Era]) at the Filmfare Awards for 

the years 1955–1957. His overall record stands at eight wins and nineteen nominations 

from the forty-plus films he made following the commencement of the 

Filmfare awards in the 1950s. He was also the first to win the Best Actor prize 

for Daag (The Stain), 1953. Little wonder, then, that Kumar remains the greatest


139 

standard bearer in the Indian subcontinent for actors hailing from a variety 

of performing styles—realistic, melodramatic, methodical, or underplaying. 

The ideas and approach to cinematic acting in India can be divided broadly 

into two eras—the one before and the one after Dilip Kumar. His was a tectonic 

influence on Bollywood as profound and game-changing as Marlon Brando’s 

debut on the Hollywood scene. To a cinematic idiom known for its predeliction 

for stylized theatricality, Dilip Kumar’s soft-spoken delivery is reminiscent of 

A fan admires the poster of a young Dilip Kumar. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

real-life conversations, and his silences and subtle expressions speak volumes. 

As he said, 

It’s not that I consciously developed a style of delivering dialogue in 

a soft voice. That’s the way I speak in real life, too. My father never 

shouted or ranted, even when he was upset. My mother was gentle 

and docile. And even at work I befriended people who were simple 

and refined—Sashadhar Mukherjee, Anil Biswas, Amiya Chakravarty, 

Gyan Mukherji, Ashok Kumar. Real-life influences impacted my acting 

styles because that’s where I found my inspiration, especially since I 

had to be my own instructor. 

Indulgent critics have often said that “you picked up more from a Dilip 

Kumar back shot than a full-frontal monologue of other stars.” To many, he 

also evoked the underlaying of Paul Muni and the intensity of Montgomery 

Clift. Kumar never lost his aura, nor did he compromise the truth of his characters 

born from the empathy of a detailed researching of their backdrop and 

respect for every audience member. He says, “If I make a film on a peasant, the 

peasant must be able to appreciate it, and react to it. So often we become so 

academic in our rendering that we find the intelligentsia and the people with 

cars and the critics giving very good reviews to them—but the same peasant is 

missing from the auditorium. I have tried to direct my efforts towards people 

so they react to it.” This, perhaps, was the reason for the spot-on achievement 

of one of Kumar’s most acclaimed performances, that of a boisterous peasant 

outlaw in Gunga Jumna, the first blockbuster in a Hindi dialect (Bhojpuri) for 

a leading Bollywood star, after courting acclaim with portrayals of urban and 

aristocrat heroes. 

Fruit Merchant to Famed Star 

Dilip Kumar’s entry into cinema was a chance happening. Born as Mohammad 

Yusuf Khan on December 11, 1922, in Peshawar (now in Pakistan) in undivided 

India, he was one of twelve siblings. He came with his father, Lala Ghulam 

Sarwar, a fruit merchant, when he migrated to Bombay in the 1930s for better 

business prospects. Once, while standing in for his father in his shop, young 

Yusuf’s charmer looks and a certain intrigue in his persona caught the attention 

of the owner of the prestigious Bombay Talkies studio and leading actress, 

Devika Rani. At a time when most actors came from theatrical/performance 

backgrounds, Devika Rani took a huge gamble by taking on as apprentice 

someone with no training or background in acting at a handsome monthly 

salary of Rs 1,250/month (almost equivalent to two lakh rupees in today’s 

times). Kumar wasn’t even sure he heard the offer right: was this meant to be


141 

an annual or a monthly package? After all, a family friend from Peshawar, the 

in-demand actor Raj Kapoor, was being paid less than Rs 200/month at that 

time. 

Devika Rani’s hunch was a good one: Kumar’s initial three films with 

Bombay Talkies may not have shaken the box office, but with his fourth film, 

Jugnu (Firefly, 1947), there was no looking back. It is not a coincidence that 

Bollywood’s most influential hero’s first big hit came in the year India won its 

independence. Dilip Kumar was the favorite actor of independent India’s first 

prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a founding leader of India’s secular and 

liberal democratic system, as well as a philosopher-politician. Naturally, his 

choice was India’s first philosopher-actor. 

Kumar chose responsibly, opting for quality over quantity, evidenced by 

his spare filmography. “It is repetitive only when you keep repeating the same 

personality over and over again,” he explained. “It is a very painful thing. But 

not if you keep on changing your personality.” Ashok Raj, in Hero—The Silent 

Era to Dilip Kumar, notes: 

All the gentlemen (actors prior to Kumar) inherently lacked the deep 

emotional appeal and the ability to generate among the audience a 

deep sense of empathy. Indian cinema, therefore, was waiting for a 

new artiste who could not only bring about a metamorphosis in the 

hero’s persona, keeping in view the new societal realities, but also 

imbue it with a new aura and new dimensions to meet the emerging 

requirements of film aesthetics and mass appeal. 

Kumar’s selectivity and resistance to repetition caused him to lose out on 

some iconic roles and films—e.g., he had rejected an all-time great internationally 

acclaimed Indian classic-to-be, Pyaasa (The Eternally Thirsty, 1957), as he 

had found its protagonist’s mood state similar to that of his career-defining 

tragic hero character in Devdas (1955). This discerning and choosy approach 

extracted a huge personal cost as well, leading to his break-up with the “Venus 

of the Indian screen,” Madhubala. In his autobiography, Dilip Kumar—The 

Substance and the Shadow, he reveals: “Contrary to popular notions, her father 

Ataullah Khan was not opposed to her marrying me. He had his own production 

company and was only too glad to have two stars under the same roof . . . 

holding hands and singing duets in his productions till the end of our careers. 

When I learned about his plans, I explained that I had my own way of functioning 

and selecting projects and I would show no laxity even if it were my 

own production house.” His would-be father-in-law saw his assertion as being 

“rude and presumptuous.” Madhubala sided with her father, thus ending what 

could have been Bollywood’s greatest onscreen pairing from being realized 

offscreen as well.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Marriage happened for Kumar at the age of forty-four (in 1966), to the 

twenty-two-year-old, ravishing beauty and rising romantic star Saira Banu, 

for whom it was a lifetime’s wish fulfilled. Banu had always nurtured only two 

ambitions—“becoming an actress and marrying Dilip Kumar!” 

The Character Hero 

Kumar’s signing off from lead roles happened a decade later, with a rare boxoffice 

failure in which he plays the hero: Bairaag (Asceticism, 1976). He had 

attempted another acting “first” by playing the triple role of a father and his 

twin sons in the film. Kumar didn’t hang around like other fading stars— 

another attitudinal difference between a legend and a superstar. Five years 

later, he came back in a meaty character part in a star-studded Independencedrama, 

Kranti (The Revolution, 1981), retaining his diamond-like status. Next 

came Shakti (Power, 1982), with then-reigning superstar Amitabh Bachchan. 

It earned Kumar his last Best Actor award, and was followed by eleven acting 

gems, frequently in a crowded ensemble of competent actors, and helmed by 

directors both new and veteran. Kumar, not a member of the younger generation 

of stars, remained the point of interest in the films as neither his co-stars 

nor his audience would ever want to see him in the shadows. These films were 

arguably the only saving grace in Bollywood’s weakest decade of storytelling—the 

1980s. 

By the end of the 1990s, Kumar hung up his acting boots for good after a 

failed attempt at directing the multi-starrer (and never completed) Kalinga. 

His last two acting outings included Saudagar (The Businessman, 1991), an epic 

melodrama spanning three generations, and Qila (The Fort, 1998), a psychological-thriller 

in which he played both the hero and the villain. 

Today, at ninety-five, Dilip Kumar remains Indian cinema’s oldest-living 

connection between the glory of its finest era and the inspiration of its ambitious 

present. Legends like him are getting rarer by the day. Most contemporary 

superstars possess not even half the acting skills Dilip Kumar exhibited in 

his heyday. Indeed, Bollywood—and the world cinema—has stopped making 

men like him: artistes with an appeal beyond borders and an ability to inspire 

by living an exemplary life in each of its 24/7 frames.

A Masterclass in Villainy 

11 

Training, according to me, is secondary in any art. Primarily, you have 

to be God-gifted to succeed. You can get a diploma from an institute, not 

talent. Any talent or skill should be within you. 

—Pran (1920–2013) 

When the ninety-three-year-old Pran (1920–2013) was finally conferred 

with Indian cinema’s highest lifetime achievement honor, 

the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, by the president of India in 2013, a unanimous 

refrain from fans, members of the film industry, and the media was that it was 

an encomium long overdue. His death, only weeks later, reiterated the irony of 

belated recognitions for Indian cinema titans. 

Pran, according to the award’s citation, was a multi-faceted actor and a true 

gentleman. But, in the annals of Indian film history, his name will be forever 

etched as its first “star villain.” With modern cinema’s preference for layered, 

gray characterizations, the actors of yore who depicted absolute, linear emotions 

have often been unfairly dismissed as theatrical, inferior, or “unreal.” 

But this is more reflective of the vanishing league of “free-spirited” actors who 

possessed a natural understanding of the extreme emotional possibilities in 

the human psyche, not the failure of melodramatic cinema. To paraphrase 

Norma Desmond, “Those actors are big; it’s the pictures that got small.” 

At a time when even Bollywood’s “romantic” heroes have taken to villainy 

with a vengeance (since Shah Rukh Khan’s Baazigar, The Gambler, 1993), why 

does Pran still remain the ultimate embodiment of skillful villainy on the 

Bollywood screen while trying to don the “good” hue on occasion. 

A Hero Wanting to Play the Villain 

In his first Hindi film, Khandaan (Family, 1942), by Lahore movie mogul 

Dalsukh M. Pancholi in undivided British India, the twenty-two-year-old Pran

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Bollywood FAQ 

“Villain” Pran (left) threatens “hero” Dilip Kumar in Ram Aur Shyam. 

 


Krishan Sikand played a young lover romancing the beautiful Noor Jahan. 

That experience, with the soft and pleasurable emotions of love, humor, and 

wonder, was “uninspiring” enough for him to promptly switch to the other side 

of absolute heroism—i.e., absolute villainy! He simply could no longer bring 

himself to sing songs with heroines around the trees. His discomfort at cooing 

sweet nothings in his lover’s ear, and that unavoidable, piercing “hard” gaze, 

even in the romantic scenes of Khandaan, hinted at ample possibilities of far 

greater impact, with stronger, decidedly unpleasurable emotions like fear and 

rage. 

In his personal life, as well as in each of his memorable performances as 

villain or Samaritan, anger and fearsomeness have defined the dominant


145 

emotional makeup of Pran’s characters. His most celebrated turn, as Malang 

chacha (uncle) in Upkar (Favor, 1967), articulates righteous anger fueled by an 

undercurrent of sorrow for the thankless ways of an opportunistic world. It 

became the essence of its rudely tearing elegy to the cherished chimera of 

human bonding—“Kasme waade pyaar wafaa sab, baatein hain, baaton ka 

kya . . .” (“Promises, assurances, love, faithfulness are all mere words; as worthless 

as words. . . . None is for anyone in this selfish world, it’s all a lie, a web of 

words. . .”) 

Incidentally, had the film’s lead actor-director, Manoj Kumar, listened to 

the song’s composing duo of Kalyanji and Anandji, Pran would never have 

been given the chance to picturize the song. So strong was his negative image 

in popular socio-cultural consciousness that the composers warned Kumar 

their composition would be wasted on Pran. This was around the time that his 

image as a screen villain was so believable that he was feared in real life as 

well! A research survey by journalists in Bombay, Delhi, Punjab, and the north 

Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, discovered that not a single boy was named 

Pran after the 1950s. “Just like no one has ever named his son Ravana (after 

the mythical villain of the epic Ramayana),” Pran recalled in an interview. 

That Samaritan turn: Pran’s conscience-keeping character in Upkar. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

He added, “When I went to someone’s house in Delhi for tea once, [the host’s] 

young sister was whisked out of my sight! My friend later phoned me and said 

his sister had fought with him for bringing a bad man into the house!” 

The very same Kalyanji, after the film’s release, had called to apologize to 

Pran “for trying to rob him of the song!” He also said, “You are the first artist 

to have sung our song from the heart, and not from the mouth” (this being a 

reference to actors who lip-sync to a playback singer’s rendition). 

The Face of Fear 

Righteous anger once again fuels the confrontations and cements the bond 

between Pran’s valiant and loquacious Sher Khan with Amitabh Bachchan’s 

smoldering inspector Vijay Khanna in Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973). Anger in a 

character with heroic streaks normally manifests into positive emotions, such 

as protective love, inspiring action, empathetic sorrow, and corrective disgust. 

In a character with negative traits, even when skewed towards courageous acts, 

the intention is to inflict fear or deepen the recipient’s sorrow. 

Like the first and foremost villain of Indian storytelling, Ravana, from its 

oldest epic, Ramayana, commands awe; Pran’s villainous characters are modeled 

in the spirit of that time-tested tradition of emotion-enhancing Indian 

acting, which heightens the action’s thrill level as the daring of his villains 

matches the mettle of the heroes. 

Villainous characters, essayed by Kanhaiyalal before Pran (and Jeevan 

afterward), were crafty prototypes of the creepy-crawly exploitative money 

lender Sukhilala of Mother India (1957), or his spineless smuggler-industrialist 

counterparts from urban narratives. They were weak opportunists, plotting 

from behind and pleading for mercy when caught. Pran’s characters always 

attack from the front and, in the end, either die or go to prison; rarely do they 

show even the slightest remorse. 

His ruthless raja Ugranarayan in Madhumati (1958) remains a splendid 

reference for a brutal and arrogant but daring villain, which was to become a 

prototype for his busiest decade of the sixties, until Upkar. Unlike a Sukhilala, 

who tries to exploit the heroine through bribes and the lure of a better life, 

Ugranarayan covets the heroine as a matter of right, not opportunity. One sees 

no hint of compassion in Pran’s villains, making them all the more villainous. 

This he achieved by diligently devising a complete characterization for almost 

every role he played. Amitabh Bachchan notes, “A gesture, a particular style of 

speaking, his appearance, were all done to perfection. He improvised to make 

his character look different from the others that he had played.” Discussing his 

preparation process, Pran said,


147 

I would cut photographs from a newspaper if I thought I could use a 

hairstyle, a moustache or an expression in any future film. I stored 

observations from people I interacted with or saw around me. I always 

tried to get into the skin of the character and to add new shades and 

novel nuances. It was I who suggested to Rajsaab (Kapoor) that I run 

my hand across my neck repeatedly for Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai 

(In the Country Where the Ganges Flows, 1960), in which I played Raaka, 

a dacoit. I told him a dacoit’s greatest fear was that of being hanged 

and this could be subconsciously reflected by such a mannerism. 

Rajsaab was delighted! The trait made an impact only because it was 

used for a dacoit. 

Further enhancing Pran’s acting caliber is the fact that he never reduced 

his characters to stereotypes. Case in point: Dil Diya Dard Liya (Gave Heart, 

Got Hurt, 1966), A. R. Kardar’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “grey classic” 

Wuthering Heights, in which Pran’s take on the exploitative Hindley Earnshaw 

not only pits him effectively against Dilip Kumar’s Heathcliff (an authorbacked 

character with ample negative streaks of his own), but also raises the 

stakes with his undiluted villainy. The character’s climactic mutilation in a 

cage of hungry birds could have given goosebumps to the Master of Suspense 

(and director of 1963’s The Birds), Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, there is neither defeat 

nor remorse in his character’s restless, raging eyes, not even in death. 

That Scary Look 

If eyes are the greatest weapon in an actor’s arsenal, Pran uses them with 

deadly impact! Their menace has the ability to make his medium frame seem 

taller as he convincingly intimidates a six-foot-tall police officer in Zanjeer. His 

gaze made actress Meena Kumari wilt in fear as the stylish cad sat in a chair, 

blowing smoke rings, in Azaad (The Free, 1955). His eyes rage with unrequited 

lust in Madhumati, they burn with malicious jealousy in Jis Desh Mein Ganga 

Behti Hai, they seethe with sorrow against an unjust world in Upkar, and they 

fume with a disgust borne of class-based intolerance in Sharaabi (Drunkard, 

1984). 

Sharaabi, incidentally, marks the high note in another character turn in 

Pran’s constantly evolving character graph—from an awkward hero (1940s), 

to an awe-inspiring villain (1950s–1960s), to a courageous supporting actor 

(1970s), to a valuable character actor especially inclined at portraying inflexible 

patriarchs (1980s–1990s). Pran pulls off his third cinematic triumph with 

Amitabh Bachchan in Sharaabi, after playing a friend (Zanjeer) and a senior 

accomplice in Don (1978). This time, playing a money-minded, busy father to 

Amitabh’s “over sensitive” Vicky Kapoor, Pran’s character of Amaranth Kapoor

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shares a complex relationship with his son, one that is nurtured by the extreme 

emotions of anger and disgust—anger on the father’s part for his son’s constant 

rebellion, and disgust on the son’s part for his father’s insensitive prioritization 

of wealth over human relationships. 

Pran’s last acting triumph remains the early Salman Khan hit Sanam 

Bewafa (Faithless Lover, 1990), revolving around the struggles of star-crossed 

lovers from feuding families. Once again, Pran laces his plotting patriarch 

with robust emotions, devoid of the softer personality traits ascribed to a typical 

“father of the bride” in a Hindi film. 

No retrospective of Pran’s legacy is complete without a proper show of 

appreciation for the strong emotional types he has given us: those truly fearsome, 

no-nonsense villains with a character, style, and class all their own. 

Pran’s Must-Watch Top Ten 

1. Halaku (1956) 

2. Madhumati (1958) 

3. Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai (1960) 

4. Upkar (Favor, 1967) 

5. Aansoo Ban Gaye Phool (Tears Turned to Flowers, 1969) 

6. Nanha Farishta (Little Angel, 1969) 

7. Johny Mera Naam (My Name is Johny, 1970) 

8. Victoria No. 203 (1972) 

9. Zanjeer (Chains, 1973) 

10. Sharaabi (Drunkard, 1984)

12 

Bollywood’s Monroe 

(1933–1969) 

When I began to understand a little of my work, the Lord above decreed, 

“Enough . . .” 

—Madhubala (1933–1969) 

Twenty-six photos from a special 1951 issue of Life magazine went viral 

almost immediately after being posted online. These candid moments 

of Madhubala, in and around her Bombay flat, were captured by celebrity 

photographer James Burke. Five decades had passed since the photos were 

taken, and four had passed since the subject’s untimely passing. The event had 

almost coincided with the senseless, barely protested razing of the tombs of 

Madhubala and other Muslim luminaries from the golden age of Indian 

cinema by the owners of their final resting 

place, a cemetery for Muslims in Mumbai’s 

Juhu. In an industry notorious for its lack of 

heritage, these never-before-seen photos 

brought vividly to mind that fallen icon. 

They also confirmed what had been said 

many times in the past: “One could photograph 

Madhubala from any angle and without 

makeup and yet come away with a 

masterpiece!” 

A year after Burke’s discovery, David 

Cort, in a 1952 issue of Theatre Arts magazine, 

observed, “The biggest star in the 

world—and she’s not in Beverly Hills.” Her 

competitors, like actress Nirupa Roy, had 

recalled, “She was perfect, right down to 

her toe-nails. There never was and never 

will be anyone with her looks.” Her juniors, 

like Minu Mumtaz, marveled in awe, “Her 

complexion was so fair and translucent that 

Madhubala—the Venus of the Indian 

Screen. 


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when she ate a paan (betel leaf) you could almost see the red colour going 

down her throat.” 

Women never felt jealous of Madhubala. and men never lusted after her. 

The male heartthrob of the 1960s, Shammi Kapoor, in his first film opposite 

Madhubala, forgot his lines as his mind went blank and he just gazed at her, 

lost and tongue-tied in his first face-to-face encounter with her on the the set 

for Rail ka Dibba (The Railway Coach, 1953). Cherished and revered as something 

meant to remain unsullied and unattainable, the beautiful Madhubala 

is a legend that continues to grow with time. 

The Child Star 

Her tryst with filmdom began as a child. She was the lone breadwinner of a 

large family of siblings, as was the case with many talkie-era Bollywood ingénues 

hailing from migrant families. Born Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi on 

Valentine’s Day in 1933, her father, Ataullah Khan, lost his job with a tobacco 

company in Peshawar (now Pakistan). The family went through hard times, 

and Khan relocated to Bombay, the Indian subcontinent’s fast-emerging “city 

of dreams.” He started doing studio rounds with baby Mumtaz. The obedient 

daughter of a disciplinarian father got her break as a child artiste as the heroine’s 

daughter in Basant (Spring, 1942). 

Five years later, she received star billing in movie mogul Kidar Sharma’s 

musical take on young love, Neel Kamal (Blue Lotus, 1947), opposite another 

icon-to-be, Raj Kapoor. About her life as a star, Madhubala, in a March 1956 

issue of the Filmfare magazine, said, “Mine is a strange life. When I leave the 

house in the morning, my little sisters are still in bed. When I come home late 

in the evening, they are either out for a walk or busy with their home-work. By 

the time they are through, I have to be in bed to be able to get up early the next 

morning. You know, I hardly see enough of my family.” 

Mumtaz was rechristened Madhubala by Devika Rani, and the debutante 

got her first box-office hit playing an enigma in one of Bollywood’s finest 

noirs, and its first horror film, Mahal (The Palace, 1949), a film that also gave 

Bollywood its most iconic female playback singer, Lata Mangeshkar. And there 

was no looking back. 

A Love Story and a Legal Case 

Smitten film journalists gushed about how Madhubala made the simple act 

of crossing a street an event. When a very private Madhubala, who would 

normally shy away from film functions and parties, was escorted by Dilip


151 

Kumar to the premiere of his film Insaniyat (Humanity, 1955), the media went 

into a frenzy. But the stars’ romance would be short-lived. 

While shooting Naya Daur (New Era, 1957), Madhubala’s father refused to 

send her outside Mumbai for some scenes, warranting shooting in the great 

outdoors of central India. In 1954, she had been diagnosed with a congenital 

heart disorder. The film’s journalist-turned-producer-director, B. R. Chopra, 

replaced Madhubala with rising dancer-actress Vyjayanthimala. The change, 

despite Madhubala having already shot a few reels of the film, made her father 

and manager furious. He took Chopra to the court for an unceremonious 

dropping-off of his daughter, who was a superstar in her own right by then. 

Chopra filed a countersuit, and his hero, Dilip Kumar, took his side. 

Madhubala and Dilip Kumar generated headlines again when he admitted 

under oath that he did indeed love her, while testifying about her father’s 

unprofessionalism. The father lost the case; his daughter, the romance of her 

life. 

Khatija Akbar in the biography, The Story of Madhubala, writes: 

Gentle as she was, Madhubala could also be fiercely independent. 

Forced to decide between one or the other, she had opted for her 

family . . . it is another matter that the family did not encourage her 

to seek her happiness. The extent of “loyalty” that families demanded 

and got from stars of the forties and fifties is quite amazing. The era 

is strewn with stories of exploitation, both financial and emotional. 

A Crowning Jewel 

Dilip Kumar and Madhubala were rumored to have ceased all communication 

after that event, but Madhubala quietly made up for the “unprofessionalism” 

allegation when she completed their nine-years-in-the-making epic costumedrama, 

Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal), which was released in 1960. The 

highest-grossing Indian film of all time—until the arrival of Sholay (Embers, 

1975), Mughal-e-Azam, in retrospect, ranks as a prominent gemstone in the 

bejeweled crown of Kumar’s career. For Madhubala, it was the first role that 

would finally give her her due as an actress—a talent that was often overshadowed 

by her great beauty. Her most challenging performance, as a doomed 

courtesan who is in love with the son (or crown prince) of Mughal emperor 

Akbar, ranks high on every list of the greatest female performances in Indian 

cinema. 

Dragging the heavy chains in Mughal-e-Azam, as the imprisoned paramour 

of a smitten rebel-heir to the throne of India, worsened her heart condition,

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Bollywood FAQ 

but she neither gave up nor compromised her takes (although her subsequent 

releases did employ doubles for her stunt scenes). 

“The Greatest Love Story Never Told . . .” 

Mughal-e-Azam’s blockbuster reception coincided with the news of Madhubala’s 

illness, which by now was entering its final stages. She went abroad for treatment, 

but the doctors in London recommended rest, with a remaining survival 

prediction of between one and ten years. In that time, Madhubala married the 

maverick singer-turned-actor Kishore Kumar, with whom she had acted in a 

series of light romantic comedies. 

Some say the marriage to Kumar was simply a bad case of rebound. Some 

attributed Madhubala’s unusual decision to her abiding fondness for the institution 

of marriage, while others speculated that she didn’t want to die a spinster. 

Kishore Kumar married a sick woman and was reportedly aware of this, 

knowing all too well that nursing his wife would be their only shared intimacy. 

Stories range from it being a failed marriage to the only relationship that 

gave Madhubala some genuine amusement, not unlike the duo’s rollicking 

screen rib-ticklers, made in the style of American musicals. Such are the ironies 

of life. The perfect comic partners onscreen were destined for a real-life 

tragedy of a painful and prolonged journey to an early death. 


It wasn’t just her being an intelligent woman in silly romances that first elicited 

the Marilyn Monroe parallel around Madhubala in the popular imagination. 

It also was that she was a beauty with an aura of purity that safeguarded 

her from the sullied world of the film industry. Poet-writer Priya Surukkai 

Chabria sumptuously describes Madhubala’s appeal: “She could balance the 

most outrageous demands of the roles she played and the absurdist plot contrivances 

with a natural radiance and humor, her infectious smile mocking 

the foolishness of it all. With her incandescent beauty, she could illuminate 

the waxen ambience of the butter-faced heroes she played against, singing a 

duet, shaking her head so that her kiss curls and her plaits swam in the air, 

she seemed to say: “All this is so silly but such fun. . . . Embraced by her warm, 

whacky presence, one agreed . . .” 

As she revealed in an interview concerning her 1957 split with Dilip 

Kumar: “I am very emotional. I have always lived my life with my heart. For 

that I have suffered more than is necessary. I have been hurt.”


153 

Madhubala, immortalized as Anarkali, in Mughal-e-Azam. 

 


The editor of Filmfare magazine, B. K. Karanjia, one of the few journalists 

to have access to Madhubala in her last days, writes: 

The first time I met Madhubala was at her Bandra residence. 

Immaculate in white, moving with the grace of a beautiful animal, 

she served us tea. That day we drank only of her beauty. And the last 

time I met her was in 1965. She lay in bed at the Breach Candy hospital, 

under oxygen. Pale and wan, with tubes jutting through her 

nostrils, sticking plaster patches on her face, she still looked beautiful 

in an ethereal sort of way. I thought of her as Anarkali and of all the 

death scenes she had brought to vibrant life on screen. I thought what a

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Bollywood FAQ 

paradox it was that she should now be playing it for real, and I thought 

of her as Cinderella whose clock has struck twelve too soon. 

. . . And Venus Departs 

Madhubala’s life ended in March 1969 when she was just thirty-six, the same 

age that Marilyn Monroe had attained when death claimed her. Even in death, 

Madhubala remains, like Monroe, a beautiful enigma, a courageous fighter 

with a giving heart in a hurting world. The posthumously released Jwala 

(Flame, 1971), permitted Indian audiences to see the now-anointed “Venus of 

the Indian Screen” for the first time in color. No one remembers Jwala today, 

but as the renewed hysteria around Madhubala in the social media following 

Life magazine’s pristine black-and-white photos prove, color was hardly necessary 

to heighten attention for filmland’s loveliest star.

13 

The Superstar Phenomenon 

The day I announced my retirement, I had realised one of my films had 

flopped. After a few days, another one flopped, and in a matter of a few 

months eight of my films crashed at the box office. The reason I decided 

against retiring, I didn’t want to go away a loser. 

—Rajesh Khanna (1942–2012) 

One of the anecdotes from the set of Amar Prem (Eternal Love, 1972), a 

critically acclaimed blockbuster in the five years of Rajesh Khanna’s 

undisputed reign at the Indian box office (1969–1974), goes like this: The buildup 

track to the film’s song sequence that introduces Rajesh Khanna’s character 

to his leading lady, played by Sharmila Tagore, had a drunken Khanna totter 

up the steps to Tagore’s first-floor kotha (bordello). He is instantly attracted by 

her pristine voice wafting through the mean streets. But the scene didn’t feel 

right, especially when compared to a similar sequence by the legendary Uttam 

Kumar from the original Bengali-language film (Nishipadma, 1970). Its popular 

star didn’t mind the twenty-five-plus takes it took to get that scene right! The 

restlessness was not about pleasing the film’s director, Shakti Samanta, who 

was happy with every one of those takes; it was an actor’s inherent desire to 

better the original and leave a signature mark of his own. 

The Phenomenon 

An orphan boy, rechristened Jatin Khanna by his foster parents (who were 

relatives of his biological parents) and renamed Rajesh Khanna (following 

his winning a star-hunt contest), would leave a decided mark on the world’s 

most prolific industry. When referring to Khanna, words like phenomenon and 

superstar entered Hindi’s movie lexicon, despite the presence of Dilip Kumar 

and Dev Anand before him, and with Rajendra “Jubilee” Kumar, who comes 

closest to having matched him in terms of box-office success, still very much 

a part of the industry.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Rajesh Khanna made a quiet debut in Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat (The 

Last Letter, 1966). But the national hysteria following his star turn in Aradhana 

(Devotion, 1969) was indicative of his popularity throughout his stunning 

string of fifteen consecutive hits in a span of three years. Salman Khan may 

have come close in the 1990s, but the hysteria has only once been matched 

since—by Hrithik Roshan in Kaho Naa . . . Pyaar Hai (Say You’re in Love, 2000). 

The Forever Face of “Joy” Onscreen 

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, but greatness was thrust upon 

“Kaka” Khanna, as he was affectionately called. One may wonder, Why only 

him? But then, only he got to play Anand, one of the most inspiring characters 

in the history of Indian cinema and a major factor in hoisting the 

Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore in Aradhana. 



157 

fair-complexioned actor with the boyish looks and gentle dimples as celluloid’s 

ultimate charmer-philosopher of the 1970s. Despite a career full of romantic 

roles, when he passed away on July 18, 2012, news channels kept replaying his 

two still-remembered monologues from Anand (Joy, 1971)—“Maut tu ek 

kavita . . .” (“Death, you are a poem . . .”) and “Hum sab rang manch ke kathputli 

hain . . .” (“We are all puppets on the stage of life . . .”)—as apt parting lines in 

his tribute videos. 

One couldn’t help but agree that Rajesh Khanna was born to play Anand— 

an inspiring cancer patient, laughing in the face of inevitable death. Just as 

Amitabh Bachchan was to do Deewar (The Wall, 1975), Dilip Kumar played the 

iconic dacoit Gunga in Gunga Jumna (Gunga and Jumna, 1961), Raj Kapoor the 

tragic joker in Mera Naam Joker (My Name is Joker, 1971), or Shah Rukh Khan 

in Baazigar (The Chancer, 1993). Shah Rukh’s efforts as the Anand-inspired star 

of Kal Ho Naa Ho (If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come, 2003), set in twenty-first century 

New York, though equally heartwarming, fell leagues short of the impact generated 

by Khanna’s portrayal. 

The seventies’ other middle-class hero (apart from Amol Palekar), Khanna 

gave us onscreen anand (joy), but unlike all actors who strive to entertain their 

audience, he magically turned that joy to bliss. Countless analytical pieces 

have attempted to decipher the reasons behind his superstardom—was it that 

full-hearted, winsome smile, the mischievous flutter in his eyes, that playful 

dancing of fingers and half-waves of the hand, or the impact of a mesmerizing 

voice that achingly asked us to hold back our tears as he cheerfully and with 

victorious aplomb, died in film after film, whether from lost love, cancer, or 

tuberculosis? 

Dying had never been so poetic—that’s why, among the many memorable 

death scenes he enacted onscreen, the death of Rajesh Khanna’s Anand still 

makes the biggest impact. For his portrayal, Khanna won his second consecutive 

Filmfare Best Actor award, after Sachaa Jhutha (True and False, 1970), to be 

followed by Aavishkaar (Discovery, 1974). 

Praising Khanna’s performance is not meant to discount all those memorable 

songs of romance and life associated with his films. Khanna had the 

benefit of the best of the seventies’ most popular music directors, R. D. Burman 

and Laxmikant Pyarelal, composing the music for most of his romantic blockbusters, 

with a fading tribe of poets providing the lyrics. 

Khanna and Kishore—The Face and Voice of Love 

The story of Rajesh Khanna’s impact would be incomplete without an 

acknowledgement of his singing voice, the versatile playback artist Kishore 

Kumar. Kumar, too, achieved a comeback of sorts by singing for and rising

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Bollywood FAQ 

in popularity with Khanna in the seventies. Two untrained prodigies, they 

complemented each other with their inherent naturalness, spontaneity, and 

dollops of madness of the creative kind. Khanna’s creative peak also coincided 

with the consolidation of two Indian cinema auteurs—Shakti Samanta and 

Hrishikesh Mukherjee—known for their intense and intimate portraits of 

middle-class follies and foibles. They repeatedly cast the boy-next-door-type 

Khanna in gently inspiring, author-backed roles that were relatable to the 

superstar’s core fan base, the romantics among the men and women across 

generations. And one had to have lived in the seventies to truly know the 

impact he made on teary, frozen-eyed movigoers in hushed theaters when he 

said, “Pushpa, I hate tears,” in Amar Prem (Eternal Love, 1972). 

If girls married his photograph, middle-aged moms secretly carried his 

picture in their wallets, and a few heartbroken teens even committed suicide 

when he, at thirty-one, married fellow teen heartthrob Dimple Kapadia (only 

sixteen then, just after the super success of her debut film, Bobby, in 1973). 

Khanna’s hairstyle was widely copied, and tailors were inundated with orders 

for the collared guru kurtas he popularized. Pressure cookers, hair salons, 

restaurants, newborn babies—all were named after Rajesh Khanna. His seafacing 

Mumbai address, Aashirwaad, rightly called “a blessing,” became a 

required tourist destination for visitors to India’s tinsel town. 

Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna in Anand. 



159 

The Fall 

How, then, did it all go so wrong? The flipside of the Rajesh Khanna story 

soon became a lesson, a morality tale, for all stars-to-be, on how not to handle 

stardom because none, to date, had lost so much, so soon, as Bollywood’s first 

superstar. It was all over within just five years. 

His fall’s biggest beneficiary, more by default than any design, was the more 

disciplined Amitabh Bachchan, who rose exactly three years after Khanna’s 

reign to consolidate the superstar space for a full decade and more. Beneath all 

the polite pleasantries, no love was lost between the two, as none could get them 

together again to recreate the magic of Anand (Joy, 1971) or Namak Haram (The 

Betrayer, 1973). 

A series of failed personal relationships (Anju Mahendroo, Tina Munim), 

marital discord, and separation from Dimple Kapadia over allegations of 

domestic violence, professional arrogance, a coterie of sycophants fanning 

his delusions, ham acting in uninspiring movies, alcohol abuse, bad debt, and 

the loss of his iconic Mumbai bundalow, Aashirwad—all caused irreparable 

damage to Khanna’s reputation. He began sleepwalking through his roles in 

uninspiring movies with repeating plotlines, further denting the once-daring 

actor’s mettle. 

A comeback did happen in the eighties with Avtaar (1983), but this time 

more as an aging patriarch than a romantic hero. Meanwhile, his contemporaries—Amitabh 

Bachchan, Jeetendra, Rishi Kapoor—carried on in hero roles 

for another decade. 

Khanna briefly dabbled in politics, winning the elections as a candidate 

of the Indian National Congress. He served as a member of Parliament from 

1991–1996, representing the Indian capital city constituency of New Delhi. He 

soon lapsed into doing B-grade films, shocking his following with his last film, 

Wafa (Trust): A Deadly Love Story (2008), in which he appeared in a steamy 

bedroom scene with a much younger co-star, three years after receiving the 

Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. 

The Last Act 

Gossip may sell tabloids and titillate fans, but an actor is venerated for the 

memorable acts of selflessness he performed during his lifetime. And Rajesh 

Khanna performed enough of these in a few years to equal or exceed what 

many strive a lifetime to accomplish. His funeral was attended by nearly 

a million mourners. They came from all corners of the globe, from Surat, 

Ahmedabad, California, Singapore, and many foreign countries.

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Bollywood FAQ 

An ordinary man who became a king who returned to commoner status, he 

experienced adulation and indifference, love and loss, fame and fadeout—in 

essence, a ruthless metaphor for stardom. The life of Rajesh Khanna had more 

drama that any film in which he starred. 

The ones who bring people together, experience joys and 

sorrows together too, 

Why the same people choose loneliness, and a wish to depart 

alone. . . . 

But to where . . . 

O’ Life, what a beguiling riddle you are. 

—Translated from the song “Zindagi kaisi hai paheli” 

(“What a beguiling riddle, O’ life!, Anand”) 

Rajesh Khanna’s Must-Watch Movie Milestones 

1. Aradhana (Devotion, 1969) 

2. Ittefaq (Coincidence, 1969) 

3. Sachaa Jhutha (True & False, 1970—Filmfare Best Actor Award) 

4. Safar (Journey, 1970) 

5. Anand (Joy, 1971—Filmfare Best Actor Award) 

6. Amar Prem (Eternal Love, 1972) 

7. Daag (The Blot, 1973) 

8. Aavishkaar (Discovery, 1973—Filmfare Best Actor Award) 

9. Avtaar (1983) 

10. Aaj Ka MLA Ram Avatar (Today’s MLA Ram Avatar, 1984—All India 

Critics Association Best Actor Award)

Megastar of a Millennium 

14 

I am as common as the common man and as special as him, too. 

—Amitabh Bachchan (1942– ) 

The uncommon success of Bollywood’s “most special” actor, Amitabh 

Bachchan (b. 1942), is a tribute to the passion and influence of the “most 

common” consumers of the film medium—the masses. It is they who made him 

the biggest star and a major influence for nearly a fifth of the entire existence 

of the century-old Indian cinema. So absolute was Bachchan’s dominance on 

the Indian movie scene in the 1970s and ’80s that legendary French director 

François Truffaut called him a “one-man industry,” while the moviegoers 

nicknamed him the “Big B”! For years on end, single-screen theaters across 

Indian towns would host year-round “unofficial” festivals of Bachchan’s films, 

screening one or the other of his six (on average) releases per year. The only 

Indian actor to have consistently given at least one super hit film for fifteen 

consecutive years—from Bombay to Goa (1972) to Aakhree Raasta (The Last 

Option, 1986)—Amitabh has also sung in twenty-five films. 

In the year 2000, and still playing charismatic lead parts, Amitabh 

Bachchan was voted as the “Actor of the Millennium” in a turn-of-thecentury 

global BBC poll (beating such global acting legends as Charlie 

Chaplin, Marlon Brando, and Sir Laurence Olivier). Bachchan is also 

the first Indian actor to have a comic-book superhero, “Supremo,” 

resembling him, and is the first Asian actor to have his wax-model 

likeness displayed at Madame Tussaud’s in London. 

Anecdotes about Bachchan’s global fanzine often range from the sublime to 

the wacky. So profound is the Bachchan impact on the Middle-East and Africa 

that surprised Indian tourists have frequently waxed eloquent about warm 

hospitality experiences from Iraqis and Egyptians just by being from the land 

of Amitabh Bachchan! Warring tribes and the Mujahedeens in Afghanistan 

famously halted war in select areas where Bachchan was shooting Khuda

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Bollywood FAQ 

Gawah (God is Witness (1992). In the film, he plays an Afghan braveheart who 

makes tremendous personal sacrifices for his word of honor. 

Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most popular and critical successes in 

the West in the new millennium, contains an imaginatively repackaged 

narrative ingredient from Bachchan’s masala movies. Slumdog Millionaire’s 

director, Danny Boyle, states that one of his major influences was Deewar 

(The Wall), featuring one of Bachchan’s finest performances. Little wonder, 

then, that Slumdog’s life-changing Q&A game show kicks off with a Bachchan 

trivia—“Who was the star of the 1973 film Zanjeer?” For those familiar with 

the hysteria around Big B, the scene in which the tiny protagonist, Jamal, 

wades through pools of feces just to get his autograph strikes Indian viewers 

as plausible. Bachchan, incidentally, is also worshipped daily as a living god 

in a temple built in his honor in Kolkata, in eastern India. 

From Death and Back 

To experience Bachchan fully, one should know about one of his (and the 

Indian film industry’s) major life-changing events. On July 26, 1982, while 

filming Coolie (1983) for director Manmohan Desai in Bangalore, Bachchan, 

as usual, insisted on doing his own stunts. This one involved a dangerous 

fight scene in which he had to take a punch, knocking him from a table. His 

onscreen opponent, played by newcomer Puneet Issar, hit Bachchan by mistake 

in the solar plexus. Reeling under the unexpected blow, he struck his 

abdomen on the table’s corner, which led to his suffering a rupture of the 

spleen. His condition worsened and he was transferred to Mumbai’s Breach 

Candy Hospital. A splenectomy took place and doctors attending him were on 

twenty-four-hour call. Eighteen holes were drilled into his stomach to drain it 

of the impurities. 

As Bachchan lay clinically dead for a few torturous minutes, an entire 

nation’s heartbeat stopped. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi postponed a foreign 

visit to personally “wish recovery” to the nation’s heartthrob. Temples, 

churches, mosques, and gurudwaras across the country remained open for 

twenty-four hours, with fans praying for a miracle. Fans also made personal 

sacrifices, from fasting to severing limbs as a means of rigorous penance. In 

Mumbai, teary-eyed fans, having walked all the way from India’s farthest 

corners, crowded around the hospital. 

In a desperate attempt to revive Bachchan, the doctors injected adrenaline 

into his heart. “And then, suddenly, there was a movement in his toe, a 

revival,” the actor’s wife, actress Jaya Bhaduri, said in an interview. “Between 

one minute and the next he had come back to life. I knew in that instant that he


163 

had come back for a purpose. I knew that he is not an ordinary human being. 

Even today, many celebrate August 2, 1982 as the superstar’s second birthday. 

Bachchan spent three more months recovering, and resumed filming 

Coolie, now with a different ending. His character, who was intended to be 

killed at the climax, survived instead, despite the fact that he had sustained 

three bullet wounds to the chest! Director Desai reasoned: “It would have been 

inappropriate for the man who had just fended off death in real life to be killed 

onscreen.” In the final release print, the climax of the now-infamous fight 

scene is dramatically frozen. A film title insert in bold reads: “This is the shot 

in which AMITABH BACHCHAN was severely injured.” As he emerges from 

the hospital (in the film’s post-climax), a grateful Amitbh gave a brief speech 

to his well-wishers. “I was dead and gone,” he says matter-of-factly. “I have 

returned only because of your prayers.” In this unprecedented screen moment, 

real life had merged with “reel” life. 

The Angry Young Man 

Amitabh Bachchan was born on October 11, 1942, in Allahabad, to Teji and 

Harivansh Rai Shrivastav. Bachchan, meaning childlike, was poet Harivansh 

Rai’s pseudonym. After finishing his schooling at Sherwood College, Nainital, 

in North India, Bachchan pursued a degree in science from Delhi University. 

His first job was for the Shaw Wallace Company, following which he worked as 

a stage actor, a radio announcer, and a freight company executive in Kolkata. 

In 1968, he moved to Bombay with a letter of recommendation from Indira 

Gandhi. 

After a modest debut as one of the seven protagonists in K. A. Abbas’s Saat 

Hindustani (Seven Indians, 1969), Bachchan appeared in a dozen films (most 

of which were flops) before tasting his first solo success in Zanjeer (Chains, 

1973). Its lead role of a no-nonsense, angst-ridden young police officer (who 

neither sings nor dances, incidentally) had been offered to him after first 

being rejected by three reigning stars of the day—Dev Anand, Raaj Kumar, and 

Dharmendra. With his brooding intensity, Bachchan emerged as the embodiment 

of the angry young man. According to the film’s co-writer, Javed Akhtar: 

The 1970s was a decade of heavy political tumult. There was massive 

unrest amongst the youth. Totally disillusioned by the state, people 

were looking for a hero who would share their anger and make the 

world right again. The angry young man coming with no tolerance 

and romanticism was someone they could relate to, in an escapist way. 

Of the seven films scripted by Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, Bollywood’s 

revolutionary writing duo of the 1970s—Yaadon Ki Baraat (Celebration of

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Memories, 1973), Zanjeer (1973), Deewar (1975), Sholay (Embers, 1975), Trishul 

(Trident, 1978), Kaala Pathar (Black Stone, 1979), and Shakti (Power, 1982), 

Bachchan played the lead in six, making the “angry young man” his onscreen 

alter ego. In an era when Hindi film writing was genteel and mindful of 

middle-class morality, Bachchan’s brash, tough, foul-mouthed product of the 

street symbolized the simmering discontent of the dispossessed as his baritone 

became the perfect accessory for spouting hard-hitting dialogue. Success 

simply had to be his! 

Celebrating the first signs of recognition, he married his Zanjeer co-star 

Jaya Bhaduri after the film’s release in 1973. As the ecstasy of achievement 

peaked, Bachchan’s reel dialogue began to reflect his real standing at the box 

office. For example, his character in Kaalia (The Black One, 1981), in a grandstanding 

moment with the villain, says, “The queue begins from where ever I 

decide to stand.” This merely reiterated his consistent reign at the top of popularity 

polls, famously emerging as a “one-man industry.” On the personal front, 

he became a father of two, Shweta (b. 1974) and Abhishek Bachchan (b. 1976), 

the latter of whom went on to become a successful star in his own right in the 

2000s. 

Amitabh Bachchan becomes the “Angry Young Man,” as Vijay in Deewar. 



165 

A Few Misadventures 

The early eighties brought with it a series of professional and personal 

upheavals—the Coolie accident (1982), a burned hand (1983), and a diagnosis 

of Myasthenia gravis (1984). Following his Coolie “rebirth,” Bachchan had 

joined politics to repay the overwhelming kindness of the people and support 

his childhood friend Rajiv Gandhi, who became the prime minister after the 

assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi. The political cesspool, however, 

got the better of Amitabh, and he quit his Member of Parliament seat mid-term 

to clear his name of corruption charges leveled by the opposition. The sensitive 

icon later reasoned: “If I fight for one cause, I will fight for every cause if 

it challenges the integrity of my family and me. I may not come out victorious 

all the time, but I shall have the satisfaction of having fought.” 

The ruling Indian National Congress Party, under Rajiv Gandhi, lost the 

elections, but Bachchan single-handedly fought corruption allegations in four 

countries—the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States— 

and won. The fighter in Bachchan had resurfaced. In the boxing ring of his 

school in Sherwood College, Bachchan was always placed in a weight division 

beyond his body strength due to his being so tall. But when he was about to 

fight a much stronger physical adversary, his teachers used to subtly advise 

him to withdraw by way of a walkover to avoid sustaining injury. But he never 

relented; instead, he always fought and lost, as was expected. So the school 

gave him the award “pluckiest loser’—an honor conferred on contestants who, 

despite the adversity they faced, almost won! 

The Second Coming 

Vindicated, Bachchan returned to films with Shahenshah (1988), but in spite 

of critically appreciated acting experiments like Main Azad Hoon (I Am Free, 

1989) and Agneepath (Path of Fire, 1990), he was getting older, and his directors 

were serving him with unimaginative rehashes of narrative recipes gone cold. 

Bachchan suffered box-office failure for the first time. Opting out of films, following 

Khuda Gawah (1992), to reflect, he became one of the first Indian actors 

to venture actively into filmmaking and allied businesses. But Bachchan had 

taken the bait too early; his inexperience cost him dearly, as his multi-faceted 

commercial enterprise, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd., fell into serious 

debt. The pluckiest loser, however, refused to quit. 

The disappointments of failure and its repercussions spurred a change in 

his attitude toward stardom and work, getting him in sync with the times. The 

superstar on the rebound did two things—approach a “successful” director for 

work, and come down from his big-screen pedestal to do a show on the small

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screen. With Yash Chopra’s Mohabattein (Love, 2000) and Kaun Banega 

Crorepati (the Indian version of the TV game show Who Wants to Be a 

Millionaire?), he regained his impact and influence. Bachchan’s innings at the 

KBC remain the highest TRP-earning show hosted by any star on Indian TV, 

to date. 

A Multi-Genre Star for All Seasons 

Bachchan’s Bollywood debut coincided with the “angry young man” of Indian 

cinema portraying working-class characters pitted against a capitalistic establishment. 

But he never short-changed his fans when it came to variety. In the 

year of his greatest “angry young man” role, Deewar (1975), he successfully 

juggled a comedy, Chupke Chupke (Slowly, Stealthily, 1975); a romantic tearjerker, 

Mili (1975); and the guns-’n’-gore curry-western Sholay (Embers, 1975). 

Even when “going arty” on occasion, Bachchan always gave his fans more 

than a moment to cherish. Be it in the rawness of his lust-and-lucre-induced 

manipulative seller act in Saudagar (The Businessman, 1973), or the polished 

Amitabh Bachchan receives the Stardust “Pride of the Industry” award from Madhuri Dixit 

in 2011. 



167 

eccentricities of his edgy “loners” in Black (2005) and The Last Lear (2007); 

the shamed helplessness at raping his wife under an evil spirit’s possession 

in Aks (Reflection, 2001), that unashamed infatuation in his (Lolita-inspired) 

character’s stolen gazes at a wanton teen in Nishabd (Without Words, 2007), or 

as a retired lawyer suffering from bipolar disorder in Pink (2016), who returns 

to deliver courtroom blows with pugilistic grace while arguing for a woman’s 

right to say “No”! 

Bachchan is that rare world-cinema star who, having debuted in actionoriented 

dramas, went on to excel equally in some of the subtlest onscreen 

romances opposite three generations of actresses. Whether it was the heartbreaking 

poignancy of his unrequited love stories with doe-eyed Rakhee 

(Kabhie Kabhie [Sometimes, Sometimes], 1976) or the amour of a rakish charmer 

romancing the glamorous Zeenat Aman (The Great Gambler, 1979) and Parveen 

Babi (Deewar, 1975); the comic timing and delicious tease of the lover’s tiff with 

Hema Malini (Satte Pe Satta [Seven on Seven], 1982), or the householder’s relish 

of caring/conjugal bliss with Jaya Bhaduri (Abhimaan, [Ego], 1973). But it was 

with the passionately smitten Rekha that Bachchan’s angry young man persona 

became subsumed within his equally compelling appeal as a romantic. 

To paraphrase a famous Hollywood quote attributed to Katharine Hepburn 

when commenting on the appeal of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: “He gives 

her class, and she gives him sex appeal.” The natural ease and popular appeal 

of their iconic pairing, however, has remained abuzz since, keeping alive 

Bollywood’s most speculated love affair to date. 

Bachchan’s filmography boasts nearly two hundred films. He has lived 

up to the vision statement he made after his first brush with success, in an 

interview for Cine Blitz in 1975: 

When I first came into the line I didn’t care about making money or 

being a star. I wanted to act, and I wanted good roles, period. That 

is why, in my early—and unsuccessful—period, I played some really 

vivid roles like a deaf-mute in Reshma Aur Shera (1971), a murderer in 

Parwana (The Moth, 1971). Nobody out to become a star then would 

ever touch such roles. 

No one out to sully his stardom now can call him a lesser actor, either. Yash 

Chopra, the Bollywood auteur who scripted Bachchan’s second coming in the 

2000s, said, “Even at this age, he is hungry for a good role. He’s not commercializing 

his career—he wants to do different things. In my opinion, he’s one 

of the best actors internationally, too.” Every phase of Bachchan’s four-decade 

career as a lead actor has had its highs and lows, joys and sorrows, making 

his life and career unique enough to match the definitive essentials of an 

icon—irreplaceable, incomparable, influential, and timeless.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Best of Bachchan 

1. Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973) 

2. Deewar (The Wall, 1975) 

3. Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) 

4. Silisila (The Affair, 1981) 

5. Sharaabi (The Drunkard, 1984) 

6. Agneepath (Path of Fire, 1991) 

7. Aks (Reflection, 2001) 

8. Black (2005) 

9. Paa (2009) 

10. Piku (2015)

15 

The King of Romance 

There are only two Khans. Ghenghis Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. 

—Shah Rukh Khan (1965– ) 

Born in 1965 to a middle-class family in a South Asian city, Shah Rukh 

Khan has utilized his gifts of emoting, dancing, and acting to become 

one of the world’s wealthiest and most widely known celebrities. He is the 

second-richest star after Jerry Seinfeld, above Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp, 

with an estimated worth of $600 million. And his fan base encompasses half 

the globe. Type “Shah Rukh Khan” into Google and 11,400,000 (and counting) 

entries will appear. No wonder Bollywood affectionately calls him the 

Baadshah (the emperor) or “King Khan.” 

SRK (his well-known acronym) is the first Indian superstar to have broken 

into the Euro-American mainstream. His global conquest of hearts started 

in the late 1990s with the surprise success of Dil Se (From the Heart, 1998), an 

unusual story of love and obsession between a radio journalist and a human 

bomb. Dil Se was the first Bollywood film to enter Top-10 box-office charts in 

the U.K. and the U.S. His “big” European introduction happened a few years 

later, in one of the last places one would associate with a “romantic family 

melodrama.” Germans were introduced to SRK’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham 

(Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow, 2001) when the German TV channel 

RTL2 TV dubbed and telecast it for the first time in 2004. Since then, five 

full-length German-language documentaries have been made on Shah Rukh; 

he’s been introduced at the Berlin International Film Festival as Germany’s 

biggest international star, bigger than Brad Pitt, with more followers than 

Pope Francis. Khan’s dubbed films are a regular feature on weekend television 

in Germany and Poland, while neighboring Austria’s Vienna University (in 

2010) hosted one of the largest European conferences on Indian cinema, “Shah 

Rukh Khan and Global Bollywood” in 2010. France conferred its highest civilian 

award, Knight of the Legion of Honour; the British Parliament presented 

him with the Global Diversity Award in 2014.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol perform at the Stardust Awards ceremony, 2015. 

 

Photo courtesy of Stardust magazine 

In a much-quoted YouTube video on SRK’s fan base in Germany, one fan 

was asked why she liked Hindi films or the “Shah Rukh Khan kind of cinema.” 

She answered, “We have a button to drive a car, a button to make coffee, a 

button to go up and down, but in Germany we didn’t have a button to cry. Shah 

Rukh and his films gave us that button!” With the increasing trend of associating 

brawn-and-fury machismo with heroism, SRK’s emotional yet resilient 

characters are among the most admired. Stating that Shah Rukh’s frenzied fans 

thrive on his “superstar-boy-next-door” instead of any “star on a pedestal,” 

critic-biographer Anupama Chopra, in her King of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan 

and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, writes, “Though he became famous 

playing the rich romantic hero, he retained a basic Everyman sensibility that 

connected across audiences. . . . The audience viewed him as an ideal husband, 

son, brother, friend. He wasn’t an inaccessible celestial being, but simply the 

most charismatic member of the family.” 

The “Ideal” Son, Husband, and Father 

Shah Rukh Khan was born on November 2, 1965, to Muslim parents—Taj 

Mohammed Khan, a lawyer and freedom fighter in the Indian Independence 

movement against British rule, and Lateef Fatima, magistrate and social 

worker and the adopted daughter of Major General Shah Nawaz Khan (an 

Indian army hero)—in a middle-class New Delhi neighborhood, Rajendra


171 

Nagar. He was an accomplished all-rounder at school (St. Columba’s, New 

Delhi) and college (B.A. Economics, Hansraj). Saddled with responsibilities 

following the early death of his father when Shah Rukh was still in his teens, 

any intelligent and career conscious middle-class boy of his background 

would have ideally stayed far away from Bollywood. Luckily, support from his 

mother, a self-made lady, gave him the emotional strength to risk a career for 

his passion for cinema. Shah Rukh’s parents had never laid down any rules. 

Shah Rukh states: “But that’s also why none were broken. My mom used to talk 

about hard work, honesty, and heartfelt feelings. But one thing my parents 

taught me was, ‘If you like doing something, go ahead and do it.’ I never feel 

guilty about anything I do.” 

A strong family value system applies to his own children as well. “My son 

must be honest and respect elders,” he says. “That’s all that I expect of him.” 

This inherent insistence on strength of character sets him apart as a man, and 

as perhaps the only superstar without the taint of scandal. His Hindu wife, 

Gauri Chibber, has stated on the record: 

How often do you pick up a magazine and read about Shah Rukh 

having an affair with somebody? I’ve never read anything of that sort 

[about my husband]. The whole commotion is because he’s from the 

film industry and yet he is so faithful to his wife. Here, men aren’t 

supposed to be monogamous. But Shah Rukh isn’t filmi [film-worldlike] 

in the least. He is like any other man from any other walk of life, 

who loves his wife a lot. I’m glad he is an exception to the rule of star 

husbands who are not faithful to their wives. 

A Secular Icon 

The other exception is his much-celebrated inter-religious marriage, further 

strengthening his emergence as the true icon of a secular nation’s inherently 

accommodative and celebratory Hindu-Muslim unity and ethos. Recalling 

the “one thing about my birth told by my parents that I still remember,” he 

has stated: “The nurse had told them that I was born with the blessings of 

Hanuman (a Hindu god and an avatar of Lord Shiva, who plays a pivotal role in 

the epic Ramayana) and that I would be a very lucky child.” Both the Bhagawat 

Gita (a sacred text of the Hindus) and the Quran (the religious guide text of the 

Muslims), share equal space in the prayer room of SRK’s Mumbai residence, 

Mannat (meaning a sacred wish). Both his children, Aryan (born November 

12, 1997) and Suhana (born May 23, 2000), have been taught to revere the copresence 

of Ganpati (one of the prime Hindu deities with an elephant’s head) 

and Allah in the Khan household. The fact became a favorite anecdote on

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Bollywood FAQ 

religious harmony, in a much-reported news story about the time Shah Rukh 

was having critical neck surgery. His son, Aryan, went to a Hindu temple and 

said an Islamic prayer so that his father could get well soon. 

Ironically, the foundation of these lifelong formative lessons in humanity, 

his mother, Lateef Fatima, did not live long enough to see his first film, passing 

away a year before the release of Deewana (The Passionate One, 1992). The 

loss also resulted in Shah Rukh severing any remaining ties with the city of 

his birth, India’s capital city of New Delhi, to make the Indian subcontinent’s 

“dream” city of opportunities, Mumbai, his permanent home from the early 

1990s on. Shah Rukh famously notes: “When I came to Mumbai, I wanted to 

own the city. Today it owns me.” Since then, the journey has been as much 

about being at the right moment at the right time, as the outcome of an insatiable 

personal hunger to win, which has come to define his persona. 

Debut Dreams 

Shah Rukh Khan’s debut film, Deewana, released on June 25, 1992, a year after 

Bollywood’s longest-reigning superstar, Amitabh Bachchan, had announced 

a break from the arc lights following Khuda Gawah (God is Witness). Deewana 

was a hit, but no box-office record breaker. Without the backing of any 

Bollywood film family or an industry godfather, Shah Rukh slowly but surely 

inched towards his mouthful of sky, with every available and often leftover 

film options, not choices. For instance, two of SRK’s early career blockbusters, 

Darr (Fear, 1993) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Braveheart Will Take 

Away the Bride, 1995), came to him after being rejected by other stars. Since 

he didn’t have much to lose or leave, Shah Rukh signed on the dotted line 

for the unscrupulous and vengeful hero of Baazigar (Gambler, 1993), and the 

villain’s role of an obsessive loser-lover in Yash Chopra’s Darr (1993), agreeing 

to be pounded into pulp in the climax of both movies. It was a choice to 

which no would-be superstar or hero aspirant would ever have agreed. But 

Shah Rukh’s was not going to be a would-be story, either. Fortune favored 

the brave, the gamble paid off, and Chopra’s Yash Raj banner zoomed skywards 

with Darr. Together, both the production house and its new star mascot 

embarked on a mutually beneficial “conquest of Bollywood,” to emerge as its 

most influential and powerful banner/production house and star by the turn 

of the millennium.


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The Global Indian Star 

Shah Rukh Khan, in many ways, embodies the transnational “Global Indian” 

of today. His emergence as one of India’s most-recognized international icons 

has been almost parallel with his nation’s rise as a global economic power following 

the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s. In his unceasing 

ambition for relentless conquests and diversification, SRK has become a model 

of inspiration for those who are no longer content with just one job, one career, 

or one dream . . . in their one life. 

Actor, performer, producer, businessman, and cultural ambassador, the 

SRK success story is as much the “unbelievable” stuff that fuels his escapist 

blockbusters, as the story of the global Indian out to make the new millennia 

his century. He fuels their imagination when he says, “I’d rather sink trying 

to be different, than stay afloat like everyone else.” He connects with them, 

too, on a believable plane, through his provocative but realistic comments, for 

example: “I’d like to believe there’s a little of Hitler and Napoleon in me. Even 

if I try, I can’t be as selfless as Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa.” 

Making the most of his opportunities, the savvy star has never ignored 

new or risky ideas—even after attaining stardom. A case in point was his 

redefining a star’s equations with the medium of television and his aggressive 

pitching of himself as a brand in the market of endorsements. His statements— 

“I work like a retailer. I sell my services, take my money, and keep it in the 

bank”—signaled a paradigm shift in attitudes to superstardom. In his ability 

to multi-task and be a success in many contradictory callings—actor and 

entrepreneur, philanthropist and businessman—only Shah Rukh, among all 

his contemporaries, has in a way, as filmmaker Karan Johar observes, “become 

a reflection of India today—its success, its magic, its aura, its mystic and its 

emotions. He truly represents India in every way.” 

In a nation of diversity, with one hundred-plus languages and myriad religions, 

where movies are one of its greatest unifying forces, a star needs to be 

extra responsible, especially in a culture that still looks for role models among 

its entertainers. Shah Rukh has always articulated pride around his “Indian” 

ethos and, with age, has also started taking greater responsibility for that 

“influence” bequest. As he said: 

We are the only film industry in the world to have survived Hollywood 

because we still believe in stars. We don’t think a movie star is just a 

professional; we look up to him or her as role models. The whole system 

of looking up to someone, or trying to find a hero, has made Indian 

cinema survive. Having said that, our stories are also very unique, 

very culturally based, emotional and musical. We put everything into 

our films, unabashedly and happily so, and celebrate life because there 

is no isolation of emotions in real life. I think our cinema, because it is

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Bollywood FAQ 

all celebration and celebrated, it makes you feel [a] little more attracted 

to it. We should not change the language of our films, only the technology 

and technique. Our stories are about hope, simple hooks, and 

simple ideologies. 

And with those simple hooks and ideologies, eleven of Shah Rukh’s movies 

have grossed a total of a billion dollars. Many have changed lives, questioned 

perceptions, and renegotiated attitudes. Entertainment alone has not been the 

hallmark of the best of Shah Rukh Khan’s films. If one reviews the post-2000 

decade of his career, while Swades (My Country, 2004), championed the need 

for self-reliance at the grassroots level for prosperity in rural India, subtly 

urging successful expatriates to contribute to their nation’s development, Chak 

De! India (Go for It! India, 2007) became an energizer for women’s hockey—and 

women’s sports in general—questioning the nation’s apathy towards its traditional 

games. Shah Rukh Khan’s first global co-production (with Hollywood’s 

Fox Star Studios), My Name is Khan (2010), in its dyslexic protagonist’s repeated 

assertions at strategic drama moments—”My name is Khan, and I am not a 

terrorist!”—pleaded for empathy and questioned the general vilification of the 

Muslim community in a post-9/11 world; this would lead to his being called a 

“Global Icon of Peace across the entire Muslim world.” In his last acclaimed hit 

film, Chennai Express (2013), Shah Rukh wowed feminists by insisting that, 

henceforth, his heroines’ names lead the credits of all his films. 

Shah Rukh has been nominated for over two hundred acting awards, winning 

nearly 150, including eight Best Actor Filmfare awards. The recipient of 

the highest civilian honors of nations and cultures as diverse as Malaysia, 

France, and Morocco, he has been awarded the Unesco Pyramide con Marni 

Shah Rukh Khan, with student fans at the University of Edinburgh in the U. K., where 

he was conferred with an honorary doctorate in 2015. 



175 

for his many charitable activities (especially in child education and disaster 

rehabilitation), as well as receiving honorary ambassadorships from Interpol 

and South Korea—he even has a crater on the moon named after him by NASA. 

In 2008, Newsweek named Khan “the world’s most influential movie star.” 

Khan assessed the appeal of his films by saying, “In the whole human community 

around the world, you will find two universal truths—they all love, and 

they all cry. If your work, your writing, your job can deal with that, without 

knowing it, you will be bringing social changes. . . . If you keep it as simple as 

loving and crying, each cinema or theatre will have its social impact.” 

Khan-isms—Attitude SRK! 

The following are examples of why Shah Rukh Khan is the most-quoted actor 

in any part of the globe: 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

“Sex is not required to sell my film. My name is enough.” 

“You never win the silver; you only lose the gold.” 

“If asking me whether sleeping with X or Y gives the media pleasure, then 

so be it. It’s a small price to pay.” 

“I’m try-sexual. I try anything that’s sexual.” 

“When people call me God, I say, no, I’m still an angel or saint of acting. I 

still have a long way to go.” 

“Awards that ignore me are losers.” 

“I don’t like wearing dark glasses. I’m happy with the fact that people know 

me. I want people to scream and shout at me, I want people to trouble me 

when I’m having lunch, I like six bodyguards around me. I love being a 

star. I find it very strange when people who are famous say they don’t want 

to be photographed. I don’t want to be photographed first thing in the 

morning, I don’t want people peeping into my bedroom, but besides that, 

it’s a wonderful life.” 

“Cinema in India is like brushing your teeth in the morning. You can’t 

escape it.” 

“There is no right or wrong way to do a scene. The method is what works for 

you. The barometer ultimately is how many people like it?” 

“I thank God for happiness and sadness . . . if you’re never sad you’ll never 

know how good happiness is.”

16 

The Game Changer 

The moment you think out of the box, people feel ki yeh pagal hai, yeh 

ajeeb hai (you are mad or weird). It has happened to Einstein, Galileo, 

and Socrates, who was killed. So, I am pleased that I am in very good 

company. 

—Aamir Khan (1965– ) 

It was perhaps Aamir Khan’s madness to challenge the actor within that 

had him debut in a grim, art-house social critique like Holi (1984). It was 

undoubtedly a weird choice to follow his first blockbuster, the romantic 

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (From Doom till Doom, 1988) with a dark and disturbing 

Raakh (Ashes, 1989) instead of further cashing in on the audience’s desire 

to see more of their favorite new chocolate hero in a romantic light. Raakh 

remains one of Hindi cinema’s most underrated gangster sagas. And if taking 

a career break of four years at the peak of his career following the stupendous 

commercial success of Lagaan (Land Tax, 2001) and the critical acclaim of Dil 

Chahta Hai (The Heart Wills, 2001) wasn’t weird, it was sheer madness to return 

to films with The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey (2005) in the new millennium’s 

weakest box-office genre—a patriotic historical. 

As a filmmaker, too, Aamir has made a habit of putting his money on some 

of the most unconventional films and unusual scripts coming out of popular 

Indian cinema in recent times—Lagaan, Taare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth, 

2007), Peepli Live (2010), Dhobi Ghat (2011), Dangal (Wrestling Bout, 2016). The 

latter film, in its 2017 release, became the all-time highest grossing Indian film 

overseas, netting a 10 billion–plus rupee earning in China alone. 

Each of the above films has been reviewed as a potential contemporary 

classic; yet each during its making was perceived to be a guaranteed box-office 

dud for their challenging of every major “safe” box-office notion from their 

conceptualization to casting and even the manner of shooting. Lagaan, for 

instance, was shot in sync sound, with actors dubbing their dialogue in postproduction, 

a practice still considered the industry norm. Aamir’s production


177 

Actor-producer Aamir Khan on the poster of his Academy Award–nominated 

film, Lagaan. 


debut further challenged convention by featuring an ensemble cast of newcomers 

in an era of multi-star pictures. The success of Lagaan promptly made 

ensemble films Bollywood’s new hit formula for the 2000s. At a time when 

the biggest stars in the most lavish musicals were biting the box-office dust, 

Aamir opted to make his directorial debut, Taare Zameen Par, an issue-based 

film with a kid protagonist. His fourth production, Peepli Live, with Raghuvir 

Yadav as its biggest draw, has become the most successful art-house film in 

Indian cinema since Ardh Satya (Half Truth, 1983). And no first-time Indian 

director inspired so much international buzz in the recent past as Kiran Rao 

did with Aamir’s latest production, Dhobi Ghat. The film has won kudos for 

its vivacious characterization of a city told through its most inconspicuous 

inhabitants. With the sole exception of Dhobi Ghat, each film just discussed

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Bollywood FAQ 

has been India’s official nominee for the Academy Awards. Lagaan famously 

became the third Indian entry in ninety years to be nominated for a Best 

Foreign Film Oscar. 

Crossover Superstar? 

Following the success of Lagaan, 3 Idiots, and Dangal, Aamir has increasingly 

been considered India’s top crossover superstar in international cinema. His 

first major influence has been an almost singlehanded overturning of formulaic 

filmmaking conventions. He has challenged some of the box-office’s most 

change-inhibiting factors, paving the way for other out-of-the-box filmmakers. 

As if to spite its dissenters, Lagaan, at four-plus hours, with half its length 

dedicated to a cricket match played by unknowns, was a hit. 

Similarly, there were doubts within the industry that Dil Chahta Hai would 

succeed. After all, the coming-of-age film lacked a conventional storyline. 

Aamir, whose entrance in Taare Zameen Par did not occur until the film’s 

second half, was deemed a narrative hara-kiri given audience members’ habit 

of walking out during the interval of a non-gripping film. And 3 Idiots required 

a mighty suspension of disbelief in order to accept the forty-plus-year-old 

Aamir Khan as a college teen. Needless to add, all were blockbuster successes, 

with 3 Idiots making box-office history as the highest grossing Bollywood film 

ever: 339 crore rupees worldwide. 

The Perfectionist Game-Changer 

Among his fraternity, Aamir has opted for quality over quantity. A “bound” 

script has suddenly become paramount in attracting a star for a project, overturning 

the age-old promised bait of a “masala entertainer guaranteeing all the 

formulaic spices.” To do just “one film at a time” dedicatedly, is now referred 

to by those in the industry as “going the Aamir Khan way.” But when Aamir 

first tried this “selective” approach to doing films after his second coming with 

Dil, “weird,” again, was the industry’s response, when most leading stars were 

making multiple films simultaneously. Recalls Aamir: 

The first lot of films that I had signed were learning experiences for 

me. The first lesson that I learnt was that I cannot do so many films. 

At that time, people were doing twenty to thirty films, and I thought I 

would do ten. But for me, I can’t work in ten films [simultaneously]. It 

is bizarre. And then all these films came out, which didn’t work. Until 

Dil happened, the media called me a “one-film-wonder,” and rightly so; 

I had only one hit film. When I went through the process of making


179 

these ten odd films, I made a promise to myself. That henceforth I 

would only sign [on for] a film when I would be thoroughly convinced 

about the script, the director, and the producer. 

Following his third superhit, Raja Hindustani (Raja, the Indian, 1996), 

Aamir consciously limited his release average to one film per year, or, on just 

a few occasions (1998, 1999, 2006), two per year. 

Perhaps most significantly, Aamir has introduced the industry and the 

viewers to words reflecting critical international parameters, including script, 

method acting, perfectionism, and professionalism, beyond the mandatory promise 

of masala melodrama and entertaining song-and-dance fare. Undoubtedly 

his generation’s most studied actor and cerebral star, Aamir has consistently 

put story first, with five of his nine releases in the past decade being ensemble 

films: Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Rang De Basanti, 3 Idiots, Dhobi Ghat, Dangal. In 

only a few of his films is he even the lead protagonist. 

Today, when Aamir Khan speaks, the industry listens. When he emotes, 

the audience watches, lest they miss something important between the lines. 

Awarded India’s third-highest civilian honor, Padma Bhushan, the determinedly 

apolitical star is even the government’s favorite attraction for socialreform 

campaigns, as well as the most consulted superstar on film industry 

reform policies. That such an iconic status has been conferred upon someone 

who didn’t go beyond high school is commendable and inspiring. 

A Serious-Thinking Star 

Among his illustrious contemporaries, Shah Rukh Khan may be a bigger star 

entertainer, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar the more prolific and popular 

stars, Ajay Devgn and Saif Ali Khan the more consummate actors, but Aamir 

Khan is the lone “perfectionist” film icon, whose expertise admirably spans the 

three major departments of filmmaking—direction, acting, and production—a 

rarity matched only by such legends as Raj Kapoor and Manoj Kumar. And 

though the number of his films may be half of each of other stars, the cumulative 

impact of his body of work is more influential on contemporary world 

cinema. 

This serious-thinking star image has lent to Aamir’s many on- and offset 

dalliances (some true, some mere conjecture) a relatively indulgent and 

“forgiving” accommodation by the media and his fans. Meanwhile, his equally 

Casonova-like contemporaries, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, have simply 

been labeled as playboys. 

Collectively, his films have made more money than any other Indian hero. 

While some of his “perceived flops” (e.g., The Rising) have sold more tickets 

than the “self-proclaimed” hits of many other actors, a deserving and very

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Bollywood FAQ 

influential perception tag of the “real” box-office darling (or Badshah) surprisingly 

eluded him until he gave the industry two of its biggest consecutive 

grossers by a single star—Ghajini (2008) and 3 Idiots (2009). Aamir reflects: 

Everybody acknowledged that my films were successes and that my 

strike rate was very high. But I feel the market took a while to treat me 

like one of them. They always looked at me as an outsider who did 

bizarre things and they wondered how my films did well because they 

didn’t think they would. Like Mann (Mind, 1999) and Mela (The Fair, 

2000) were typically mainstream films but they didn’t do well, while 

Sarfarosh (1999) did well. They wondered, “How can this do well?” The 

market took a while to say, “Okay, he knows what he is doing.” 

They should have known that filmmaking was in his genes. 

Flashback—Born for 

the Movies 

A fan poses in front of an Aamir Khan poster in which 

he is portraying Mangal Pandey, a revolutionary British 

soldier who was credited with having triggered India’s 

first war of independence against the British, in 1857. 

 


A descendant of Muslim scholar 

and an Indian Independence 

movement leader, Maulana Abul 

Kalam Azad, Aamir Hussain 

Khan was born into a conventional 

Bollywood film family. His 

father, Tahir Hussain, and uncle, 

Nasir Hussain, would go on to 

be among of the most popular 

producers of the 1960s and ’70s. 

His father, Tahir Hussain, was 

the producer of such hit films as 

Caravan (1971), Anamika (1973), 

and Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (1993). 

Aamir’s uncle Nasir Hussain was 

producer-director of some of Hindi 

cinema’s most fondly remembered 

musical hits from the retro era— 

Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai (1961), 

Teesri Manzil (1966), Yaadon Ki 

Baraat (1973), and Hum Kisi Se 

Kum Nahin (1977)—and his most 

acclaimed early hit films, Qayamat


181 

Se Qayamat Tak /QSQT (From Doom to Doom, 1988) and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar/ 

JJWS (The Winner Takes All, 1992). 

Bollywood became a natural destination for young Aamir, who made his 

acting debut as a child star at the age of eight in the classic musical-thriller 

Yaadon Ki Baraat (A Parade of Memories, 1973). He dropped out of formal education 

after the twelfth standard and is known to have spent most of his two 

years in college (eleventh and twelfth) outside his classes in the dramatics. 

Having found his calling early in life, the ever-focused perfectionist avoided 

wasting his time on conventional education to hone his professional skills 

as an assistant director, and then an actor, in his family’s home productions. 

Aamir’s mastery of the various elements of filmmaking did not come to him 

as an afterthought. He affirms: 

Even as far as QSQT [Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, 1988, his first major 

film] was concerned, I was a part of the scripting process—the prep 

process—and [I] was one of the assistants. I did all the scheduling, all 

the paperwork for Mansoor (Khan), which a first AD [assistant director] 

would do today. And even when we were promoting the film, I was 

a part of the team. At that time, we had come out with a banner [reading], 

“Who is Aamir Khan?” For one week, there was just that banner, 

nothing else. People didn’t know if it was a film or a product launch. 

After a week we added a line—“Ask the girls next door.” It was a teaser 

campaign and in the third week, we said—“See him in QSQT.” That’s 

when everyone realised it was regarding a film. If I am doing a film, I 

am completely in that moment. 

Filmmaker and talent spotter Dev Anand, who had signed Aamir for his 

second hero project, after QSQT, has said, “Aamir had a very vulnerable face. 

Shooting with him in my film Awwal Number (Numero Uno, 1990), I realised 

that he was very hard-working and individualistic, even then. He would keep 

on rehearsing until the last moment of giving a shot. He uses his own mind 

and always pushes himself to [be] his best. But then you must be hard-working 

to be a star. Nothing can be taken for granted.” 

That sort of all-consuming involvement comes naturally to a concerned 

actor, one who is passionate about his craft and his project beyond his own 

part. His involvement in an egocentric creative process like filmmaking gave 

credence to the only unsavory rumors to haunt his career, that of being an 

“interfering” actor who winds up having serious creative sparring matches 

with his directors.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Aamir Khan with his wife, Kiran Rao. 


On His Terms, Always 

Aamir’s tiffs over scripts are part of film gossip lore, especially dealing with his 

run-in with the biggest director of them all, Yash Chopra. Chopra’s Darr (Fear, 

1993), which launched Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom, was initially offered to, and 

refused by, Aamir. 

Today, when Aamir returns to the successful Yash Raj film franchise, 

Dhoom 3 (Blast 3, 2013), it is on the merits of the script—his only condition for 

assent. It was the lack of promise of a convincing script that made him refuse 

one of his dream directors, Mahesh Bhatt, while he was still a newcomer (they 

eventually did Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahin [The Heart Doesn’t Agree, 1991] and 

Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke [1993] together) while the compromises made in the 

script by Ram Gopal Varma “to accommodate commercial compulsions” had 

him sever ties with the maverick director, despite his giving Aamir one of his 

first critically acclaimed roles, in Rangeela (Colorful, 1995). 

Aamir is that rare Indian superstar whose choices have remained uninfluenced 

by concerns of camp loyalty and currying favor in a relationship-based 

industry like Bollywood. The fact is, no other superstar has lent himself to or 

inspired the projects of as many talented new directors (Ashutosh Gowariker, 

Dharmesh Darshan, Ram Gopal Varma, Deepa Mehta) and debuting directors 

(Mansoor Khan, Aditya Bhattacharya, Indra Kumar, John Matthew Mathan,


183 

Farhan Akhtar, Anusha Rizvi, Kiran Rao). If perfectionism has been Aamir’s 

forte as an actor, spotting and aiding deserving directorial talent has been his 

raison d’être as a creative influence. 

One of the first popular Indian superstars to acknowledge the director as 

“the most important meaning provider in a film,” Aamir has been steadily 

pushing Bollywood towards its biggest attitude change ever. Just as theater 

is an actor’s medium, film is a director’s. The journey of any national cinema 

toward becoming an influential global cinema has happened only since its 

industry’s recognition of this practice. 

Popular cinema today is readying itself to make that decisive leap from 

being a star-driven to a director-driven art form. Freeing Indian cinema from 

the limiting clutches of its star-dependent creativity is the biggest impediment 

to its growth. Though occasional, odd voices have been emerging and gaining 

strength, the most sustained changes in any cultural form have happened only 

when led by its biggest beneficiaries. And none at the top in Bollywood seems 

more inclined to achieve this than Aamir Khan. 

It hasn’t been an easy task. But then, when has Aamir Khan ever been 

known to take the easy way out?

17 

A Diva for All Seasons 

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. You give to 

the world your greatest gift when you’re being yourself. 

—Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (1973– ) 

In 2010, the end of the first decade of the current millennium, Aishwarya 

Rai Bachchan (b. 1973), had the lead female roles in five of the year’s biggest 

and most-anticipated films—Raavan, Raavanan, Robot, Action Replayy, and 

Guzaarish (A Wish). Together, they cost a whopping Rs 400 crore to make! 

Never in the history of Indian cinema had so much money ridden on a heroine’s 

fragile shoulders in a single year. And, despite being on the unflattering 

side of thirty in an industry where heroines have been reduced to motherly 

roles by their late twenties, Aishwarya is still offered the leads in mega-budget 

commercial films. 

But then, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is no ordinary actress. Consider her 

impressive list of “firsts”: 

■■ 

The first Indian actress to be on the jury of the Cannes International Film 

Festival (2003) 

■■ 

The first Asian actress to be replicated in wax by Madame Tussauds 

Museum in London (2004) 

■■ 

The first Miss World to appear on the cover of Time magazine (2003) 

■■ 

The first Indian actress to be listed among the world’s “100 Most Influential 

People” (2004) 

■■ 

The first Indian actress to appear on countless covers of global magazines, 

crossing genres from cinema to business, lifestyle to public affairs 

■■ 

India’s youngest actress to be feted with the nation’s fourth-highest civilian 

honor, Padmashri (2009) 

■■ 

The first Indian celebrity to have a special variety of tulip named after her 

in Netherlands (2005). 

■■ 

The first Indian star couple (with her husband, Abhishek Bachchan) to 

appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Their host introduced them this way:


185 

“They stopped production on eight major movies and flew eight thousand 

miles to be here for their first-ever television interview together. The movie 

star couple more famous than anybody else in the world—even more than 

Brad and Angelina . . . anybody . . . India’s Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek 

Bachchan have five billion fans around the globe. She has been called the 

world’s most beautiful woman . . .” 

An Evolving Actor of Eclectic Parts 

Incidentally, not all of Aishwarya Rai’s cherished honors are a spillover of her 

cultural ambassador, beauty-queen profile. They are, instead, in recognition of 

her emergence as an actress of excellence, whose varied roles in four separate 

language cinemas (Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, and English) have entertained audiences 

across the globe since her screen debut in 1997. A successful modeling 

career, following her reign as Miss World in 1994, may have given her the poise 

and panache to make an unavoidable impact on any glam platform thereafter. 

Her films, however, have been the raison d’être for her growth as an individual, 

as well as her emergence as an influential icon. Irrespective of the box-office 

fate of her films, her creative choices can rarely be faulted; indeed, her abiding 

keenness in selecting her roles always bring new dimensions to her art. 

Even the above-mentioned films, made in her most prolific year to date, were 

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with the poster of her film Jodhaa Akbar in the background. 

 


186 

Bollywood FAQ 

helmed by two auteurs, Mani Ratnam and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, populist 

filmmaker Vipul Shah, and Shankar, an ambitious creator of spectacles. In her 

eclectic body of work, Aishwarya essays multi-lingual parts from the 1970s to 

the 2000s, ranging from a feisty wife held captive by a jungle outlaw, to that 

of a free-thinking nurse coming to terms with the euthanasia request of her 

paraplegic patient. 

On a Road Less Taken 

From her debut in Mani Ratnam’s acclaimed political biopic, Iruvar (The Duo, 

1997), Aishwarya has always strived for a varietal creative equilibrium, balancing 

her studied Iruvar with the spectacular Jeans (1997); a sleepwalking 

romance saga like Mohabbatein (Love Affairs, 2000) with a spirited love tale 

Kandukondain Kandukondain (I Have Seen, I Have Seen, 2000); a self-sacrificing 

lover in Devdas (2002) with that of a plotting passion player in Chokher Bali 

(Sand in the Eye, 2002); a battered NRI hausfrau in Provoked (2006) with an 

edgy glam doll in Dhoom 2 (2006); and a compassionate period princess in 

Jodhaa Akbar (2008) with an opportunistic contemporary CEO in Sarkar Raj 

(2008). No two roles in a year have been even comparable. Aishwarya maintains: 

“In terms of my approach to work, my doing Iruvar first [despite a myriad 

of movie roles] is a statement that I was here to just be a part of cinema. I have 

mixed my work all through. I don’t like to compartmentalise—it’s just cinema 

for me, irrespective of the language, genre, scale, or any other aspect. I don’t 

want to be slotted as ‘a-kind’ of actor, but within the gamut of offers I receive, I 

try and choose just one experience that’s different from the other.” 

She has assiduously sought good and diverse roles, whether in Bollywood, 

South India, Hollywood, Britain, or Bengal, to emerge as a truly pan-Indian 

actor, one who enjoys a creditable mainstream presence in the West. Forbes 

magazine, in 2008, declared her “the most bankable Hollywood star from 

India.” 

Just two years after making her debut with a double role (a first for any 

Indian actress), Aishwarya was on her own, winning accolades (Taal, Rhythm, 

1999) and Best Actress awards (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam; I Have Given My 

Heart Away, Darling, 1999). Master director Mani Ratnam recalls, “Aishwarya 

was good right from Iruvar. She was acting in a language she did not know, 

doing two different characters in a film that was being shot in a lengthy 

and slightly complicated style. It did not have any comfort of a launch film. 

She was pushed into the water.” She not only swam across admirably, she 

earned her director’s respect: every time he has a challenging bilingual role 

to fill, he offers it to her. Incidentally, Aishwarya enjoys the maximum repeat


187 

actress-director partnerships with some of the toughest and most acclaimed 

directors of the day. 

Gurinder Chaddha (Bride and Prejudice, The Mistress of Spices) waxes eloquent 

on her “versatility and elegance.” Sanjay Leela Bhansali (Hum Dil . . . , 

Devdas, Guzaarish) celebrates the “timelessness of her appeal.” Mani Ratnam 

(Iruvar, Guru, Raavan) speaks appreciatively of her “meticulousness and dedication 

to perfecting a language she wasn’t born into.” And Rituparno Ghosh 

(Chokher Bali, Raincoat) has commented on her seamless overcoming of the 

trappings of stardom to make believable, common, yet complex art-house 

parts, like “Rabindranath Tagore’s iconic Binodini” in his Chokher Bali. These 

films, which have made a significant impact on moviegoers, have consistently 

challenged her critics who, overwhelmed by her beauty, have often denied her 

due as an actor. 

She has also played the female lead in more literary adaptations 

(Kandukondain . . . , Devdas, Chokher Bali, Bride and Prejudice, The Last Legion, 

The Mistress of Spices) and biopics (Iruvar, Provoked, Jodhaa Akbar, Umrao Jaan) 

than any other new-millennium Indian actress. 

Beauty Queen to Diva Actress 

Contrary to perceived notions, Aishwarya’s wasn’t an overnight-success story. 

Her transformation from beauty-contest winner to movie star may have 

appeared seamless, but her newfound position was hardly without its detractors. 

Indeed, no other Indian actress in recent times has faced as much media 

scrutiny. She may have seventeen thousand glowing websites dedicated to her, 

but the internet also abounds with venom against her “unusual quiet” over her 

failed love affairs, her “much debated” style debacles, her “politically correct” 

stance towards criticism, her “plastic” smile, her perfect “mannequin” looks, 

the “uneven” box-office performance of her Hollywood projects. Everyone, 

it seems, from budding critics to seasoned industry denizens are having a 

field day, listing her flaws. “A lot of people are waiting for her to fail,” director 

Rituparno Ghosh said when Aishwarya—a glamorous Bollywood actress—was 

cast in a classic Rabindranath Tagore creation. “But she can manage both 

regional and Hindi or Bollywood cinema like no other.” 

The rarely flabbergasted Aishwarya once observed: “I’m amazed by how 

many people feel good hitting out at me. . . . Someone asked me why I am 

politically correct, even when people hit out so openly at me. But the truth is, 

I’ve never been brought up to behave in any other way. I can’t say anything 

hurtful about anyone. I just don’t believe in saying mean things. I won’t feel 

good doing that. It’s strange why being well behaved is perceived as being too 

‘propah’ and staid. This is the way I am.”

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Bollywood FAQ 

The consequence for this statement? She was saddled with another unflattering 

tag: “ice maiden.” 

Aishwarya may not be a spontaneous, naturally talented actress like her 

illustrious contemporary Kajol. She has compensated for this by becoming 

a more malleable actor, flexible enough to essay the visions of filmmakers 

with diverse sensibilities, to mutual satisfaction. Her other major asset is 

her thorough professionalism. As writer-commentator Shobhaa De observes, 

“Unlike so many of her contemporaries, she displays impeccable good manners 

that say a lot about her sensible upbringing. Devoid of attitude or standard 

superstar tantrums, Aishwarya remains a delectable package. People 

who deal with her vouch for her professionalism. She gives all to whatever 

she undertakes—marriage and movies. . . . She is the archetypical Number 

One personality—driven, passionate, ambitious.” Director Bhansali adds, “She 

is not only a beautiful girl, she has a beautiful mind too, a sharp mind and a 

thinking mind that questions and answers.” 

That flexible attribute in her craft coupled with a professional attitude 

toward her art has allowed Aishwarya’s career to survive longer than any of her 

1990s co-debutants. Consider, for example, her role as the femme fatale muse 

and lover of a restless young rock star, played by the eleven-years-her-junior 

Ranbir Kapoor, in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (O Heart, It’s Difficult, 2016). Her character 

enlightened eager millennials with the following dialogue: “Jo aankhen 

keh deti hain, uske aage lafzon ka kya darza. . . . Guftgoo bezaar logon hi aadat 

hai.” (“What worth are words, when the eyes speak? Conversations are wasting 

habits of the passionless.”) 

A Love Triangle 

Aishwarya, incidentally, has survived every storm in her personal and professional 

life with equanimity. A case in point was her decorous handling of a 

public spectacle early in her career, involving two stars with diametrically 

opposed personality types and star power—Salman Khan and Vivek Oberoi. 

Salman’s (Aishwarya’s then boyfriend) possessiveness led to an infamous 

brawl with Aishwarya’s co-star, Shah Rukh Khan, on the set of Chalte Chalte 

(Walking By and By, 2002). Khan, who was also the film’s producer, unceremoniously 

dismissed Aishwarya and replaced her with Rani Mukherjee, despite 

the fact that she had already shot scenes for the film. For any rising actress, a 

boycott by the industry’s biggest superstar, with another superstar boyfriend 

ominously hovering over her every new project, would have been potentially 

career-ending. 

Instead of sulking into an early retirement, Aishwarya sought opportunities 

transcending culture, industry, and language barriers beyond Bollywood


189 

and the influence of the mighty Khans in regional and international cinema. 

When asked by a member of the press about her “perceived” inability to leave 

an “abusive” boyfriend, she replied proudly: “I’m a self-respecting woman. I 

don’t take nonsense from anyone. No one tries caveman tactics on me.” 

The post–Salman Khan phase saw her essay some of contemporary cinema’s 

most memorable and colorful female characters, in Chokher Bali (2003), 

Khakhee (2004), Raincoat, and Bride and Prejudice (2004). Simultaneously, she 

engaged herself in more enriching pursuits—appearing on diverse platforms 

as the ambassador of leading global beauty brands, touring various film festivals, 

interacting with international actors, and working with directors from 

diverse national cinemas and sensibilities. Meanwhile, “Brand Ash,” unsullied 

by gossip or competition, grew to the point that she became the first Indian to 

be the global model of a major international brand, L’Oreal. 

Between Hollywood and Bollywood 

Time and again, Aishwarya has rejected big-ticket international projects 

opposite the likes of Will Smith, Brad Pitt, and Jackie Chan, settling instead 

for smaller but stronger female-centric films “with characters that have been 

relative to her growth as a woman within,” and always on her own terms. Top 

Hollywood projects she was considered for or declined include Troy (2004), 

Hitch (2005), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Casino Royale (2006), and Rush Hour 

3 (2007). An exceptional negotiator with a keen business sense (she was the 

trigger behind the Bachchans’ decision to produce Paa), Aishwarya has always 

been known to strike her own deals, read the fine print in her contracts, and 

give discerning thought concerning scripts and directors. It’s not a coincidence 

that after rejecting three previous films with Rajinikanth (Chandramukhi 

[2005] Shivaji [2007], Kuselan [2008]), she opted to be a part of the biggest 

science-fiction spectacle of all, Robot (2010), for her first purely eye-candy role 

in almost a decade. 

Marriage and Bliss 

Her April 2007 wedding to Abhishek Bachchan, the son of megastar Amitabh 

Bachchan, and her subsequent entry into Bollywood’s current first family, has 

finally provided her with the personal stability she needs to continue rising to 

greater creative challenges. Be it in her reasoned handling of her pre-nuptial 

“being manglik (inauspicious)” brouhaha or her emphatically standing by her 

in-laws’ much-squabbled-over limited wedding guest list, Aishwarya has been 

admirably living up to her new—and no less challenging—real-life role of a

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Bollywood FAQ 

Aishwarya Rai with her husband, actor Abhishek Bachchan. 

 

Photo courtesy of Stardust magazine 

high-profile bahu (daughterin-law) 

and a mother to 

emulate. 

Even her diehard detractors 

will agree that hers is a 

worthy social position. In just 

over a decade of public life 

she’s packed in a lifetime of 

achievements. Her interviews 

may seem boring for being so 

correct and free of sensation, 

but they are never puerile or 

unimaginative, laced abundantly 

as they are with her 

signature silky-smooth 

finesse and self-awareness. 

This is why she has been 

invited on some of the globe’s 

most popular talk shows, with 

such indomitable hosts as 

David Letterman, Oprah 

Winfrey, Tyra Banks, and 

Karan Johar. The impact of 

her famed beauty (Julia 

Roberts famously stated that 

Aishwarya was the most 

beautiful woman she had ever seen) on random photographers and bystanders 

who succumb to a clicking spree must be seen to be believed. Even a fleeting 

cameo by her gets a film project greenlighted. Her dancing to the 1995 song 

Kajra re (“Kohl-like dark [Eyes]”) made it Bollywood’s most popular song of the 

1990s. She sizzled on the screen while matching steps with the phenomenal 

Big B (Amitabh Bachchan) and then-fiance Abhishek Bachchan. 

Today, Aishwarya enjoys divahood in the league of Rekha. But, unlike her, 

she is no recluse. Divas flourish in their becoming uncommon and remaining 

far from the common fan. But we live in an era where connecting is the key to 

being remembered. If there was one achiever to find that “perfect and proper” 

workable way out of the conundrum, it has to be that “beauty with brains” 

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

18 

Crossover Stars 

The Bollywood Presence in Hollywood 

and Beyond 

In January 2017, Deepika Padukone (b. 1986) made her Hollywood debut in 

the lead female role of Serena Unger in xXx: Return of Xander Cage opposite 

action star Vin Diesel. In this superhero action-adventure, she got to play 

a part as meaty as a girl’s can be. In the end, she even kisses the hero, in a way, 

to dispel any remaining confusion (among the film’s many attractive female 

fighters), on who is the film’s “real” heroine. The hero, Vin Diesel, is barely 

interested enough to complete that kiss, opting instead to indulge in some 

last-minute bromancing with the film’s last star-cameo entrant, American 

rapper-actor Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson). 

Fan congratulations poured in from all over for Deepika Padukone, but 

critics at home warned that if she really wanted to make her mark as an “actor 

of some reckoning” in Hollywood, as she had already in Bollywood, then she 

should make more prestigious films. And among the twenty-first century 

Indian actors hoping to achieve international stardom, Deepika has the talent 

and the presence to do so. Her skin tone allows her possibilities to play characters 

from multiple geographical locales—Latin America, West Asia, even North 

Africa. But will she achieve a crossover of substance or land roles at even striking 

distance of her Bollywood repertoire? Deepika became the highest-paid 

Indian actress, commanding a bigger salary than her male counterparts in the 

2018 historical drama, Padmaavat, the most expensive Bollywood film to date. 

Acting offers in international projects are often subject to market dictates, 

viewership diversity, and audience preferences. Hence, Hollywood’s mostwatched 

genre across India—action-oriented films—also happens to be the 

genre in which maximum mainstream Indian stars have appeared in relatively 

substantial roles.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Beauty Queens 

to Global Stars 

Priyanka Chopra. 


Along with Deepika, former Miss 

World winners-turned-actresses 

Priyanka Chopra (b. 1982) and 

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (b. 

1973) are the other contemporary 

Bollywood leading ladies to 

appear in Hollywood-made 

action pictures. Priyanka 

Chopra’s September 2015 debut 

on the American Broadcasting 

Company (ABC)’s Quantico made 

her the first Indian actress to 

headline an American network 

drama series. Praised for her 

complex performance, that of 

Alexandra “Alex” Parrish, an FBI 

recruit-turned-terror suspectturned-CIA 

agent-turned fugitive, 

as the show’s “strongest 

human asset” (in a New York 

Times review), she received the 

People’s Choice Award (PCA), for 

Favorite Actress in a New TV 

Series in 2016, making her the 

first-ever Indian actress to win a 

Hollywood acting trophy. A year 

later and for the same show, she won another PCA in the Favorite Dramatic TV 

Actress category to become the first South Asian actress to win the honor. 

Since then, she has appeared on the Emmy and Academy Award ceremonies 

as a presenter. 

Priyanka made her Hollywood film debut playing the antagonist in Seth 

Gordon’s action-comedy Baywatch (2017), steadily climbing the Hollywood 

ladder to enter the Time and Forbes magazines lists of influential global icons 

in 2016 and 2017, respectively. In her change of genres, from action to drama 

in the forthcoming films A Kid Like Jake and Isn’t It Romantic?, Priyanka seems 

to be following in the footsteps of India’s second Miss World (1994), Aishwarya 

Rai Bachchan. Aishwarya’s meatier repertoire features A-lister action flicks 

like the 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (also featuring Indian 

star Naseeruddin Shah) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009), opposite Steve Martin,


193 

John Reno, Andy Garcia, and Alfred Molina. Her most memorable “foreign” 

acting parts, however, have been in the British films Bride & Prejudice (2004), 

Mistress of Spices (2005), and Provoked (2007), in which she portrayed strong, 

performance-driven, characters. 

Bald and Beautiful 

The first Indian beauty queen who made it big on international screens was 

“Miss India 1965,” Persis Khambatta (1948–1998). Her breakthrough film was 

the science-fiction action-adventure Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Persis 

was offered a role in a Bond film at the Miss World contest in Miami, where 

she was representing India. She declined the offer to keep a promise made to 

her mother to return home after the contest. She debuted in writer-director 

K. A. Abbas’s critically acclaimed Bombay Raat Ki Bahon Mein (Bombay by 

Night, 1968), but left for London soon after, complaining of Bollywood’s lack of 

professionalism. Her first international film was The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) 

opposite Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine; she followed this by starring in 

Richard Attenborough’s Conduct Unbecoming (1975). 

Her big Hollywood break—and the biggest achieved by an Indian actress 

until then—happened in 1978, when she was selected from thousands of hopefuls 

by director Robert Wise to play the female lead in, first, the Star Trek TV 

series, and then Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The role required her to shave 

her head, an order at which the gorgeous former Miss India did not bat an eye. 

Playing Lieutenant Aliea, the alien navigator of a spaceship in the costliest 

Hollywood film of its time, Persis appeared onscreen as the world’s first bald 

heroine. Her bald pate was seen on posters worldwide, alongside franchise 

icons William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. 

The space-orbiter’s Hollywood career got off to a flying start with a series 

of action flicks, Nighthawks (1981, opposite Sylvester Stallone); Megaforce 

(1982); Warrior of the Lost World (1983); and Phoenix the Warrior (1988). In 1980, 

Khambatta became the first Indian actress to present an Academy Award, but 

her busy career was abruptly cut short when a car accident in Germany left a 

huge scar on her head. Her final role was as a chair of the Congress of Nations in 

the 1993 pilot episode of ABC’s Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. 

New Millennium Charmers 

An Indian actress who was ahead of her time was Mallika Sherawat (b. 1976). 

Sherawat entered the Bollywood limelight with her lead role in Khwahish (A 

Wish, loosely inspired by Eric Segal’s Love Story, 1970), courting controversy

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Bollywood FAQ 

and headlines for her seventeen kissing scenes. Finding Bollywood’s conservatism 

to be limiting, Sherawat defected to Hollywood, where she made Hisss 

(2010), an Indo-American horror-thriller directed by Jennifer Lynch, and costarring 

Irrfan Khan. Inspired by Bollywood’s indigenous snake-woman lore, 

Sherawat once again made headlines with her “bold” nude scenes in the film. 

A veritable publicity magnet, she promoted her first English film by posing 

with a twenty-two-foot-long (6.7 m) Burmese python on the red carpet at the 

2010 Cannes Film Festival. She followed her gory horror experiment with 

Politics of Love (2011), in which she plays an Indian-American Democratic 

campaign worker who has an unexpected romance with an African-American 

Republican (played by Brian White). Set against Barack Obama’s presidential 

campaign, the film garnered mixed reviews, with Sherawat being unanimously 

panned for “trying too hard.” Her biggest international success remains a 

Chinese film, The Myth (2005), in which she has an extended cameo as an 

Indian girl who is rescued by Chinese action legend Jackie Chan. 

But, where Mallika Sherawat’s “noise and news”–driven Hollywood relocation 

was thwarted by her limited acting abilities, another Mumbai export, 

Freida Selina Pinto (b. 1984), who debuted with the eight-time Academy 

Award–winning Slumdog Millionaire (2008), has “quietly” become the only 

Indian actress to make it to the international big league. Following that 

global success, in which Pinto danced her way through the song Jai Ho, she 

Mallika Sherawat, on-set, performs a Bollywood item song. 



195 

demonstrated her acting mettle in two art-house projects. Woody Allen’s 

2010 comedy-drama You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger featured her “mystery 

woman” character as well as Hollywood heavyweights Anthony Hopkins, 

Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, and Naomi Watts. Miral (also 2010), directed by 

Julian Schnabel, is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by writer-journalist 

Rula Jebreal. Pinto essays the title role of an orphaned Palestinian woman 

growing up in an Israeli refugee camp. Her next was another Middle-East 

themed project, albeit shot on an epic scale, the Qatari-French-Italian-Tunisian 

war historical Day of the Falcon (2011). Pinto is an Arab princess, the film’s 

romantic interest. Her next Hollywood commercial success was the 2011 science-fiction 

film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, in which she plays a primatologist 

who falls in love with the lead character. She balanced this blockbuster choice 

with another valuable acting part—although one garnering mixed reviews—as 

the title character in Trishna (2011), Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of 

Thomas Hardy’s 1892 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully 

Presented. Trishna is a teenaged Rajasthani peasant girl, who leaves her family 

to work for a British-born Indian hotelier. Freida won back the critics with her 

supporting role in Desert Dancer (2014), based on the true story of a self-taught 

Iranian dancer, Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life to become a dancer in a 

country where dancing was banned. 

Thus, among all the Indian actresses venturing into Hollywood and beyond, 

Freida Pinto is the one with the most substantial filmography, balancing bigbudget 

blockbusters with smart independent films. As she explains: “You don’t 

have to limit yourself to a culture or ethnicity. I want to spread my tentacles 

everywhere and am ready for a film offer from any part of the world.” 

The fact remains that the only “foreign” actresses to succeed in Hollywood 

are those who have been able make their presence felt in all genres, especially 

drama, where acting ability outshines physical appearance, ethnicity, glamor, 

and sex appeal. Performing alongside internationally acclaimed actors only 

adds to the gravitas needed to rise above the role of “exotic” love interest of 

brawny action stars in forgettable films. 

The Male Order 

Bollywood’s Dilip Kumar famously refused the role of Sherif Ali in David Lean’s 

Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the role that made an international star of Omar 

Sharif. Bollywood’s best-known present global superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, 

has staved off every temptation of a Hollywood calling, wary about the size 

and impact of his role. The fears are not unfounded. Consider the blink-andmiss 

Hollywood debut of Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in The Great 

Gatsby (2013). Bachchan, portraying one of literature and cinema’s most colorful

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Bollywood FAQ 

gangster characters, Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish figure from New York’s seedy 

underworld of organized crime, did the cameo for free as a personal favor for 

director Baz Luhrmann. As the actor graciously stated on his blog, “It may have 

been a very small part of this film, but a very large part of the film shall remain 

with me.” Luhrmann, of course, greatly appreciated Amitabh’s contribution, 

adding that he was “honoured to have him on board” along with actors from 

different nations. Generally speaking, more Indian actors seem to land better 

roles in Hollywood films than their female counterparts. 

Hollywood’s First Indian Superstar 

It was a truly uncommon tale of the outsider making it big. Sabu Dastagir 

(1924–1963, also known as Selar Shaik Sabu and Sabu Francis) had never 

worked in the Indian movie industry before starting his career in the West. 

He became a major Hollywood star in a series of stunt-action fantasies like 

Elephant Boy (1937), The Thief of Bagdad (1940), and became the first actor to 

play the cult “jungle-hero” character of Mowgli, in the first screen version of 

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1942). 

Sabu was born in 1924 in the Mysore city-state of British India. He was the 

son of an Indian mahout, or elephant driver. Losing both his parents at the 

tender age of six, he spent his adolescence, first as a stable boy assistant before 

becoming a fulltime mahout himself, for the Maharajah of Mysore. It was 

while riding one of his favorite elephants that eleven-year-old Sabu was spotted 

by documentarian Robert Flaherty, of Nanook of the North (1922) fame. 

Flaherty was in India, looking for someone to play another Rudyard Kipling– 

created jungle-hero, Toomai, from his story Toomai of the Elephants. 

Sabu’s journey of chance had begun scripting itself a few years earlier, 

when Flaherty had first 

pitched his idea of a story 

about the unlikely friendship 

between a Mexican boy 

and a bull to British movie 

mogul Alexander Korda. 

Korda, with a personal fondness 

for Kipling’s Toomai of 

the Elephants story, changed 

the bull to an elephant, and 

Flaherty traveled to India 

instead of Mexico to look for 

the hero of the tale’s onscreen 

Sabu Dastagir. 

Photo courtesy of NFAI adaptation, titled Elephant


197 

Boy. The film revolved around a young mahout and his separation from, and 

ultimate reunion with, his beloved elephant Kala Nag (Black Cobra). Part fiction, 

part documentary, and part autobiographical for little Sabu, Elephant Boy 

became a superhit, establishing Sabu as an instantly recognizable global icon. 

The New York Times, in an April 6, 1937, review, called the film: 

one of the most likable of the jungle pictures. Having a simple story at 

its heart, it has had the wisdom and the good taste to tell it simply and 

without recourse to synthetic sensationalism. . . . Sabu, the Indian boy, 

is a sunny-faced, manly little youngster, whose naturalness beneath 

the camera’s scrutiny should bring blushes to the faces of the precocious 

wonder-children of Hollywood. He’s a much better actor than 

the British players Mr. Flaherty tried to disguise behind frizzed beards 

and Indian names. 

Korda immediately signed Sabu to a long-term contract, producing a series 

of box-office hits in similar jungle-adventure and other fantasies on both 

sides of the Atlantic. Sabu’s last film for Korda, The Jungle Book, brought his 

film career in London to a sort of circular close, starting with a Kipling tale, 

Elephant Boy, and ending with another. Needless to add, he was a natural as 

Mowgli, just as he had been an ideal Toomai. The shooting of The Jungle Book 

was completed in Hollywood, and Sabu stayed on after his contract with Korda 

was up, through World War II. Universal Pictures signed him to make four 

B-pictures opposite Maria Montez. He married actress Marilyn Cooper, with 

whom he had two children, and became a U.S. citizen. In 1944, he flew several 

missions for the U.S. Air Force as a tail-gunner towards the end of the war. His 

hit films in the war years included Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), 

and Cobra Woman (1944). 

Sabu’s film career took a dip in the postwar era as he transitioned to adult 

roles, albeit now as a supporting character actor, in the exotic Technicolor 

extravaganza Black Narcissus and The End of the River (both 1947), his last 

memorable screen parts. He spent the rest of his career making relatively 

undistinguished Hollywood films and building a successful career in real 

estate. Just prior to his fortieth birthday, and following an appearance in his 

first Disney film, A Tiger Walks (1963), Sabu Dastagir died unexpectedly in 

Chatsworth, California. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the 

Hollywood Hills. His epitaph reads: 

Sabu, 

Beloved Husband and Father 

1924–1963 

Until the Day Break, 

and the Shadows Flee Away

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Bollywood FAQ 

Few Handsome Faces of Villainy 

The next Indian actor to become popular in the West was the tall, handsome, 

olive-skinned Kabir Bedi (b. 1946). His international career began in Europe, 

where he played the pirate hero Sandokan in a popular Italian TV miniseries. 

Bedi’s big Hollywood debut, however, happened in the role of a villain, 

Gobinda, in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. He opted to return to India 

and play vicious (but attractive) antagonists, starting with a film adaptation of 

the Australian mini-series Return to Eden (1983)—the heroine-driven revengedrama 

Khoon Bhari Maang (Blood on the Head, 1988). 

The action-fantasy genre, incidentally, has been a favorite Hollywood 

debut pad for most Indian actors, starting with Amrish Puri (1932–2005), who 

plays the blood-sacrificing “scary” priest and devotee of the Hindu goddess 

of destruction, Kali, in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), starring 

Harrison Ford. The film was met with controversy and criticism from religionists 

in India for its distorted portrayal of Hindu prayer rituals, but it did 

set a brief trend for Indian actors playing diverse characters in Hollywood. 

Prominent in this list was Gulshan Grover (b. 1955), the first Bollywood actor 

to successfully transition to Hollywood star; he even temporarily lived in Los 

Angeles. Grover got to play pivotal supporting roles in many low-budget indie 

films, such as Tales of The Kama Sutra 2: Monsoon (2001), Beeper (2002), Blind 

Ambition (2014), Desperate Endeavors (2011), and Prisoners of the Sun (2013). 

He has since diversified his global portfolio by acting in films made in Iran, 

Malaysia, Canada, and Australia. 

A “Doctor” from Bengal 

The 1980s also saw Bengali actor Victor Bannerjee (b. 1946) make a notable dramatic 

film debut in David Lean’s 1984 adaptation of E. M. Forster’s acclaimed 

literary classic A Passage to India. His character of Dr. Aziz Ahmed brought 

him to the attention of Western critics and audiences, and Victor Bannerjee 

became the first Indian actor to be nominated for a Best Actor in a Leading 

Role at the 1985 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards. 

He went on to play diverse supporting roles of South Asian/Indian origin in 

the films of James Ivory, Jerry London, Ronald Neame, and Roman Polanski. 

Polanski’s Franco-British-American erotic-thriller Bitter Moon (1992), in which 

he plays a “distinguished Indian gentleman,” is Bannerjee’s other landmark 

film. Since then, he has had leading roles in the Bengali- and Hindi-language 

films of Indian art-house auteurs Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Shyam Benegal.


199 

An Actor for All Seasons 

The credit for the first Bollywood star to become a sustained, stellar presence 

in Western dramas goes to the supremely talented and versatile leading star of 

Indian New Wave cinema of the 1970s, Om Puri (1950–2017). His international 

debut was a brief but unforgettable role in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi 

(1982). His fiery look of vengeance, juxtaposed with the serene visage of 

Gandhi (Ben Kingsley), in the film’s pre-climax, caught the attention of 

Hollywood casting agents and directors. Puri, playing a victim and a perpetrator 

of the Hindu-Muslim riots brought on by the partition of India, makes a 

gut-wrenching confession to Gandhi about killing an innocent child with his 

own bare hands. The scene was a major turning point in the story, leading to 

Gandhi’s breaking of his fast unto death for communal amity. 

Puri’s next major work was the interracial cult comedy East is East (1999), 

which is frequently cited as one of the All-Time Great British films. So successful 

was this inter-ethnic love story of a migrant from Pakistan who settles 

Om Puri interacts with a young fan at the first annual Edinburgh Festival of Indian Films 

and Documentaries in 2016. 

Photo courtesy of Roshini Dubey. 

 


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Bollywood FAQ 

in the U.K. that a sequel, West is West, was released in 2010, also with Puri in 

the lead. 

Puri’s successful outings in Hollywood films continued, with cameos in 

critically acclaimed dramas like City of Joy (1992), Wolf (1994), Charlie Wilson’s 

War (2007), and The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014). The latter film is a delightful 

romantic comedy featuring Puri and Helen Mirren as feuding owners of adjacent 

restaurants in a French village—one an Indian-family-run place, and the 

other a lofty Michelin-starred restaurant. Incidentally, Puri’s prolific Western 

dramas were made in tandem with his equally prolific work in Bollywood, 

thus dispelling the argument that in order to make it in Hollywood, one must 

live there permanently. 

Holding his own with co-stars Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, Patrick Swayze, 

Amitabh Bachchan, Smita Patil, Helen Mirren, Rekha, Shabana Azmi, or 

Rachel Anne Griffiths, Om Puri is truly an actor to reckon with. His wealth of 

world-cinema characters include the adorable migrant-parent George Khan 

(East is East), Doctor Vijav Alezais (Wolf ), restaurateur Papa Kadam (The 

Hundred-Foot Journey), President Zia-ul-Haq (Charlie Wilson’s War), Inspector 

Velankar (Ardh Satya), Professor Amar (Aastha), Colonel Krishnakant Puri 

(Chinagate), weaver Ramulu (Susman), garrulous political fixer (Kakkaji Kahin), 

and a multitude of characters from Indian history in the epic TV series, Bharat 

Ek Khoj (Discovery of India, 1988). 

Om Puri straddled the popular and art-house cinema divide well, both in 

his Indian and international film choices, while making meaningful contribution 

to India’s middle-cinema. While his debut film as a hero, Ardh Satya (Half 

Truth, winner of the Best Actor award at the Indian National Film Awards and 

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 1984), remains Indian art-house cinema’s 

biggest commercial blockbuster. His Western debut, East is East (1999), 

made him the second Indian star to be nominated for a BAFTA award for Best 

Actor in a leading role. He was also awarded the Order of the British Empire in 

2004 for his services to the British film industry. When he died, at the age of 

sixty-six, on January 6, 2017, Om Puri was mourned at all the major award ceremonies 

in the U.K. and the U.S. Remembered as Bollywood’s lone actor-star to 

have found critical success in the East and West, even in death he continues to 

inspire Indian actors to break beyond exotic cameos in predominantly South 

Asian character parts and take on meaningful leading and supporting roles in 

British and American films.


201 

The “K” Factors 

In the tradition of Om Puri’s groundbreaking success, three Bollywood stars— 

Anupam Kher, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan—have made their marks in 

Hollywood dramatic films in the new millennium. 

■■ 

■■ 

■■ 

Anupam Kher (b. 1955), a prolific Bollywood character actor, has had 

memorable cameos in A-list American dramas. Starting with Gurindher 

Chaddha’s 2002 Golden Globe–nominated British sports-romcom, Bend 

It Like Beckham, followed by Bride and Prejudice (2004). Kher’s other 

memorable films include Oscar winning–director Ang Lee’s Golden Lion 

Winner Lust, Caution (2007), and David O. Russell’s multiple–Academy 

Award–nominated Silver Linings Playbook (2013). Kher received his share 

of plaudits for his portrayal of the compassionate therapist of the film’s 

bipolar protagonist Pat Solitano Jr. (Bradley Cooper). The five-time winner 

of Filmfare’s Best Comedian award, Kher seems to be skewing his career 

towards lighter comic roles. 

Anil Kapoor (b. 1956), a leading Bollywood star of the 1980s and ’90s, he 

nearly had a second career in Hollywood with the unexpected global success 

of Slumdog Millionaire. He plays the second-most important character 

in the film: the scheming game-show host Prem Kumar, who puts 

his “lucky” contestant through a roller-coaster knowledge game, using 

every trick in the book—from mock tension to tough questions—to prevent 

him from winning. The talented Kapoor extended the global reach of his 

post–Slumdog Millionaire popularity with a prolonged guest-starring role 

in the popular U.S. television show 24 (2010); he even purchased the rights 

to produce and play the lead in its Indian version. In his next Hollywood 

blockbuster, opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 

(2011), he plays an Indian tycoon who falls victim to a secret agent. 

Irrfan Khan (b. 1965), who, after years of struggle in Bollywood, made 

his big feature debut in a British film, The Warrior (2001), has emerged as 

the closest successor to Om Puri’s dream run as a bankable actor in both 

Bollywood and Hollywood. Khan has diligently chosen character roles of 

substance in films like New York, I Love You (2008), Life of Pi (2012), The 

Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and Jurassic World (2015). Irrfan Khan entered 

the Jurassic franchise as its lead villain, a far cry from the blink-and-miss 

debuts of other Indian stars. He has also garnered praise for his lead performances 

in international Indian co-productions, including The Namesake 

(2006) and the Lunch Box (2013). His occasional forays into Hollywood 

action-adventures, along with his BAFTA Best Foreign Language Film 

nominee Lunch Box, have made him the toast of the European art-house. 

Irrfan Khan’s films are among the most highly anticipated at leading North 

American indie film festivals.

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Bollywood FAQ 

A leading Bollywood superstar with stated Hollywood aspirations is still 

a rarity—although most of the new generation of stars are open to the possibility 

of taking part in Hollywood projects, especially if Indo-international 

co-productions continue to offer meaty characters to play. Whether Priyanka 

Chopra, Freida Pinto, and Irrfan Khan will achieve a twenty-first century 

repeat of Sabu’s twentieth-century Hollywood box-office success depends as 

much on the fickle public’s choices as on their own talent and opportunities.

19 

Gossips, Scandals, 

and Grand Affairs 

Actress and TV host Ellen DeGeneres has called gossip “the biggest thing 

that keeps the entertainment industry going.” The more scandalous the 

news, the greater are its chances of spreading. Put a star in the story, add a 

twist of a romance—hidden or lost—and it will spread that much faster. Add 

the passage of time, and oft-repeated lore becomes legend. 

Bollywood dancer-choreographer Saroj Khan, who’s had at least three 

generations of heroines and heroes from the 1960s to the 2000s dancing to 

her tunes, reflected on the personal side of life in the early years of the film 

industry: 

There never used to be publicised love affairs in those days. Of course, 

people frequently fell in love then, too, and what great love stories 

used to happen! But everything was behind the curtains. That time the 

grace of a film heroine and the dignity of a film hero was very much 

there. Because they had shame. 

Shame, indeed, is a prized grace in a conservative society, even for actors, 

despite the liberty of a profession that allows them a routine playing-andbartering 

of love. The following are just some of the tempestuous affairs and 

shocking scandals that have rocked Bollywood through the decades. 

A Mess-up with the Boss’s Wife: Devika Rani–Najmul 

Hassan 

Events in Bollywood, both on and offscreen, are always larger than life. The 

Indian film industry’s first big gossip-turned-scandal-turned-failed affair . . . 

was neither small in scale, nor the nature of its players! The First Lady of 

Indian Cinema (to be), Devika Rani, eloped with the hero of the first

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Bollywood FAQ 

Devika Rani and Najmul Hassan. 


production of the talkie era’s leading studio, Bombay Talkies. It didn’t matter 

that the producer of the film—Rani’s husband, Himanshu Rai—was one of the 

most influential men in the industry. The “other man,” in this case, was Najmul 

Hasan, one of the handsomest actors of his time. The thriller Jawani Ki Hawa 

(The Passions of Youth, 1934) features Hasan and Rani as lovers on the run, and 

was shot entirely on a train. Saadat Hasan Manto notes, “The worst affected 

and the most worried man at Bombay Talkies was Himanshu Rai, Devika 

Rani’s husband and the heart and soul of the company.” Rai’s second-in-command, 

Sashadhar Mukherjee, tracked the eloped pair to a Calcutta hotel and 

brought Rani back to Bombay, convincing her to be practical, not emotional. 

“Her talents had far greater chance of flourishing under Rai’s baton in the 

studio than being the temporary love interest of a reputed cad,” Mukhrjee had 

reasoned. Rani relented, and went on to become India’s first actress-producer 

and the industry’s official “first lady,” taking over the Bombay Talkies studio 

after Rai’s untimely death, in 1940. Hasan’s career, however, was over. Studio 

owners avoided him assiduously.

Gossips, Scandals, and Grand Affairs 

205 

Raining Love Letters from the Sky: Motilal–Shobhana 

Samarth 

Bollywood’s next leading lady, a member of the “privileged class” as well as a 

divine beauty, Shobhana Samarth opted to walk out of her soured marriage to 

be with her lover. The “other man” in question was, in this case, one of the most 

sophisticated gentlemen ever to grace the industry, the flamboyant Motilal. 

The decision of Samarth, a mother of two, to attempt living-in with her lover— 

something unthinkable in the 1940s—painted their affair in the deepest 

shades of scarlet. Although they never 

married, they spent a tumultuous 

decade of togetherness, full of merriment 

and madness. Years later, 

Samarth, with characteristic candor, 

reflected: 

Motilal. 


It was one of the most tempestuous 

relationships ever. We were forever 

fighting—out of 365 days, we 

would fight 360 days. He reacted 

by drinking—he had to drink 

because we had a fight, and he had 

to drink because we were happy. 

Shobhana Samarth in Ram Rajya. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

When I decided to quit Bombay and live in Lonavala (a neighboring 

hill station), he objected. I went away. He had a flying licence and he 

hired a plane and flew over my cottage, throwing stones with letters 

tied to them saying, “I love you.” 

If only they still made lovers like that. 

A Ring in the Sea: Suraiya–Dev Anand 

One of the biggest singing stars of the 1940s, her voice was a craze; her face, 

beauty incarnate. He went on to become one of the most-loved romantic stars 

and all-time style icons to grace the Indian screen. Suraiya wanted to marry 

him; Dev Anand was madly in love with her. Anand used to affect Gregory 

Peck’s mannerisms because Suraiya was a big fan of the Hollywood star. The 

efforts and the anecdotes got Dev Anand the nickname of the “Gregory Peck of 

India.” Their love affair continued for four years, from 1948 to 1951. He called 

her Nosey, and she named him Steve. And long before there was a Brangelina, 

Suraiya was Anand’s Suraiyana, and he, her Devina. Later, Dev Anand named 

his daughter Devina, born of his marriage with another actress, Kalpana 

Kartik. 

So, what went wrong? 

Anand and Suraiya, with the help of the cast and crew of one of their films, 

Jeet (1949), ironically meaning victory, had made secret plans for a wedding in 

a temple. At the last moment, a jealous assistant-director informed Suraiya’s 

grandmother of the couple’s plans. That domineering woman, who held her 

star daughter’s life in a vicelike grip, broke in on the scene being shot and 

literally dragged the young lady home. 

The ring Dev Anand had given to Suraiya was flung into the Arabian Sea 

opposite their beach house in Bombay, by her irate grandmother. She was 

against their inter-religious union: Suraiya was a Muslim; Dev Anand, a 

Hindu. The singing star quietly withdrew from public life, never to marry. She 

died many years later, a rich, lonely spinster who had remained in that house 

near the Arabian Sea, which held the ring in its depths. Dev Anand, on the 

other hand, did marry, and was then famously smitten by his discovery, Zeenat 

Aman, in the 1970s. But he had been in love only once, he confided to many 

interviewers through the years. His other romances could never measure up to 

the legend of the failed Suraiya-Dev Anand love story, a much-lamented heartbreak 

borne of forced parental restriction, in a newly free and independent 

nation.


207 

The Showman and His Muse: Raj Kapoor–Nargis 

An ambitious, handsome director, he made his debut feature at the age of 

twenty-four, at a time when seasoned veterans ruled the film industry. Before 

this, when he was even younger and looking for work, he found himself knocking 

on the sea-facing front door of the home of legendary singer-actress and 

early pioneer of Indian cinema, Jaddanbai. Her pretty teenaged daughter, 

Fatima Rasheed (who later took the screen name Nargis), opened the door. 

The first thing he noticed was that the flustered girl in the doorway had 

inadvertently smeared some batter on her nervous face. It was love at first 

sight. Bollywood’s most influential “filmmaker-to-be” had found his muse. For 

nearly a decade (1949–1957), making sixteen films together, their onscreen 

pairing and offscreen romance inspired enough gossip to fire many a romantic’s 

imagination. Actor-director Kapoor was so smitten by Nargis that his 

production company’s logo was redesigned (it was originally RK Films), from 

that of an iconic pose he and Nargis had struck in his first blockbuster film, 

Barsaat (The Rains, 1949). Years later, when Nargis had quit acting and Raj 

Kapoor was launching his son, Rishi, in a teenage love story entitled Bobby 

(1973), the memory of that first meeting made for an unforgettable onscreen 

introduction for the young lovers. A curious teen (Rishi Kapoor), standing on 

Actor-director Raj Kapoor with heroine Nargis in Awara. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

a stranger’s doorstep, is welcomed by a flustered teenager (Dimple Kapadia), 

her hair smeared with batter. 

The Raj-Nargis love story had to end because the actor-filmmaker could 

not, and would not, leave his wife and the mother of his three sons, the “forever 

forgiving,” gentle, and elegant Krishna Kapoor. Nargis found her soulmate in 

the year-younger Sunil Dutt, who had played her son in Mother India (1957), a 

film that would make a living icon of the retiring actress. Their marriage went 

on to become a successful and nurturing union, a rarity in filmdom. The Dutts 

lived privately in their marital bliss, and publicly in grace and dignity, ending 

with Nargis’s untimely death from cancer, in 1981. The duo had even paid a 

gracious visit to Raj Kapoor’s cottage in response to Raj and Krishna’s invitation 

to their son Rishi’s wedding. The muse and lover of Bollywood’s greatest 

showman went on to become a lasting image of marital bliss, assuring many 

about the sanctity of marriage. 

The Venus and Her Brooding Adonis: Madhubala– 

Dilip Kumar 

The greatest love story of Bollywood’s golden age featured two beautiful 

people—the most talented star-actor and the most beautiful face to grace the 

Indian screen. If Bollywood’s Monroe, Madhubala, was nicknamed the “Venus 

of the Indian screen,” Dilip Kumar was its Paul Muni and Marlon Brando, 

rolled into one. Both intensely private, Kumar made national headlines by 

making a flamboyant courtroom declaration about Madhbala: “I shall always 

love her till the day she dies.” Ironically, he was there to testify against his love, 

in support of his producer, against her co-star’s unprofessional tantrum. The 

villain in the story, once again, was parental opposition. 

Madhubala’s disciplinarian father, Ataullah Khan, had gotten wind of 

his daughter falling for the dapper Dilip. As a result, he refused to let her 

shoot outside of Bombay in far off outdoor locations for producer-director B. R. 

Chopra’s Naya Daur (New Age, 1957), a film that was reinforcing the need for 

tradition against selfish modernity, albeit in the transport sector. Ataullah lost 

the case, B. R. Chopra won, and Madhubala lost her love. Dilip Kumar used his 

influence to avoid pursuing damages or pressing charges against the father 

or his daughter. But hearts were broken beyond repair. Madhubala married 

maverick comedian and star playback singer Kishore Kumar in the very year 

that saw the release of India’s grandest-ever romantic musical, Mughal-e-Azam 

(The Great Mughal, 1960), featuring Dilip Kumar and Madhubala. It features 

one of the most referenced, most sensual scenes of onscreen passion. After 

what is hinted at to be a night of lovemaking, Prince Salim (Kumar) caresses 

the face of courtesan Anarkali (Madhubala) with a feather. Following the film’s


209 

completion, Madhubala quit movies, 

nursing a weak heart, the condition 

that eventually led to her death at 

the young age of thirty-six. 

Kumar later married the 

“Sensation of the Sixties,” Saira Banu, 

a smitten fan, half his age: he was 

forty-four; she, twenty-two. But, even 

decades after Madhubala’s passing, 

his face would light up at the mere 

mention of her name. 

The Scandal of a Nation: 

Sonali Dasgupta– 

Roberto Rossellini 

The legendary Italian filmmaker 

Roberto Rossellini had come to 

India, almost as a state guest, at 

the invitation of Prime Minister 

Jawaharlal Nehru, to make a documentary 

on the country. Rossellini 

Dilip Kumar and Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam. 

 


was already married to Hollywood actress Ingrid Bergman when he arrived in 

India in 1957. But he, like many European explorers of the subcontinent before 

him, instantly fell in love with the land and its ladies. 

Sonali Dasgupta was a mother of two and the wife of a promising 

Bombay-based documentarian, Harisadhan Dasgupta. They first met through 

Harisadhan, who was sought by Rossellini to collaborate on his project, but 

he was unable to commit due to his own busy schedule. An instantly smitten 

Rossellini, known for casting unknowns, tried unsuccessfully to convince 

Sonali to act in his film, despite the fact that she had no talent. Rossellini, more 

determined than ever, next asked Harisadhan to let her join his script-writing 

team, just to be close to her. 

They fell in love—to a family’s nightmare and a nation’s embarrassment. He 

was fifty-two, and she was twenty-seven. Her relatives, trying to prevent Sonali 

from leaving her husband, sought a private meeting with Prime Minister 

Nehru to impound Sonali’s passport. Sonali, who had a personal rapport with 

the prime minister, directly approached him for a passport instead. Nehru, 

after an initial mock refusal, made sure that she obtained the document before 

sending her off with this advice: “Stay in touch. But stay in touch directly. Stay 

away from the embassy.” Sonali’s elopement with Rossellini was planned as a

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Bollywood FAQ 

strategic escape, via Paris, with the help of common friends, with the duo traveling 

separately to diffuse suspicion. Sonali took her younger son, Arjun, who 

was renamed Gil Rossellini, and settled down in Rome. Rossellini and Sonali 

had a daughter together, named Raffaella Rossellini (b. 1958), who became 

an actress and a model. For love, Sonali left India, her husband, Harisadhan, 

and her elder son Raja for good. After seventeen years of togetherness, the 

much-married Rossellini (he had already been married twice before marrying 

Ingrid Bergman) left Sonali for a younger woman, Silvia D’Amico. Sonali 

rose to become a highly regarded figure in her adopted European home. She 

popularized Indian textiles in her boutique on Via Borgogna, which became 

a brand in itself. When Nehru’s daughter and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s 

plane developed a technical snag on a visit to Italy, Sonali was the PM’s official 

hostess. 

But her family—and India—never forgave her. 

The Tiger and His Star Bride: Mansoor Ali Khan 

Pataudi–Sharmila Tagore 

Theirs was the first successful, high-profile, real-life union between two icons 

hailing from two of India’s favorite passions—cinema and cricket. Pataudi 

was a royal, the titular Nawab of the Pataudi estate from 1952–1971, when the 

twenty-sixth amendment to the Indian constitution derecognized the titles of 

its remaining princes. Mansoor, however, earned his nickname, Tiger, for his 

ferocity on the sports field as one of the Indian cricket team’s most successful 

captains. At twenty-one, he was the youngest captain of the Indian cricket 

team. 

She was “to the manor born,” hailing from the elite Tagore family of Bengal, 

and was launched onscreen by the internationally acclaimed auteur of Indian 

art-house cinema, Satyajit Ray. Breaking taboos, on and offscreen, she was the 

first Indian heroine to pose in a bikini and bridge the diverse worlds of art and 

popular cinema with equal success. They met in India’s capital city, Delhi, in 

1965, and Tiger proposed to Sharmila four years later in the City of Light, Paris. 

The dashing royal had lost his heart to the self-confessed cricket fan, described 

by Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi as “the innocent-looking beauty with a mature 

outlook.” She was attracted by his sense of humor and his respect for her choice 

of career. They married on December 27, 1969, and Sharmila converted to 

Islam—with a new name, Ayesha Sultana, to fulfill the regal requirements of 

her Nawab’s estate. It was a mere formality for the documents; onscreen, she 

remained Sharmila Tagore, acting in some of her most complex and challenging 

roles, from an unwed mother to a foul-mouthed prostitute. Her comeback 

helped break a major taboo for married actresses, who normally had to quit the


211 

industry or make do with supporting roles. Bettors and analysts had given this 

high-profile odd match of two strong personalities not even a year of success, 

but it lived to tell Bollywood’s most enduring fairy tale, one that lasted over 

four decades, until the Nawab’s demise on September 22, 2011. 

Meena’s Five Husbands, and Kishore’s Four Wives 

She was “La-Ra-Lappa Girl,” and he the “Yodelling Boy.” Both started their 

careers in the 1940s—Sikandar (Alexander, 1941) and Shikari (The Hunter, 1946), 

respectively—and were active for the next four decades. Born in 1921 in British 

India, Meena even changed citizenship in her quest for love and career. But 

Meena Shorey and Kishore Kumar garnered more headlines for their partner 

choices than their onscreen achievements. 

Meena could well be the subcontinent’s Elizabeth Taylor, if not on a talent 

meter, at least on the marriage meter. She had three husbands in pre-Independence 

India, and two in Pakistan, where she relocated after the partition 

of India. Her first marriage was to actor-producer-director Zahur Raja, whom 

she had met while shooting her debut film, Sikandar (Alexander, 1941), and fell 

in love. Her second marriage was to actor and co-star Al Nasir, from whom 

she had separated by the mid-1940s. Her third—and longest-lasting—marriage 

(until 1956) was to Roop K. Shorey. Shorey, a pre-partition-era producer, 

who lost his resources in Lahore, migrated to India and made the first postpartition 

Punjabi film, Chaman (Garden, 1948) with Meena’s financing. Shorey 

and Meena were invited to Pakistan by producer J. C. Anand to make a film 

called Miss 1956 (1956). She and the film were well-received in Lahore, compared 

to Bombay cinema where she had begun to be relegated to secondary 

roles. Shorey returned, while she opted to stay back, and went on to become 

the first Pakistani actress to model for the Lux soap and be known as the “Lux 

Lady of Pakistan.” There, she reportedly married two local actors, first Raza 

Mir, and subsequently Asad Bokhari, her co-star in Jamalo (1962). But her 

many husbands did not make her financially secure, as she died in penury 

on February 9, 1989 in Lahore. Her funeral arrangements were paid for by 

charitable donations. 

It has always been one of Bollywood’s most puzzling riddles: How did the 

miserly maverick comic genius and talented playback singer Kishore Kumar 

impress four beautiful actresses enough for them to marry him? His first—and 

longest-lasting—marriage was to 1950s Bengali singer-actress Ruma Guha 

Thakurta, who gave birth to his eldest son, playback singer Amit Kumar. His 

second wife, Madhubala, may have been the most beautiful of them all. The 

two had co-starred in some of Kishore’s most successful films, all of which 

were comedies—Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (What Moves is the Vehicle, 1958) and

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Bollywood FAQ 

Meena Shorey, with Motilal, in Ek Thi Larki. Photo courtesy of NFAI. 

Jhumroo (1961)—to become the leading comic pair of the decade. For a heartbroken 

Madhubala, following her breakup with Dilip Kumar, Kishore Kumar 

was perhaps the only one who could make her laugh. He even converted to 

Islam and changed his name to Karim Abdul to marry the Muslim actress. His 

parents didn’t attend the ceremony, and the couple had a Hindu marriage, too, 

to please Kumar’s parents, but Madhubala was never truly accepted as his wife. 

Within a month of their wedding, she moved back to her father’s bungalow. 

Most of their marriage was spent with Madhubala remaining bedridden with 

a terminal heart ailment, to which she succumbed in 1969. 

Kishore’s third marriage was with the doe-eyed actress Yogeeta Bali, who 

left him after just two years for the rising disco star of the 1980s, Mithun 

Chakraborty. Eventually, the wandering singer found marital bliss with his 

fourth—and last—wife, actress Leena Chandavarkar. She was twenty-one 

years his junior and gave birth to Kishore’s second son, Sumit Kumar. The two 

remained together until Kishore’s death in 1987.


213 

She Hid Alcohol in Dettol Bottles 

One of Indian cinema’s finest actresses, Meena Kumari, was the female equivalent 

of Dilip Kumar, due to the caliber and complexity of her celebrated roles. 

She was the Best Actress winner at the first Filmfare Awards in 1954, and for 

thirty-five years remained the actress with the most nominations. If Dilip 

Kumar was the “King of Tragedies,” she was the “Tragedy Queen.” Nobody 

performed melodrama better! In 1962, Meena Kumari bagged all the Filmfare 

nominations in the Best Actress category and won for her haunting portrayal 

of an alcoholic aristocrat who pines for love. Fiction couldn’t have been more 

true for Meena, whose entire life was wasted on one ambition—finding true 

love! Her much older producer-director husband, Kamal Amrohi, had dismissed 

her mystique as someone who “derived perverse pleasure from selfinflicted 

sorrow.” Bollywood lore, however, abounds with ample evidence of 

how the stress of having married a controlling husband played havoc with 

Meena’s nervous system, driving her to drink in order to find her voice and 

seek fulfillment. 

The aberration soon grew to an addiction. She would conceal alcohol in 

Dettol bottles and court a series of young stars, including Raaj Kumar, Pradeep 

Kumar, and—most famously—Bollywood’s first “stud hero,” Dharmendra Deol. 

Hurtling from affair to affair, she drank and poured her heart out in some 

exquisite, pensive poetry she wrote under the pen name of Naaz (meaning 

pride). Meanwhile, overlooking her peccadilloes, her estranged-but-neverdivorced 

husband, Amrohi, designed her last film, Pakeezah (The Pure One, 

1971), as an epitaph to her immense talent built over a time span of eighteen 

years. Days after the release of Pakeezah on February 4, 1972, one of the greatest 

classics and grandest musicals in the history of Indian cinema, Meena 

Kumari succumbed to cirrhosis of liver, betrayed and brokenhearted, four 

months before her fortieth birthday on March 31, 1972. The relatives of one of 

India’s greatest stars did not even claim her body as they feared being attached 

by creditors to pay the debt-ridden actress’s unpaid bills. The doctor who 

treated her paid for her last rites. Meanwhile, her final film, Pakeezah, became 

the biggest blockbuster of the year—as audiences crowded the theaters to pay 

tribute at the celluloid tomb of one of the industry’s greatest stars. 

Triangle Tattle: Anju Mahendru–Rajesh Khanna– 

Dimple Kapadia 

The turn of the 1970s marked the arrival of a phenomenon called Rajesh 

Khanna. He was India’s first superstar, with romance being his speciality genre 

and a string of broken hearts his legacy. After all, he was the hero of hysterical

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Bollywood FAQ 

The “Teen Bride,” Dimple Kapadia. 

 


female fans across the country. Naturally, when 

Khanna decided to marry at the peak of his 

stardom, discussions around the “how” and 

“who” of it became the national pastime. The 

marriage had broken the hearts of not only the 

girls, but also many young boys. Khanna’s wife 

was the heartthrob of the nation and the teenage 

sensation of the decade—the delicately 

beautiful Dimple Kapadia—whose debut film, 

Bobby (1973), remains the biggest romantic 

blockbuster in Indian cinema history. 

He was thirty-one; she, only sixteen. But no 

one batted an eyelash over the bride’s youthful 

age. The proposal, like every event in Khanna’s 

life, was larger-than-life—it was made in the 

skies, literally! Rajesh and Dimple were on 

a flight to Bombay when Dimple expressed a 

desire to pay a visit to the cockpit and see how 

the pilots flew the plane. Rajesh Khanna told 

Cine Blitz for its April 1975 issue: “The curtain 

falls back into place as we go up to the cockpit, 

separating us from the rest of the passengers. I 

hold her hand, draw her towards me, into my 

arms. It is the first time that I kiss her. And it is 

Groom Rajesh Khanna at his marriage ceremony with Dimple Kapadia. 

 



215 

here, over a thousand miles high in the skies and that much closer to God, I say 

those crucial words asking her to marry me!” 

But in all this romantic tittle-tattle, the one whose heart was bruised and 

betrayed, and who went around making as much news about her breakup as 

the new bonding, was model-turned-actress Anju Mahendru. She was Rajesh 

Khanna’s steady girlfriend and support system in Bombay for seven years 

while he was making his steady climb to superstardom. Once there, however, 

he dropped her unceremoniously from his life, making an overnight decision 

to marry the teen sensation of the decade, Dimple Kapadia. She was the biggest 

trophy the multiple award-winning actor acquired. But the couple separated 

a decade later after the birth of their two daughters, when Dimple 

rejoined the film industry and became romantically involved with an eighties’ 

action-star, someone more in her age group. In later years, Khanna rekindled 

his friendship with Anju and regretted that he should have married her, “following 

his heart, instead of a headline.” 

Beauty and the Beasts: Sanjay Khan–Zeenat Aman– 

Mazhar Khan 

A former Miss Asia and the first “beauty queen” to become a Bollywood leading 

lady, Zeenat Aman upped the oomph factor for Indian heroines in the 

1970s. Launched as a cute and adorable but misguided hippie in the counterculture 

hit Hare Rama Hare Krishna (Hail Rama Hail Krishna, 1971), she had 

its hero and her onscreen brother, played by the “evergreen romantic” Dev 

Anand, fall madly in love with her. The young and ambitious Aman, however, 

walked out on her mentor-discoverer for a smart, rising star of sugary 

romances, Sanjay Khan. 

But it all soured badly, leading to one of the film industry’s most violent 

acts against a woman, when Aman became the victim of a public battering 

by Khan. It was November of 1979, and the location was a haute Bombay 

destination, the Taj Mahal Hotel, where Sanjay was partying with his wife, 

Zarine. He was just back from a long outdoor shoot in the Middle East for his 

Arab-adventure Abdullah (1980), in which Zeenat was his leading lady. The 

duo was rumored to have secretly married during the film’s year-long-plus 

shooting schedule, outside Bombay. But, back in the city, the already-married 

Khan preferred to be seen with his wife. Zeenat gate-crashed his private party, 

insisting acknowledgment and marriage. Sanjay was not averse to tying the 

knot a second time, but it got messy when she started asking him to leave his 

wife and kids first. An agitated Zeenat, according to Sanjay, apparently slapped 

him in public. The enraged Pathan in him retaliated in full public view, leaving 

her bloodied and battered, even permanently damaging one of her eyes.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Surprisingly, though, no charges were made. Zeenat eventually wed another 

much-married Pathan, Mazhar Khan, who professed, “She is my most private 

and precious possession,” adding simultaneously, “And yes, it is possible for a 

man to love two women at the same time.” 

Unluckily for Zeenat, her marriage with Mazhar ended in divorce after 

frequent bouts of domestic violence, which made many wonder why Zeenat 

and her ilk, although known for playing bold and beautiful women onscreen, 

let their men get away with caveman behavior in private. 

A Beach Streak in the Nude! 

Model-turned-classical-dancer Protima Bedi was never a film star, but she 

married one of the most desirable hunks of the Bombay filmdom, Kabir Bedi. 

Yet the compellingly unshackled and beautiful Protima generated a lot of press 

for streaking across the Juhu beach for the launch of a popular Bollywood film 

magazine, Cine Blitz, in 1974. Her aim was to register a personal protest against 

a hypocritical society, and how better to do this than by appearing in public, 

completely naked? Protima Bedi told a reporter for the 1974 inaugural issue of 

Cine Blitz magazine: “One of the creative hindrances to creative living is fear, 

and respectability is a manifestation of that fear. Streak with me and learn the 

meaning of freedom.” 

Death of a Dream: Parveen Babi’s Famous Live-ins 

Another one-of-a-kind celebrity from the 1970s who tested the limits of life itself 

was the sensual Parveen Babi. Babi and noted screen villain Danny Dengzongpa 

were Bollywood’s first “bold and beautiful” couple. They “lived in sin” for four 

years at a time when even dating was sneered at! However, Danny’s need for 

commitment, and Babi’s need for freedom, ended the affair. As Danny later 

revealed in Filmfare magazine, “I was not content being lovers. I wanted to marry 

Parveen.” Fear of commitment also led Babi to end it with Kabir Bedi, the handsome 

star of the Italian TV series Sandokan (1976). “I am not the kind who can sit 

at home as Mrs. Kabir Bedi,” she said. “We enjoyed a beautiful relationship, and 

before any sourness could creep in, we thought it best to split.” 

Next, it was then-struggling director Mahesh Bhatt, who went on to 

become one of Bollywood’s leading filmmakers of brutally honest relationship 

stories. They lived together for two years, a period of intense passion and pain, 

as this is when Parveen first showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Bhatt later 

documented this in three critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical films.


217 

Parveen Babi, with co-stars Amitabh Bachchan (left) and Shashi Kapoor (right), in Do Aur 

Do Paanch. 


From romancing a nation and becoming the first Bollywood beauty to grace 

the cover of Time magazine, Babi suddenly disappeared from view, fueling 

rumors of suicide and even murder. She returned six years later, vastly changed 

in appearance, a bloated parody of her once-glamorous self. The victim of paranoid 

schizophrenia, she made news with her allegations against everyone from 

her Bollywood co-star Amitabh Bachchan to Prince Charles and President Bill 

Clinton, blaming them for her current predicament. She alleged that these celebrated 

men were actually part of a global Mafia cartel, and informed the courts 

that she would be presenting evidence when a leading star of the 1990s, Sanjay 

Dutt, was being tried for his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai blasts. When her 

court date arrived, she was absent, saying that she feared for her life. 

By this time, Parveen Babi had withdrawn completely from society. In 

2005, she was found dead in her apartment, at least seventy-two hours after 

having passed away. Concerned neighbors alerted the police regarding the 

accumulation of newspapers and milk bottles at her doorstep. For the ephemeral 

world of glamour, she had died long before, when she lost both her sanity 

and beauty. Only her three ex-lovers—Danny, Kabir, and Mahesh Bhatt— 

attended her funeral. These men had known, experienced, and had been

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Bollywood FAQ 

enriched by the inner warmth of this intelligent beauty. As Bhatt said in 

Outlook magazine (January 24, 2005): “She was the ultimate glamour girl, the 

first woman who had an alternate morality and was never ashamed of the way 

she lived life.” 

Rekha and Amitabh Bachchan on the poster of Silsila, their final film together. 

Amitabh’s wife, Jaya Bachchan, can be seen in the upper-right corner. 

 



219 

Forever in Love: Amitabh Bachchan–Rekha 

He was voted as the biggest superstar of the twentieth century in a global 

BBC poll. She is the ultimate enigma, the “Greta Garbo of Bollywood.” In a 

post-millennium poll, three decades after their first onscreen pairing in the 

1970s, their “alleged affair” still captures the imagination of a country. Even 

now, television cameras frenziedly zoom in for reactions of the seventy-plus 

Amitabh Bachchan and the sixty-plus Rekha when either is called upon to 

honor the latest winner at one of Bollywood’s award ceremonies. Some hint 

of public acknowledgment is desperately hoped for, but not a hint is given by 

these motion picture legends, which only adds to their mystique. Amitabh 

Bachchan was married to Jaya Bhaduri, one of the most beautiful and influential 

leading ladies of the 1970s, when he met Rekha, then a pudgy teenager and 

just another aspiring actress from south India trying her luck in Bollywood. 

He was then the icon of angst, with little time for onscreen romance, the focus 

of a new genre of “angry young man” movies. His refined manners influenced 

Rekha to become the last fashion icon of twentieth century Bollywood. 

Their affair became iconic when Rekha agreed to portray “the other 

woman” in a film featuring Amitabh and Jaya Bhaduri, an uncanny example 

of a real-meets-reel love story. The film, incidentally, was called Silsila (1981)— 

meaning affair. They never made a another film together. Rekha was subsequently 

romantically linked with other co-stars by the tabloid press and film 

magazines, as well as a failed marriage to industrialist Mukesh Aggarwal, who 

later committed suicide by hanging himself with her sari. 

Bachchan never ended his marriage to Bhaduri, nor has he ever commented 

on his affair with Rekha. His silence and her hints kept adding to the 

lure of the most alluded-to romance—or, simply, “the affair”—in the history 

of Indian cinema. Years later, Rekha, playing the mature wife of a royal in 

another romantic triangle, Zubeida (2001), paraphrased La Rochefoucauld 

when she said, “In love, there is always the one who loves, and the one who is 

loved.” An entire nation and two generations of fans knew instantly that this 

was the summary of her life—and Bollywood’s last grand affair.

Section 3 

Songs, Dance, 

and Music Magic

20 

A Story About Song 

and Dance 

Why is there so much singing and dancing in Bollywood films? 

This question has long perplexed students, critics, and fans of 

Indian cinema. Numerous explanations have been attempted, and more are 

being researched—even as you’re reading this—by academics in art, film studies, 

and socio-cultural research spaces across the globe. But are such explorations 

empathetic enough? And are they ready to step beyond the disciplines of 

logic and into the realm of myth and magic? 

The Nātyaśāstra Connection 

The presence of song and dance in films is a celebration of a tradition going 

back thousands of years in the Indian subcontinent’s cultural space. Its oldest 

religious and life-guiding texts, the Vedas, before their written appearance in 

the last 5000 years, are presumed to have been orally passed down by generations 

of sages as sung proclamations in the preceding centuries. India’s two 

oldest, and still performed, epic tales written in the verse form, the Ramayana 

and the Mahabharata, continue to be sung and performed in their many vernacular 

languages, as a daily ritual in temples and cultural spaces. Early talkies 

in Indian cinema liberally and naturally dipped into that creative stream of 

song-driven performance tradition for inspiration to make it a unique attribute 

of its narrative form. Today, music and dance have become Bollywood’s greatest 

signifier, identifier, and differentiator. 

According to local religious-cultural lore, the fine art of singing and 

dancing have been guided by stated and remembered codes to performance 

from time immemorial, often sourced directly to the divine. For historical 

purposes of recorded transmission, the critical consensus broadly rests at 

the Nātyaśāstra, a theoretical treatise on ancient Indian dramaturgy and 

histrionics, especially Sanskrit theater. Deliberating at length on stagecraft

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Bollywood FAQ 

and the performing arts, it describes and categorizes the different kinds of 

drama, acting, and direction, along with the varied aesthetic experiences of 

the audience. According to dramatist and twentieth century cultural icon 

Adya Rangacharya, the Nātyaśāstra has “not only defined for us characters 

on the stage, but even characters in the auditorium [the audience],” based on 

the nature of their responses. Susan Schwartz, in her book Rasa: Performing 

the Divine in India, best sums up its scope and significance as “part theatrical 

manual, part philosophy of aesthetics, part mythological history, part theology,” 

and part psychological in its “analysis of the mental states of spectators 

watching a performance, and the nature and effects of the pleasures derived 

by them, there-of.” 

Though attributed to Bharata muni, an ancient sage of the dramatic arts, a 

dominant counterview is that the name may have been an acronym for the 

three syllables—Bha (Bhava, or mood), Ra (Raga, or melody) and Ta (Tala, or 

rhythmic timing). These are essential for any artistic performance, and went 

on to become a common name for sages, dramatists, or eminent ancient actors 

whose collective works over the centuries have formulated the foundational 

principles of Sanskrit dramaturgy known as the Nātyaśāstra (or Natya 

Shastra). 

A wall mural depicting (Left to right, seated atop) the Hindu Divine Trinity featuring Brahma, the 

Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Shiva, the Destroyer.

A Story About Song and Dance 

225 

Entertainment with Enlightenment 

The drama compendium, in the Indian tradition of prescribing the authorship 

of any ancient work (e.g., the Vedas) to the gods or sages of yore, states in its 

first chapter that it was composed by Brahma (the Hindu god of creation) at 

the request of the gods to create something that would educate and inspire 

its audience about “the nature and behaviour of the world by imitating its 

conduct through various stages and situations, to be rendered by physical 

and other forms of acting, by depictions communicating the emotions of the 

entire triple world.” However, because it was supposed to be entertaining as 

well as enlightening, its presentation had to be pleasing to the eyes and the 

ears so that it was accessible to all. This included the evolved immortals of the 

celestial world (devas) to the demons (asuras) of the netherworld, along with 

the entire gamut of human beings in between. 

Hence, Brahma composed the fifth Veda, or the Natyaveda, incorporating 

elements from all the arts, sciences, and ethics, “taking the words from Rig 

Veda, music from Sam Veda, movements and make-up from Yajur Veda, and 

emotional acting from Atharva Veda,” and gave it to Bharata muni and his 

sons (or pupils) to practice and perform the lessons of a good, civilized, and 

moral life for the entertainment and enlightenment of all. The Nātyaśāstra’s 

elevation to the status of a Veda in many commentaries also highlights the significance 

attached to its undisputed guide status in the shaping of subsequent 

cultural meanings. 

. . . and Dance Happened 

Returning to the legend, Brahma’s contribution was self-sufficient for drama. 

He spoke of the drama text, acting, music, and the aesthetics of appreciation 

(rasa), which the previous three stated elements evoke in the hearts of the 

collective audience. Dance was pre-existing when drama was created, with 

Lord Shiva (the Hindu god of destruction) being the acknowledged god of 

dance. However, when Shiva saw the first performance, though appreciative 

of Brahma’s creation and the efforts of Bharata and his actors, he thought it 

was too plain. Brahma then asked Bharata to take inspiration from Shiva’s 

Tāndavam (cosmic dance) as he created the apsaras (celestial nymphs) to perform 

them with grace (lasya), since he felt that no male other than Shiva could 

manage the graceful aspects of his Tāndavam. Experiencing the aesthetic 

appeal of Shiva’s dance movements, Bharata incorporated dance to beautify 

drama and transformed it from a plain (and bland) performance to a beautiful 

(and complete) performance, thus giving birth to the concept and realization 

of the first operatic Sanskrit dance-drama.

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Within this fable-like tale of its origin is embedded a significant guiding 

principle that has become the raison d’être of all Indian performance forms, 

imbibed right into its cinema—the integral role of music and dance in any 

dramatic performance. But this should not to be confused with a recommendation 

for the musical format, as Bharata warns that the presence of music should 

not be overdone lest both the performers and the viewers will feel the strain 

in his review of the “first-ever drama performed” in the Devaloka (land of the 

gods). Perhaps that explains why, although Bollywood has song and dance as 

an integral part of its storytelling format, the Indian film industry has almost 

never made an out-and-out musical like Hollywood does, featuring characters 

singing through the entire narrative.

21 

Lights, Camera, Music 

The Journey of the Bollywood Film Song 

If music be the food of love, play on,” the Bard has written. Music is the soul 

of Bollywood, and it has been playing it well, deliciously nurtured and 

diligently enhanced, ever since sound made its first date with the frames. To 

the uninitiated and the critical, a film song may merely be an extravaganza of 

music and dance. But to most Indian filmmakers and their audiences, it has 

been the window into the heart and the imagination. With every new telling, 

music has often been the source of a film’s most lasting, cherished memory. 

In no other motion picture industry does the release of a film’s songs command 

as much attention, almost like the launch of a Hollywood film’s trailer. It 

is the first peek into a new film and its highlights, and the music launch event 

is treated with a fervor on par with a film’s premiere. Many average films have 

achieved box-office success by the popularity of its songs; conversely, many a 

great film has failed to capture audiences’ attention by not having enough popular 

songs. No wonder the fifth-most important category in Bollywood award 

ceremonies, after Best Film, Director, Actor, and Actress is Music Director. 

Today, as old and new films are uploaded and revisited on YouTube, it is 

often their songs that have stayed in the collective mind of the public. These 

are circulated as odes to fundamental human emotions like joy, friendship, 

love, and loss, or sold as single star- or singer-centric albums or compilations 

bearing such titles as Sad Songs of Mukesh, Haunting Melodies of Lata, Love 

Songs of the 1950s, Patriotic Songs, Romantic Songs of Dev Anand, etc. 

The origin of the Hindi film song and its initial techniques in presentation 

have been sourced to Western traditions, from early Hollywood musicals 

to MTV–style choreography. It is, however, their specific singing styles and 

drama-enhancing lyrics that have been influenced by Indian folk theater and 

classical dance and drama traditions involving the articulation of a sung emotion 

and the context of its situations. 

The Bollywood film song has emerged as a unique global art form, one that 

is comprised of India’s folk, classical, and regional influences as well as those 

of other countries across the globe. It is Bollywood’s interpretation of Gandhi’s 

idea of an all-welcoming yet distinct “Indian identity.” As he famously said,

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“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be 

stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely 

as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” 

The situations for a film song may not have drastically altered over the 

years, but the style of singing, the lyrics, their musical treatment, and the 

nature of their choreography reflect current trends. The following is a finite 

listing of an infinite number of talented lyricists, composers, singers, and 

performers who have shaped the Bollywood film song through the decades. 

1930–1939: the Pioneers 

Ardheshir Irani was the first filmmaker to make a movie that “talked, sang, 

and danced,” with Alam Ara (Ornament of the World) in 1931. In the silent era, 

music was provided by musicians seated in the theater’s foreground, matching 

the moods of the film with their accompaniment, in tandem with the country’s 

performance traditions. This, however, was a luxury afforded by few metrobased 

picture places in India, with the primary instruments being the tabla (a 

hand-drum-like instrument), a harmonium, a flute, and, occasionally, a sitar. 

For nearly thirteen hundred silent films, this was the prevalent film music 

experience for India’s moviegoers. 

The success of Alam Ara made music in film a major draw. RCA Victor— 

known by its trademark, the phrase “His Master’s Voice” with an illustration 

of an attentive dog listening to a gramophone—started operations in India 

in 1902. It was not until 1932, however, that its first musical selections from 

a film—in this case, Madhuri, composed by Pransukh Nayak, were recorded 

and released. So began the era for experimentation and the proliferation 

of indigenous recording studios. Most of the early composers came from a 

classical Hindustani (north Indian) music tradition. Prominent among them 

were: Ustad Jhande Khan, Rafiq Ghaznavi, Master Dinkar, Pankaj Mallick, Rai 

Chand Boral, and Govindrao Tembe. These pioneers established the template 

used by their successors. 

The first star singers—Durga Khote, Pahari Sanyal, Naseem Banu, 

Jaddanbai, and Rajkumari—emerged. Jaddanbai, India’s first film singer, also 

produced films and composed music for them. But the era’s greatest singeractor 

was Kundan Lal Saigal, who made his debut in Mohabbat Ke Aansoo 

(Tears of Love, 1932). Within two years following the release of his songs from 

the tragic romance Devdas (1935), Saigal became a sensation, turning out one 

chartbuster after another, bearing such titles as “Balam aaye baso” (“Reside in 

my mind, O dear,” from Devdas, 1935); “Ek bangla bane nyaara” (“A home beautiful 

may get built,” from President, 1937); and “Babul mora . . .” (“O, father dear, 

my home keeps drifting away” from Street Singer, 1938). Saigal’s deep baritone


229 

Indian cinema’s first star, singer-actor Kundan Lal Saigal (right), with singer-actress Kanan 

Devi, in Street Singer. 


added a sense of timelessness to these melancholic melodies, inspiring many 

clones of his singing style in the process. But there was, and will always 

remain, only one K. L. Saigal—Indian cinema’s first superstar-singer! 

1940–1949: First Game-Changers 

This was the period that created the “leitmotif-to-be,” the template for a threestanza 

Hindi film song. As playback music acquired technical finesse, two 

distinct categories of film stars began to emerge: 1) a photogenic actor or 

actress who lip-syncs to a song onscreen; and 2) the playback singer in the 

background who sings those melodies offscreen. If celluloid gave birth to 

acting stars, then record labels and radio broadcasts made stars out of the 

playback singers, with their faces appearing on countless sheet-music covers. 

The 1940s marked the Golden Age of Bollywood, during which it introduced 

some of the greatest names in playback singing and music making: Mukesh 

(Nirdosh, Innocent, 1941); Manna Dey (Tamanna, Wish, 1942); Mohammed Rafi 

(Pehle Aap, You First, 1944); Hemant Kumar (Iraada, Intention, 1944); Kishore

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Kumar (Ziddi, Adamant, 1948); Suraiya (Nayi Duniya, New World, 1942); 

Shamshad Begum (Khazanchi, The Cashier, 1941); and Geeta Dutt (Bhakta 

Prahlad, Devotee Proahlad, 1946). 

But the most sensational discovery of the decade, the one who would 

change the style of female playback singing forever, was Lata Mangeshkar. 

Though she had started by imitating the singing style of the reigning heavyvoiced 

female singer-actress Noor Jahan, and her more successful contemporaries—including 

Mubarak Begum and Shamshad Begum—she soon developed 

her own style, one which seemed to speak directly to a new generation. 

Lata’s voice fit like the proverbial glove, its effervescence evocatively articulating 

the leading heroines of the time—Nargis, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, 

Geeta Bali, and Nalini Jaywant. Lata’s debut song, a bhajan (a devotional) in 

the thumri (a light romantic form of classical raga-based singing) style, “Pauu 

lagi kar jori re . . .” (“Offering prayer at your feet”) for the film Aapki Sewa Mein 

(In Your Service, 1947), was conducted by Datta Davejekar. Only two years 

later, with her first hit song, “Aayega aane wala” (“The awaited one will come) 

from Mahal (Palace, 1949), and her first blockbuster song, “Hawa mein udta 

jaye” (“In the wind flies”), from Barsaat (Rains, 1949), as the voice of two star 

actresses-to-be—Madhubala and Nargis, respectively—that the Lata reign was 

Between recordings: Lata Mangeshkar (extreme right) with music composer R. D. Burman (left) and 

superstar Rajesh Khanna. 



231 

distinguished by the number of heroines who insisted that only she sing the 

song to which they would lip-sync. 

The other great debut of the decade was of the music-directing duo of 

Shankar and Jaikishan, who went on to become the resident musicians of 

Bollywood’s RK Studios. They shot to fame with their score for Barsaat (1949), 

introducing a new flavor to the sound of the 1950s. Class took a backseat to 

melody, as the complex renditions of yore gave way to simpler, more memorable 

tunes. Lyrics flowed seamlessly, creating a unique identity for the film 

song, into which flowed all genres of popular music. (Shankar-Jaikishan’s 

populist music-making template is still followed today.) Simultaneously, 

an unending debate was triggered concerning the extent to which a mix 

between traditional raga-based songs and populist fusion–based melodies 

should be permitted. While Shankar-Jaikishen were becoming the “Fathers of 

Contemporary Bollywood Film Music,” the “Emperor of Classical Hindi Film 

Music,” composer Naushad Ali, was emerging from the shadows of his mentor, 

Ustad Jhande Khan. 

1950–1959: the Golden Age 

This was a momentous time in the history of Bollywood, when melody 

reigned supreme, contributing significantly to the most memorable decade of 

India’s cinematic storytelling—the 1950s. The euphoria of independence was 

reflected by a burst of patriotic songs, pioneered by poet-lyricist Pradeep in 

Jagriti (Awakening, 1954). These include the reflective Hum laye hain (“We have 

brought the boat through a sea of turbulence”), the celebratory Aao bachchon 

(“Come, kids, let’s see the diversity of India”), and Bollywood’s first personal 

tribute to the “ Father of the Nation,” Mahatma Gandhi, and his message of 

non-violence De di hume azadi. 

What a miracle you achieved O saint of the Sabarmati, 

bringing freedom to us, 

without weapon or war! 

Later disillusionment with the ruling Indian National Congress party and 

its “part-capitalist, part-socialist” politics inspired such leftist poet-lyricists as 

Sahir Ludhianvi (Pyassa, Thirsty, 1957) to critique the problems of a developing 

nation and the failure of the freedom dream towards the end of the fifties. 

The 1950s heralded the arrival of such musically inclined actors and directors 

as V. Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Guru Dutt, Subodh Mukherji, 

and Raj Khosla. They encouraged the composers working on their films 

to use combinations of fifty or sixty instruments, including those foreign 

to the Indian classical tradition. Audiences responded enthusiastically to

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these new sounds, which fused regional folk with Western classical, light 

local melodies with catchy strums from Hollywood musicals. To the Western 

ear, this new hybrid sounded Indian; to Indian classicists and purists, it was 

clearly Western-inspired. The influx of composer-filmmaker-actor combinations 

became the inevitable outcome to brand film music around a star composer’s 

personality or a studio’s dominant film genre. The strongest team was 

comprised of actor-director Raj Kapoor, composer Shankar Jaikishan, singer 

Mukesh, and lyricists Hasrat Jaipuri and Shailendra. Dilip Kumar was associated 

with composer Naushad, lyricist Shakeel Badauni, and singer Mohammed 

Rafi. Dev Anand was associated with composer S. D. Burman, who used the 

voices of Kishor Kumar and Rafi. 

Most heroines however, insisted on Lata Mangeshkar singing for them—it 

was even included as a clause in their contracts! 

1960–1969: The Consolidation of Melody 

Further honing the “hybrid” experiments of the 1950s, film music in the subsequent 

decade both soared and sizzled. Composers began combining Indian 

classical music with American jazz, pop, rock ’n’ roll, and Latin-American 

rhythms. Increased use of Western instruments—trumpets, saxophones, harmonicas, 

drums, guitars, and synthesizers—changed the sound of Indian film 

music. From the classical and the semi-classical to Rabindranath Tagore’s 

distinct, stylized music, folk to Western, including compositions from the 

likes of Beethoven, Mozart, and Hollywood musicals—the experimental merging 

of diverse music influences from the prior decade emerged into a finely 

tuned melodic art form. Romance was the dominant genre, and good music 

reached its zenith. Broadly, the great love stories were divided into two distinct 

categories: the costume-dramas (including Muslim Socials) and and simple 

modern romances. Such films as Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal, 1960), 

Mere Mehboob (My Love, 1963), and Taj Mahal (1963) from the costume-drama 

category featured a riot of color, expansive sets, legendary actors, and soulful 

melodies. Kashmir Ki Kali (The Girl from Kashmir, 1964), Jab Jab Phool Khile 

(1965), Aradhana (Devotion, 1969), An Evening in Paris (1967), and Love in Tokyo 

(1966)—all were breezy, simple romances, shot in beautiful locales across India 

and the world. 

The old order changed, yielding a place for the new. Shankar Jaikishan left, 

making room for Laxmikant and Pyarelal, Kalyanji and Anandji, and R. D. 

Burman. Though competing constantly at the box office and over the audio 

waves for popularity, these five leading composers remained fast friends, often 

contributing to the improvement of one another’s compositions. For instance, 

when R. D. Burman played the mouth organ in Laxmikant Pyarelal’s songs for


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their first hit film music album, Dosti (Friendship, 1964), the latter arranged the 

music for Burman’s debut film, Chote Nawab (Younger Aristocrat, 1961). 

Toward the end of the decade, Kishore Kumar came out of his self-imposed 

exile, singing exclusively for actor Dev Anand, to lend his voice to the new 

sensation, Rajesh Khanna, in S. D. Burman’s Aradhana (Devotion, 1969). There 

would be no looking back. With two chartbusting solos—”Mere sapnon ki rani” 

(“The queen of my dreams”), “Roop tera mastana” (“Your intoxicating beauty”) 

and a duet with Lata Mangeshkar, “Kora kagaz” (“My life is a blank paper”)— 

Kumar swept away all the competition. Kishore became the preferred voice 

of Bollywood’s first superstar, Rajesh Khanna, and his successor megastar, 

Amitabh Bachchan, to emerge as the definitive hero’s voice from 1970 onwards, 

with his songs still played and performed, two decades since his demise. 

The decade also saw the emergence of prolific film songwriter Anand 

Bakishi, a lyricist of poetic excellence who used simple wording in his compositions. 

He remained the lyricist for four generations of composers and at the 

pinnacle of his craft until his death in 2002. 

1970–1979: Going Stereophonic 

Stereo arrived, and the sound quality improved. Two new composers—Bappi 

Lahiri with Chalte Chalte (Passing By, 1976), and Rajesh Roshan with Julie 

(1975)—brought in a fresh mix of sound and instrumentation into their movie 

melodies. But an old-timer, Ghulam Mohammad, triumphed in the traditional 

style of music making, providing Lata Mangeshkar, the celebrated “Voice of 

India,” with one of her all-time great soundtracks, from the musical courtesan 

drama, Pakeezah (The Pure One, 1972). The film’s nostalgic songs, celebrating 

the best of Muslim aristocracy and the Islamicate influence on music and 

poetry, have rarely been matched. 

This was also was the decade of the “Angry Young Man” protest films, 

with Amitabh Bachchan as the lead in these revenge-based sagas. As violence 

and angst took precedence, romance and melody, predictably, took a backseat. 

Songs became more functional than dreamy, their frequency in a film 

plummeting from ten to eight, to two (Deewar, The Wall, 1975) or, at times, 

none (e.g., Ankur, The Seedling, 1974). But melody survived elsewhere, as in the 

multi-genre masala films of Manmohan Desai (e.g., Amar Akbar Anthony 1977) 

and Prakash Mehra. And when the “intense” Bachchan shifted moods to do 

an occasional romance, the results included the “intensely romantic” Kabhie 

Kabhie (Sometimes, Sometimes, 1976) and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (Conqueror of 

Destiny, 1978). 

Although the Raj Kapoor–Shankar Jaikishan partnership was dissolved, 

the Raj Kapoor–Laxmikant Pyarelal pairing yielded some of Bollywood’s

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Bollywood FAQ 

best-remembered soundtracks from the seventies, including Bobby (1973). 

But the box-office king, indisputedly, was the young maestro R. D. Burman. 

Nicknamed Pancham, or the fifth tune, he was the best of the decade, with 

chartbusting scores in every genre of film music—the hippie anthem Hare 

Rama Hare Krishna (1971), to the classically based mature love story Amar 

Prem (Eternal Love, 1972), and the precursor to disco rebel romance Hum Kisi 

Se Kum Nahin (We Are Not Less Than Anyone, 1977). R D.’s father, S. D. Burman, 

who kept traditional tunes alive, became the only composer from the golden 

age to provide an award-winning score to Abhimaan (Ego, 1973), a musical love 

story about a singing couple torn apart by the husband’s jealousy of his moretalented 

wife. The senior Burman even composed a song from his deathbed, 

the vivacious “Maine kaha phoolon se . . .” (“I asked the flowers to smile and 

they broke into a full-hearted laugh”) from Mili (1975), a motivational film 

about a spirited cancer victim. 

1980–1989: Disco Time! 

This was the era when cacophony took over melody, and the masters gave 

way to the clones. Rajesh Roshan and Laxmikant–Pyarelal were still active, 

but Kalyanji–Anandji and the “whiz kid” of experimentations, R. D. Burman, 

had started facing money problems after a few initial hits. Bappi Lahiri rose 

and consolidated himself as Bollywood’s most popular music composer of the 

decade’s disco beat–themed film music, while starting a sartorial trend, of 

sorts, sporting shiny gold jewelery, also known as bling. The disco tradition— 

with its strident beats, psychedelic lights, fluorescent costumes, and flimsy 

lyrics— found its groundbreaking singers in the Indian-born, England-based 

Biddu Appaiah’s “disco with echo” composition, “Aap jaisa koi” (“Someone like 

you”) in Feroz Khan’s stylish action-caper, Qurbani (Sacrifice, 1980). Its debutant 

singer, Nazia Hassan, became an instant star and the first Pakistan-born, 

international winner of the Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer award. 

Music plagiarism, which had previously been alluded to concerning a song 

or two on a few albums, now singed an entire album for the first time, when 

Laxmikant–Pyarelal’s Filmfare Best Music Award–winning soundtrack for 

Subhash Ghai’s reincarnation drama, Karz (The Debt, 1980), had the opening 

strums of two of its most famous tracks, Ek hasina thi (“There was a beauty”) 

and “Om Shanti Om” directly inspired (read: lifted) from George Benson’s “We 

As Love” and Trinidad Calypso artist Lord Shorty’s “Om Shanti Om,” respectively. 

It revealed the inadequacy of most classically trained composers to live 

up to the “foreign” disco challenge. But disco was no temporary flavor, and 

though melody did take a temporary backseat, recording studios were now 

better equipped, ensuring a higher tonal quality of music.


235 

At the record launch of Dharma Productions’ film Duniya, lead star Dilip Kumar (center) is 

flanked by legendary actor Ashok Kumar (left); junior star Rishi Kapoor (right); producer 

Yash Johar (sixth in line, standing from left); lyricist Javed Akhtar (standing, extreme left); 

Pran (seated, left); and music director R. D. Burman (seated, right). Music launches were once 

grand promotional events in the life of a Hindi film, second only to its premiere. 

 


Bollywood’s two most popular singing stars, Mohammed Rafi and Kishore 

Kumar, passed away in 1980 and 1987, respectively. An unprepared music 

industry took nearly a decade to find even remotely comparable replacements. 

Anwar, Shabbir Kumar, and Mohammed Aziz had brief singing careers as Rafi 

clones, possessing limited appeal, while Abhijeet and Kumar Sanu fiercely 

competed to fill the need for the “Kishore Voice.” Even Kishore Kumar’s elder 

son, Amit Kumar, tried to forge his own career in the romantic songs genre, 

without success. Only towards the end of the decade did two distinct voices 

emerge—Udit Narayan with the blockbuster tragic musical-romance, Qayamat 

Se Qayamat Tak (From Doom to Doom, 1988), and south Indian singer S. P. 

Balasubramanian with Maine Pyar Kiya (I Have Loved, 1989). They became the 

voice of two romantic superstars of the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, 

Udit Narayan for Aamir Khan, and S. P. Balasuramaniam for Salman 

Khan. Among the many artists singing for Shah Rukh Khan, Abhijeet and 

Sonu Nigam came the closest to being associated as his onscreen voice. 

Lata Mangeshkar, after three decades of undisputed rule at the top of her 

profession, found the ground beneath her shaken by clones of merit: Alka 

Yagnik, Sadhana Sargam, and the belligerent Anuradha Paudwal, going all

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Bollywood FAQ 

out in her criticism of the Mangeshkar monopoly. But the real challenge came 

from a closer source—her younger sister, Asha Bhosle, was finally coming 

into her own with a distinct style, evident on the ghazal album of the decade, 

Umrao Jaan (1981). 

Surviving the disco craze, the diametrically opposed genre of slow and 

soothing ghazal singing bloomed, with the first emergence of non-playback 

singing stars, cutting successful signature music albums for the first time since 

the pre-talkies. The “ghazal couple,” Jagjit and Chitra Singh, along with the 

“velvety” Pankaj Udhas, led the melodious challenge. Talat Aziz and Suresh 

Wadkar made their mark singing ghazals in films, but there, too, Jagjit upped 

the quality quotient in middle-cinema’s urban musical classics Arth (Meaning, 

1982) and Saath Saath (Two Together, 1982). 

1990–1999: Music Becomes Big Money 

In the 1990s, music rights and labels were the order of the day. Filmmakers 

and producers had music companies vying with one another, offering big 

money to sell their songs. The top-ranking music companies of the day were 

HMV, Venus, and Tips, but it was an outsider entrant, T-Series, founded by 

audio-cassette entrepreneur Gulshan Kumar in the 1980s, which became the 

record label of the 1990s. Starting with cheap cover versions of HMV originals, 

T-Series hit the big leagues with the unexpected success of its musical film 

Ashiqui (1990), which sold twenty million units, becoming the best-selling 

Bollywood soundtrack of all time. 

Producers, too, started their own music labels, such as Amitabh Bachchan’s 

Big B, and Rajiv Rai’s Trimurti Sound. CDs were fast replacing cassettes, and 

LPs were no longer being produced, as mono was replaced by stereo. With 

money playing an important factor, it became mandatory that an album have 

on it at least one hit song. Melody returned to music, with the top three newgeneration 

superstars—Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Salman Khan— 

each making his mark in romantic-dramas with ample song and dance. 

The technical standards of yore were facing a complete revision. Recording 

studios, with their huge 150-piece orchestras, vanished, and songs were no 

longer recorded in a day. Multi-track recording ensured that songs could be 

recorded piecemeal, and vocal tracks were recorded in sections, and subsequently 

added or deleted. This led to artist substitution, resulting in tracks 

often lacking a spontaneous connection with the situation. Pioneering this 

revolution was a young Music Magician from Madras, A. R. Rahman, who won 

a national award for his very first film Roja (Rose, 1992). Bollywood woke up to 

Rahman’s iconoclastic style, with Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela (Colorful, 1995) 

becoming a box-office success. It reintroduced the sixty-two-year-old Asha


237 

Bhosle as a convincing voice of joy and zest for its young heroine in the songs 

“Yai re” . . . and “Tanha tanha” . . . (“Alone Alone”), leading to her popularity 

with young music composers. 

Rahman’s revolutionary new sound-to-film music combined rhythm and 

melody with ease, sweeping through and dipping in and out of myriad influences, 

from folk, jazz, Arabic strums, and rap, enveloped with an Indian-ness 

that was essentially Rahman. Vishal Bhardwaj, Aadesh Shrivastava, Himesh 

Reshammiya, and Ismail Durbar were the other 1990s composers with a predilection 

for the traditional, while the Rahman template was innovatively 

replicated by Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy, and Vishal–Shekhar. 

Lyrics followed a similar trend of consolidation and innovation. While an 

assembly line approach to the writing of lyrics prevailed, an element of quality 

was retained by still-working veterans as Anand Bakshi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, 

and Javed Akhtar. Poet-director Gulzar also blazed his own trail of songs with 

Hinglish lyrics and uncommon imagery. 

The Roja Makers: music composer A. R. Rahman (left), with director Mani 

Ratnam. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Beyond 2000: The Return of Melody—and Some Noise! 

Kaho Naa . . . Pyar Hai (Say You’re in Love, 2000) melodiously ushered in the 

millennium with a new romantic icon, Hrithik Roshan, riding on yet another 

music-driven romance that brought back the 1970s music composer sensation 

Rajesh Roshan. With romance again the most popular genre, the production 

house of Vishesh Films, helmed by producer Mukesh Bhatt and writer-director, 

Mahesh Bhatt, led a mini-musical revolution with a series of low-budget erotic 

thrillers with melodious songs and provocative titles: Jism (Body, 2003), Murder 

(2004), and Gangster (2006). 

Raga returned in compositions with Bollywood’s twenty-first century 

movie mogul Sanjay Leela Bhansali bringing back a trend of lavishly mounted, 

grand musical-romances in the classic style. Like Raj Kapoor, he has a strong 

music sense, and he is the only new-millennium director (along with Vishal 

Bharadwaj) to compose the music for his own films. Simultaneously, five newage 

auteurs with an ear for good music—Imtiaz Ali, Karan Johar, Farah Khan, 

Farhan Akhtar, and Anurag Basu—ensured that the “music scene” returned 

as an integral narrative element and not just a CD-selling attraction in their 

cinematic vision. New director-composer partnerships emerged—Imtiaz Ali 

with Pritam and A. R. Rahman, Anurag Basu and Pritam, Farah Khan and 

Vishal-Shekhar, and Farhan Akhtar with Shankar, Ehsan, and Loy. The outcome 

has resulted in such contemporary musical classics as Dil Chahta Hai 

(2001), Devdas (2002), Main Hoon Naa (I Am There, 2005), Rockstar (2011), Barfi 

(2012), Aashiqui 2 (Love 2, 2013), and one of the first Bollywood attempts at a 

Hollywood-style musical, director Anurag Basu’s Jagga Jassos (Detective Jagga, 

2017), with music by Pritam. 

New talents surfaced and were encouraged, unlike in past eras where 

camps and coteries proliferated, thus finally bringing to an end the age of 

clones. Singers who made a mark with their distinct voices were Shreya 

Ghoshal and Sunidihi Chauhan, carrying forward the Lata-Asha legacy, with 

the “silken voiced” Arijit Singh emerging as the go-to singer for love songs from 

the 2010s and onward. 

Music-revenue sources changed, with more money being made through 

song downloads than on sales of CDs. As quantity increased, quality took a 

predictable hit, with a “hook line”—or mukhda—being enough to make a hit 

song. Item songs, fusing the beats of East and West, Bhangra Pop, and wedding-ceremony-driven 

group songs, made for some ludicrous lyrics. Words 

were just assembled to rhyme and fit the rhythm of a song irrespective of 

whether they made any sense to a scene or contributed to the narrative. Often, 

a film’s most popular song could be an added extra, playing as the credits 

rolled. Consider the following chartbusting song from Ragini MMS 2 (2014), 

by rapper-singer Honey Singh:


239 

Melody rules again in the new millennium, with Kaho Naa Pyaar 

Hai. 


Chaar botal vodka, 

Kaam mera roz-ka, 

Main rahoon saari raat in the bar, 

Daaru piyoon lagaatar . . . 

(Translation) 

I wanna hangover tonight, 

Four bottles of vodka are my daily dose, 

I stay all night in the bar, 

drinking to the close. 

Many millennial filmmakers also lack the expertise to convincingly integrate 

a song into the narrative, opting instead for dance highlights, shot in the

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Bollywood FAQ 

manner of music videos for promotion gigs and played in the background of 

discos and pubs. With style dominating over soul, similar-sounding, technodriven 

compositions frequently fail to hit their mark, disappearing from the 

charts soon after making their debuts. As music becomes more consumed than 

listened to—whether in jigs, jogs, and even the gym—beats over words have 

become the order of the day. And with that trend, whereby the main attraction 

of a song is its being “catchy,” the quality of lyrics has, naturally, taken a hit. 

But the new millennium, with its digital revolution, has also broadened the 

patron base of the Bollywood music. After wooing listeners around the globe, 

starting with Russia and China in the 1950s and the Middle East in the 1970s, 

Bollywood music entered the playlists of mainstream listeners in the West, 

with A. R. Rahman’s double-Oscar-winning international groove song anthem 

“Jai ho . . .” in Slumdog Millionaire. Since then, Rahman has only added to his 

acclaim with more A-lister international collaborations. 

On the reverse side, international singing sensations have begun doing 

playback in Hindi films. Two popular examples are Kylie Minogue, who performed 

“Chiggy Wiggy” in Blue, 2009, and Senegalese-American R&B singer 

Akon, who sang “Chammak Challo” and “Criminal” in Ra.One (2011). Turning 

increasingly to Western grooves and moves like hip-hop, rap, lounge, rock, 

reggae, blues, and R&B have created new hybrids, like Sufi Rock and Bhangra 

Pop. These have paved the way for Indian and Pakistani rock bands and 

Pakistani singers, including Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and singer-actor Atif Aslam, 

to create some memorable music for the movies. 

Simultaneously, nostalgia is being celebrated through remixes of old songs, 

from the 1940s superstar playback singer Shamshad Begum to 1950s and ’70s 

compositions by Mohammad Rafi and R. D. Burman. In some cases, new films 

have been made featuring titles borrowed from the lyrics of popular old film 

songs, like Aye Dil Hai Mushqil (2016). In Bollywood, a good melody may 

vanish temporarily, but it never dies—as long as the soul of a film continues to 

live and breathe through its songs.

22 

Bollywood’s Greatest 

Music Albums 

There is a beautiful word in the Sanskrit language, prana (breath as a 

life-force). The body is a lifeless piece without the prana; it draws its 

essence and existence from the nature of the prana, the life force and source 

of all joy. In Bollywood, music has always been that prana, or soul. In a predominantly 

oral culture with a predeliction for dramas, songs go a long way 

to not only articulate the unstated, but also to enrich and expand the life of 

a movie memory. The following is a discussion on the finest Bollywood film 

soundtrack albums of all time, where not one or two but all of the songs were 

hits at the time of release. 

Awara (The Vagabond, 1951) 

Music: Shankar Jaikishan; Lyrics: Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri 

Six decades after its making, the film’s title song “Awara hoon” (“I am a vagabond”), 

speaks to Russians, Eastern Europeans, and Chinese citizens, from 

multiple generations. The socialist-leaning drama of the The Vagabond aside, 

its popularity is due to its sing-a-long, simple melodies, including Shamshad 

Begum’s vivacious “Ek do teen aaja mausam hai rangeen” (“One, two, three to a 

wonderful time”), Lata Mangeshkar’s operatic “Ghar aaya mera pardesi” (“My 

wandering love has returned”), and Mukesh’s Awara hoon. 

In Bollywood history, Awara marks the introduction of myriad influences 

and trends that still find an echo—like an East-West fusion experiment 

with music, the longest-ever musical dream sequence in Hindi cinema, Lata 

Mangeshkar’s emergence as the definitive female voice for soulful romantic 

melodies, and a grand signoff to the first begum (grand dame) of female playback 

singing. Shamshad Begum sings the evergreen Ek do teen for a vampish, 

flamboyant, party/bar dancer-singer (a valuable precursor to the item 

song insert of later years), essayed by the cabaret dancing star of the 1950s,

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Bollywood FAQ 

“rubber-girl” Cuckoo Moray. The film established the formidable director-songwriter-composer 

trio of Raj Kapoor–Shailendra–Shankar Jaikishan, respectively, 

while starting a trend for profound yet easily singable grand-fusion 

orchestrations featuring melody and rhyme. The arrival of Awara ushered in a 

new dawn for movie music. 

Baiju Bawra (Crazy Baiju, 1952) 

Music: Naushad; Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni 

Coming a year after the popular melody storm of Awara, with distinct classical 

Hindustani music roots, Baiju Bawra re-asserted the appeal of India’s signature 

music traditions and their subtle, abiding influence with almost each of its 

songs being based on a distinct raga. 

A raga refers to the basic musical modes in Indian classical music that 

express different moods through certain characteristic progressions set to a 

traditional music scale or a pattern of notes. Their variations at the hands of 

master musicians can lead to the creation of new ragas. Each of Baiju Bawra’s 

songs are sourced from a classical Indian raga—e.g., “O duniya ke rakhwale” 

Baiju Bawra, a rare classical rhapsody. 


Bollywood’s Greatest Music Albums 

243 

(“O preserver of the universe”) is in raga Darbari; “Tu Ganga ki mouj” (“You 

are like the flow of the Ganges”) is in raga Bhairavi; Jhoole mein pawan ki 

aayi bahar” (“The spring has come”) is in raga Pilu—thus recreating an ancient 

music experience on a modern film platform. For perhaps the first time, popular 

singing stars (Mohammad Rafi, Lata and Shamshad Begum) are featured 

alongside living legends of classical music (Ustad Amir Khan and Pandit 

D. V. Paluskar) on the same album. Music director Naushad used Ustad Amir 

Khan as a consultant to give Indian film music two of its greatest moments—O 

duniya ke rakhwale (a Hindu prayer song with tremendous emotional impact, 

interestingly composed, written, and sung by three Muslim talents) and a 

music-contest song, “Aaj gaawat man mero” (“Today, my mind sings”) between 

the Mughal court’s greatest legend, Tansen, and neophyte challenger, Baiju, 

that had Amir Khan and Paluskar match their singing talents. The result was 

a critically acclaimed soundtrack that won Naushad the first Filmfare Best 

Music award. 

Pyaasa (The Thirsty, 1957) 

Music: S. D. Burman; Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi 

French film director and critic Olivier Assayas reviewed Pyaasa as “possibly 

one of the most remarkable transpositions of poetry on screen.” This was 

the film that put the lyricist on par with the music director in a film’s musicmaking 

hierarchy. Every song is a standalone poetic statement and a timeless 

commentary on society, its leaders and followers. The lament is universal: 

auteur Guru Dutt created his signature take on the subcontinent’s favorite 

romance inspiration—the doomed lover, Devdas. The leftist poet-writer Sahir 

bested the poet of the masses, Shailendra, to become Bollywood’s greatest poet 

ever, with consistent, inspiring lyrical verses that made Urdu the language 

of impact, for the best in Hindustani cinema. Bitter renunciation had never 

sounded more progressive and attractive than in the song, “Yeh mehlon, yeh 

takhton, yeh taazon ki duniya . . .” 

The world of these palaces, thrones and crowns 

The world of multitudinous enemies of mankind 

The world of money-grubbing mores 

Even if one gains such a world—so what? 

Pyaasa, in retrospect, has been hailed as a compelling articulation of a 

leftist worldview, borne of lament, seeking remedy in violent purgation or 

abandonment, as the above song’s last lines rousingly declare:

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Bollywood FAQ 

Jala do ise, phoonk daalo ye duniya, mere saamne se hataa lo ye 

duniya . . . 

Burn it down, consign this world to the flames 

Remove this world from my being, my consciousness 

It is yours, and yours a world to keep, 

Even if one gains such a world—so what? 

The composer of the music from Pyaasa, S. D. Burman from the royal family 

of Tripura, ensured that its cherished ideals were accessible to the maximum 

number of moviegoers through an eclectic and memorable music palette that 

also features some of the best compositions on sentimental romance (“Hum 

aapki aankhon me,” “In your eyes if my heart resides”), Baul/ folk music (“Aaj 

sajan mohe ang laga lo,” “Make me yours today, my lover”), and a workman’s 

fun song (“Sar jo tera chakraye,” “When your head spins”). The film established 

director Guru Dutt’s wife, Geeta Dutt, as the most versatile playback singer in 

the Hindi film scene. Her career was abruptly cut short by her husband’s suicide 

in 1964. She died in 1972, aged forty-two, of cirrhosis of the liver. 

Madhumati (1958) 

Music: Salil Choudhury; Lyrics: Shailendra 

Between the experimentations with Western music to create popular desi (local 

Indian) fusions, and a spirited renewal of Indian classical music through ragabased 

compositions that drove the two extremes of film music processes in the 

1950s and ’60s, a distinct flavor—folk music—was engaged for a location-specific 

song or two. This was explored and celebrated in full in Salil Choudhury’s 

score for Bimal Roy’s commercially successful, much-feted classic. Growing in 

the backdrop of some momentous mass movements, Choudhury, one of India’s 

most underappreciated musical geniuses, offers a veritable feast of distinctive 

folk melodies. From subtle flute-based hill ballads to vigorous boatmen songs, 

from foot-tapping tribal beats to robust notes of farmers and workers singing 

away their toils—Madhumati has it all, and more. 

There is a little gem from every established Hindi film song category—a 

fun, energetic “Bichua” (“The bite of the scorpion”) or “Jungle mein mor nacha” 

(“None saw the peacock dancing”), a haunting melody “Aaje re pardesi” (“Come 

home, O wanderer”), an evergreen romantic song “Dil tadap tadap ke” (“A pining 

heart’s beat”), a mujra “Hum haal-e-dil sunayenge” (“Let’s discuss some affairs of 

the heart”), and even a travel song, “Suhana safar” (“What a tranquil journey”). 

Madhumati also features an exhaustive list of virtually the entire roster of playback 

singing stars of the 1950s—Mukesh, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi,


245 

Manna Dey, Mubarak Begum, Ghulam Mohammad, Asha Bhosle, and an eerily 

arresting Dwijen Mukherjee—and all on one movie album! 

Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Emperor, 1960) 

Music: Naushad; Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni 

If Baiju Bawra provided evidence of the musical genius of Naushad, the 

Mughal-e-Azam film score established him as an emperor among Indian cinema’s 

music legends. The music traditions of the subcontinent are celebrated 

in melodious achievements in a range of song types and categories—bhajan 

(devotional song), qawwali (chorus), ghazal (romantic poetry), symphony, folk, 

and classical. 

One anecdote about the film’s music concerns Maestro Bade Ghulam 

Ali Khan, who was known for his dislike of the “lower” art forms, including 

motion pictures. In an attempt to dissuade director K. Asif from hiring him for 

a film, he quoted a fee of Rs 25,000 per song, at a time when Lata Mangeshkar 

and Mohammed Rafi (the highest-paid playback singers of the time) were 

charging Rs 300–400 per song. To Khan’s surprise, Asif agreed, and he sang 

two songs, “Prem jogan ban ke” (“Like an ascetic of love”) and “Shubh din 

aayo” (“Blessed times are back”) to become the onscreen voice of the legendary 

medieval Indian singer Tansen (1500–1586). 

A lesser-known (albeit equally intriguing) story has Asif attempting to lure 

music director Naushad with a briefcase full of money to make “memorable 

music” for Mughal-e-Azam. Offended by such an explicit flaunting of money 

over art, Naushad threw the notes out of his window. His wife later acted as 

peacemaker for the two artists. 

Yet another account involves the film’s heroine, Madhubala. Nine out of the 

eleven songs attributed to her were sung by playback star Lata Mangeshkar, 

who led off the tour-de-force courtesan song, “Pyaar kiya to darna kya” (“Why 

fear falling in love?”). To date, Mughal-e-Azam shines like the Kohinoor diamond 

in Lata’s crown. 

Guide (1965) 

Music: S. D. Burman; Lyrics: Shailendra 

The songs from Guide have collectively and individually been featured in 

every major Hindi film music–themed polls in recent years. A spectacular 

dance number featuring a bevy of dancers—”Piya tose naina lage” (“What next

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Bollywood FAQ 

Guide, a “hit” album for all times. 


after my gaze has returned yours, my love”)—celebrating all the major Indian 

festivals with as many region-specific dance and costume changes; a philosophical—”Wahan 

kaun hai tera” (“No one’s waiting for you, O traveler”); the 

eternal lament of a pining lover—”Din dhal jaaye” (“The day still spent, but the 

nights are a torture in your absence”); a moving prayer—”Allah megh de” 

(“Lord, give us rain”), and a memorable example of “freedom on the celluloid”— 

”Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai” (“I want to live again, today”), and more. 

Guide is the rarest of musical gems. It celebrates a rich diversity of Indian 

music sources (from folk to classical); it articulates profound life notes in its 

lyrics; it features grandiose dance numbers (by choreographers Hiralal and 

Sohanlal); and it showcases expressive emoting by its lead actress, Waheeda 

Rehman. In the rich repertoire of music director S. D. Burman, Guide stands 

out as his most regal composition. 

Teesri Manzil (The Third Floor, 1966) 

Music: R. D. Burman; Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri 

After being limited to one or two song experiments in the predominantly ragas 

and folk-tune-based Hindi film scores before Teesri Manzil, fusion came to the


247 

fore with this rocking album by R. D. Burman. Its many experimentations in 

sound choreography have made it one of the most revolutionary soundtracks 

of its time. Three vigorous dance numbers are staged in a Western-style hotel 

set—”Tumen mujhe dekha” (“When you saw me”), “O haseena zulfonwali” (“O 

maiden with the irresistible tresses”), and “Aaja aaja main hoon pyar tera” 

(“Come, come to your love”). Teesri Manzil’s robust western score with a distinct 

Indian flavor ensured that its music director would be a contributor to 

the majority of fusion trends for nearly two more decades. Teesri Manzil is 

the most important talent establisher for playback singer Asha Bhosle, who 

finally got to sing all the songs epitomized by both the vamp and the heroine 

(in a single A-lister film). Singer Mohammad Rafi reaffirmed that whether the 

music is indigenous or Western, he could pull of any challenge with aplomb. 

Indian cinema also introduced its first dancing superstar with a signature 

style, Shammi Kapoor. 

Bobby (1973) 

Music: Laxmikant and Pyarelal; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi, 

Vithalbhai Patel, and Inderjeet Singh Tulsi 

Inflation-adjusted box-office data for the last millennium ranks Bobby as the 

twentieth century’s second-highest all-time box-office earner after Sholay 

(Embers, 1975). It was also Indian cinema’s second-biggest global success since 

Awara, with sixty million–plus viewers in the Soviet Union alone. For just 

another love story, its appeal is in its freshness—fresh voices, youthful energy, 

teenaged leads—and fresh music! Hindi cinema’s most successful director-musician 

team, Raj Kapoor and Shankar Jaikishan, had dissolved their partnership, 

with Kapoor joining forces with newcomers Laxmikant and Pyarelal to give the 

showman his biggest directorial success. With Mujhe kuch kehna hai (“I must 

say something”), “Main shayar to nahin” (“I am not a poet”), “Akhiyon ko rehne 

do” (“Let your eyes be by my eyes only”), and the chart-busting “Hum tum ek 

kamre me band ho” (“What if we are locked in a room, and the keys get lost . . .”), 

Anand Bakshi became the leading songwriter of the 1970s. However, it was the 

unusual-sounding voice of Narendra Chanchal—with his still-relevant, pensive 

plea for humanism and empathy “Beshak Mandir Masjid todo, par pyaar bhara 

dil na todo” (“Break temples and mosques if you wish, but don’t break a heart 

in love; for in it, resides love”), who swept the singing awards for the year. His 

success also helped to popularize the trend of having traditional or folk singers 

articulate the emotions in a film’s most impactful moments.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Aashiqui (Romance, 1990) 

Music: Nadeem Shravan; Lyrics: Sameer 

Nadeem Shravan’s spectacular burst onto the music scene of the 1990s, with 

three hit romantic films—Aashiqui (Romance), Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin (The 

Heart is Forever Restless) and Saajan (My Love)—ensured that its signature 

orchestration remained the most identifiable template of the 1990s. With easily 

hummable melodies like “Jaane jigar jaaneman” (“My darling, my dearest”), 

“Main duniya bhula dunga” (“I will forsake the world in your love”), “Nazar 

ke saamne” (“Before my eyes”), “Dheere dheere se” (“Slowly, steadily, enter my 

life . . .”), female playback singer Anuradha Paudwal, along with Kumar Sanu 

and his clones, became the collective voice of the 1990s in similar-sounding 

songs and situations. Simultaneously, lyricist Sameer’s prolific use of simple 

Urdu words like dil, jigar, nazar (heart, liver, sight) to convey passion greatly 

influenced the articulation of romantic feelings in poetry. Aashiqui’s biggest 

contribution, however, was to bring back a market for soft and simple melodies 

in an increasingly noisy, gimmicky era. 

Bombay (1995) 

Music: A. R. Rahman; Lyrics: Mehboob 

Celebrated by The Guardian as the “1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” 

Bombay has not only inspired many Indian and international cover versions, 

but is that rare film album whose instrumental “theme” piece has been 

officially featured in such scores as Denti (Italy, 2000), Divine Intervention 

(Palestine, 2002), Lord of War (England, 2005) and Miral (England, 2010). 

Rahman made a distinct mark in the Indian film music scene with his debut 

score for Roja (Rose, 1992), the second pan-Indian crossover film made in south 

India since Chandralekha (1948). However, the range of Rahman’s genius is 

on display of the rich-yet-layered melodic score of Bombay. It includes the 

pensively reflective (“Tu hi re,” “You are the one”), the foot-stomping Humma 

humma, an innocent love ballad (“Kehna hi kya,” “What more to say?”), and 

the slightly naughty “Kuhi kuchi rakamma” (“Cute girl Rakamma”). Featuring 

twenty playback singers for his eight-song score, Rahman once again deflected 

the focus from a star playback singer to the composer. He also used the S. D. 

Burmanesque signature of singing the film’s most important song himself, 

thereby articulating its essence or guiding philosophy.

23 

Dancing Stars 

and Melody Czars 

Helen—Her Dance Celebrated Life 

Conservative estimates would indicate that she performed in at least 

a thousand dance numbers. In each of those onscreen songs, she was 

exuberance personified. Her dance moves are better seen than described. 

Helen danced opposite three generations of stars, wooing almost every major 

and minor hero from the 1950s to the early 

1980s, dancing her way through every 

Bollywood genre—socials, costume-dramas, 

action-adventures, and even the mythological. 

Urban thrillers, however, gave her meaty 

roles and unforgettable dance numbers, 

often portraying a libertine without a home. 

A superb dancer of Indian and Western 

forms, Helen was a respected professional 

with an innocent face, a mischievous grin, 

and tremendous elasticity. She was a reference 

for subsequent vamps, including Aruna 

Irani, Bindu, and Kalpana Iyer, just as 

Vyjayanthimala was to be for the dancing 

heroine. Jerry Pinto, the author of Helen: The 

Life and Times of an H-Bomb, writes: 

Helen achieved a kind of immortality 

from the sidelines, which is a much 

greater achievement than the achievements 

of those acknowledged as stars. 

Helen performs a cabaret song in Faraar. 

 


250 

Bollywood FAQ 

Where cinema sought to slot her into a small, well-defined space, she 

simply burst out of those confines. When she was given silly stuff to 

do, she did it with great panache. 

That hint is gloriously conveyed in Helen’s first solo song, the one that 

propelled her into the national limelight, “My Name is Chin Chin Choo,” in 

playback singer Geeta Dutt’s swinging jazz number from Howrah Bridge (1958). 

It wasn’t Bollywood’s first item song, but Helen became its most celebrated 

item dancer, albeit with the consummate, compelling presence of a leading 

star. Item girls normally give a non-stop take of a maximum three-to-five seconds; 

Helen’s were at least thirty seconds long, often stretching across an 

entire song, and with ample close-ups. For instance, of one of her iconic cabaret 

numbers, Piya tu ab to aaja, from Caravan (1971), the critic Pinto writes: 

She was polymorphic and could get into the skin of any character from 

a village belle, to a temptress, or from a Chinese stereotype to a medieval 

princess. Helen was a moral pole in the Hindi cinema universe, 

representing the temptations of an “easy and lust-driven” urban life to 

which the “virgin” hero would be lured. 

Short Takes on a Big Life 

■■ 

■■ 

■■ 

■■ 

■■ 

Mr. John, Baba Khan ya lala Roshandaan (“Mr. John, Baba Khan, or Mr. 

Roshandaan”), in the Nutan–Dev Anand starrer Baarish (Rains, 1957), was 

Helen’s first full cabaret. 

Helen vamped three generations of men, and all from the same family— 

Prithviraj Kapoor (Harishchandra Taramati, 1963), Raj Kapoor (Anari [The 

Innocent One], 1959) and Rishi Kapoor (Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan 

[Blooming Flowers in Heavenly Garden], 1978). Yet, one never felt embarrassed 

to like Helen! 

To stay trim, Helen would skip for half an hour every morning and avoid 

breakfast, unless she required energy for a vigorous dance. Only once in a 

two-month period did she allow herself the luxury of eating Chinese food. 

Helen had quite a lineage—her father was French; her mother, half 

Burmese and half-Spanish; and her great grandfather, a Spanish pirate. 

Helen was conferred with the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 

1998. She also won two Best Supporting Actress Awards: for Gumnam 

(Unnamed, 1965) and Lahu Ke Do Rang (Blood’s Two Colors, 1979).

Dancing Stars and Melody Czars 

251 

Naushad (1919–2006)—He Made Classical Music 

Accessible 

Naushad Ali is the first and the last name in raga-based Indian movie songs. 

He tasted his first musical success with the all-India top grosser Rattan (1944), 

a love story that is remembered today only because of its vivacious love ditties. 

Naushad followed Rattan with thirty-five silver-jubilee hit films, twelve golden 

jubilees, and three diamond-jubilee mega-successes. 

Working with virtually every playback singer, big or small, he is often 

acknowledged as their founding teacher. Eminent classical vocalists like Bade 

Ghulam Ali Khan, D. V. Paluskar, and Amir Khan have sung for him. Just 

being relevant and being requested to make music in a frequently changing, 

fad-based calling like film music is a tremendous accomplishment; being 

in demand for over six decades, from Prem Nagar (City of Love, 1940) to Taj 

Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005), is nothing short of a miracle. Naushad’s 

legacy remains a keen merging of simple rural folk music with ornate and elaborate 

classical forms, resulting in a beautiful balance of poise and grandiosity. 

Classic Film Scores: Andaz (Style, 1949), Baiju Bawra (Crazy Baiju, 1951), Mother 

India (1957), Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal, 1960), Gunga Jumna (Gunga and 

Jumna, 1961). 

Music composer Naushad (right), with producer-director Mehboob Khan. 

 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Voice of India— 

the Mangeshkar 

Sisters 

Lata Mangeshkar, with Dilip Kumar. Author’s collection 

If Helen danced opposite 

three generation of actors, 

Lata Mangeshkar (b. 1929) 

was the preferred voice for 

four generations of heroines. 

The melody of her 

voice is considered a miracle; 

even hard-to-please 

masters of classical singing 

admit that she has never 

sung a false note! 

The only film industry 

singer to be bestowed with 

India’s highest civilian 

honor, the Bharat Ratna 

(Jewel of India), a joke emanating 

from the diplomatic 

circuit of India’s warring 

neighbour Pakistan (at 

the peak of her career) 

was about “them willing 

to let go their claim on the 

thrice fought for north-Indian state of Kashmir, if India agreed to give Lata 

Mangeshkar in exchange.” She even made Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal 

Nehru cry, so moved was he by the pathos in her voice as she sang a public 

tribute to India’s martyrs, “Aye mere watan ke logon” (“Hear my fellow countrymen”). 

And both babies and adults have been lulled to sleep by the sweetness 

of her lullabies. Today, Lata Mangeshkar is no longer just an icon of Indian 

music; she is integral to the staying power of many evergreen songs, songs that 

have become cherished monuments in Bollywood’s musical history. 

Still, questions abound as to whether Lata ruthlessly maintained her 

monopoly, and whether her sister (four years her junior), and the more prolific 

playback singer Asha Bhosle (b. 1933) were more talented. The caliber of her 

voice, however, has always remained beyond doubt and above criticism. 

That question—who is the better singer, Lata and Asha?—was partly 

answered by Lata herself. Asha, she conceded, was the more versatile singer. 

She has, after all, sung every genre in which her Lata-Didi (elder sister) had 

excelled, and the one she had skipped after one song, the cabaret. If Lata was


253 

the voice of the heroine, Asha was 

the voice of the vamp—sensual, 

playful, inviting, husky, experimental, 

unique. But it was while 

singing for the vamp’s classical 

counterpart, the libertine courtesan 

patronized by the elite, that 

Asha shot to fame with Umrao Jaan 

(Courtesan Umrao, 1981), a film 

soundtrack for which she received 

her first Best Female Playback 

Singer National Award. 

Lata had achieved her courtesan 

genre pinnacle with the 

“authentic” Pakeezah (The Pure One, 

1972), exactly a decade earlier. A 

decade was indeed the amount 

of time needed by Asha to come 

within striking distance of Lata’s 

reputation as India’s greatest post- 

Independence female playback 

singer. Lata had always been given 

the best compositions in the films 

they sang in together; even Asha’s 

husband, R. D. Burman, gave his 

complex and classical “tough” 

songs to Lata, while reserving the 

girlish, breezy love notes for Asha. 

Asha Bhosle, with filmmaker Yash Chopra. 

 


Following the success of Umrao Jaan, Asha began to be considered for the best 

compositions of the best music directors. By the end of the 1980s, she had 

finally come out from under her sister’s shadow. She matched vocal to vocal, 

talent to verve, in one of the most memorable Lata-Asha duets, “Man kyun 

behka” (“Why did my mind sway?”) in Utsav (Festival, 1984). Never shying 

away from a challenge, Asha made her acting debut at the age of eighty, in Mai 

(Mother), in 2013. 

The diverse trajectories of Lata and Asha’s lives—one linear, the other circular—are 

a reflection of their characters. While Lata has remained a spinster, 

singularly dedicated to the honing of her talents and career, Asha has survived 

oscillating career fortunes, two marriages, a divorce, and her daughter’s suicide. 

Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle remain Indian cinema’s only two playback 

singers to be honored with its highest honor for a lifetime’s contribution 

to the film industry, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Lata won it in 1989; Asha

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Bollywood FAQ 

did so a decade later, in 2000. Hopefully, the wins have put to bed the longtime 

debate of who is the better singer. 

Bhagwan Dada (1913–2002)—the Street Dancer 

Film lore fondly tells a story about how once, when he fell short of trained 

dancers for a group dance sequence in his maiden social drama Albela (The 

Unique One, 1951), Bhagwan Dada hired stunt actors as chorus dancers for a 

foot-tapping number, “Shola jo bhadke” (“The burst of the talented”), which 

he personally choreographed. The song was an instant success, and remains 

so, six decades later. It was also the highlight of a 2016 film depicting the 

making of Albela. Having entered the film industry during the silent era, Dada 

made his mark as an actor in the stunt films of the 1930s. From 1938 to 1949, 

he directed a string of popular, low-budget action films in which he usually 

played a naive simpleton. At the peak of his career, he owned and lived in a 

twenty-five-room sea-facing bungalow on Bombay’s Sunset Boulevard, Juhu, 

and owned a fleet of seven cars (one for each day of the week). At the base 

of his reputation as Bollywood’s first comic star was his natural talent for 

freestyle dancing. His influence lives on. Two superstars who seem the most 

inspired by Dada are Shammi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan. 

Kishore Kumar (1929–1987)—the Voice of Romance 

Kishore Kumar was an actor, director, music composer, singer, lyricist, producer, 

and screenwriter. He also was a yodeler, a prankster, a madcap, and an 

unpredictable talent. And yet, filmmakers and music directors virtually lined 

up at his door and worked with him on his idiosyncratic terms because his was 

a talent nonpareil—he was also loved and respected by the masses. Untrained 

in any classical school, the “naturally gifted” singer became the voice of three 

of Bollywood’s superstars from three generations—style icon and eternal 

romantic Dev Anand (1960s–1970s), the phenomenon Rajesh Khanna 

(1970s–1980s), and the megastar Amitabh Bachchan (1970s–1980s). Traversing 

the entire emotional spectrum—from immense joy to uninhibited sorrow, 

youthful rebellion to pensive reflections—Kishore introduced the zest of yodeling 

to playback singing. He is best remembered, however, for lending his voice 

to some of Bollywood’s most passionate and inspiring romantic songs. Among 

a long line of handsome actors, it was the very ordinary-looking Kishore 

Kumar who married the most beautiful actress ever to grace the Indian screen, 

Bollywood’s Monroe, Madhubala. Three decades after his death, Kishore still


255 

Kishore Kumar and Madhubala in Chalti Ka Nam Gadi. 


holds the record for the most Best Male Playback Singer Filmfare Awards 

(eight wins) from a still-unbroken record of twenty-seven nominations. 

Dev Anand (1923–2011)—Swinging on an Elixir 

Called Life 

Style icon, hero, prolific filmmaker, and Bollywood’s evergreen romantic, Dev 

Anand was a veritable fountain of energy and enthusiasm, music and rhythm—a 

human embodiment of “bliss” unlimited, aptly personifying by his surname, 

Anand! The whimsical playback singing legend Kishore Kumar had refused to 

use his “youthful” voice for no one but the handsome Anand for the first two 

decades of his career. And yet, the mature, silken-voiced Mohammad Rafi also 

sounded appropriate when singing for the stylish star. No actor has romanced 

the Hindi film heroine with as much grace and class, for as many years; it isn’t 

just a coincidence that his repertoire features the most-loved romantic songs to 

be picturized on a Hindi film hero. In one of his last interviews, Dev Anand said, 

“My greatest strength is that someone, somewhere, at some time in the world, is 

either talking or thinking about me—and that’s one hell of a feeling!” 

Even at the time of his passing, at eighty-eight, in London, he was thinking 

about making a film. At a time when all his contemporaries were retired, forgotten, 

or gone, he was carrying on, celebrating life—“blowing every worry

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Bollywood FAQ 

Dev Anand essays a double role in Hum Dono. 


into a mist of smoke,” like a line from his hit film song “Main zindagi ka saath” 

from Hum Dono (We Both, 1961). Dev Anand faithfully moved along, wherever 

life took him, making and believing in his films, even if, towards the end, they 

were reduced to poor shadows of his past glories. 

To his naysayers, he said, “It always happens with age that your body 

becomes feeble, but if your mind is sharp, you can go on making films because 

filmmaking is all about mind and brains. As long as I live, I will keep making 

films for you and for myself, for my inner sustenance and satisfaction. I’m 

floating, I’m swaying, I’m dancing in my own mind . . .” 

The USP of his production banner, Navketan Films, a premier production 

house of Bollywood’s golden age, had always been its melodious music, regardless 

of the genre—thriller, romance, social-drama, comedy, or noir—as was the 

case of its first hit film, Baazi (The Bet, 1951). Baazi marked the debut of another 

auteur with a fine sense for evoking onscreen poetry, Guru Dutt. But the partnership 

that made the best classics at Navketan involved actor-producer Dev, 

his younger brother and director Vijay Anand, and composer S. D. Brman. The 

trio’s peak was reached with the musical-drama Guide (1965), which remains 

at the top in every list of “All-Time Great Bollywood Soundtracks.” Not surprisingly, 

Anand’s most memorable films co-starred three of Bollywood’s finest 

classically trained dancer-actresses—Vyjayanthimala, Waheeda Rehman, and 

Hema Malini—giving them some of their most unforgettable dance songs. 

Anand matched their mettle with a naturally choreographed rhythm of simple, 

sideways-swaying prances with a nervous “head nod” that went on to become 

his signature move. It was spontaneous, easy to do, and came at a time when 

vigorous hip-and-head shakes were trendy.


257 

According to Dev: “When I was cast in a film for the first time, I was very nervous 

and a bit stupid, too. I was new and had never studied acting, so whatever 

I did was on the spur. I was just being myself, but as I grew, I realised that the 

audience had taken a liking to me and my style. . . . One cannot define stardom.” 

If Dilip Kumar was the actor, and Raj Kapoor the filmmaker, then Dev 

Anand was the style icon and romantic star. Fans unable to get a darshan 

(sighting) in his heyday were known to have plucked leaves from his verdant 

Mumbai villa as mementos, hopefully the ones touched by the legend. 

The legend who took Frank Capra for a swim in the nude at Mumbai’s Juhu 

beach, who often spoke long-distance with Shirley MacLaine on the soulsearching 

wisdom from the East, who had discussed Limelight with Charlie 

Chaplin at his villa in Switzerland, who chatted cinema with Vittorio De Sica 

in Rome, who managed to secure Nobel prize winner Pearl S. Buck to script 

his Hollywood debut (the English version of Guide), who knew personally the 

acclaimed writer W. Somerset Maugham, and whose last memorably acted film 

was Love at Times Square (2003)—Dev Anand was a truly international man, 

Indian cinema’s ideal crossover story that never happened, a Hollywood star 

born in Bollywood. 

Must Watch Musicals: CID (1956), Kala Pani (1958), Kala Bazar (Black Market, 

1960), Hum Dono (We Both, 1961), Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967), Johny Mera 

Naam (My Name is Johny, 1970), Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971). 

Vyjayanthimala (b. 1936)—Born to Dance 

She had danced before the pope at the Vatican when she was only six years 

old. A year after her Bollywood debut, she revealed in an interview for Filmfare 

magazine that her greatest ambition was to “tour and dance in the great cities 

of the world.” She then added: “Dancing is my passion.” She walked out at the 

peak of her career, after playing a legendary court dancer from 500 B. C., in 

the historical dance-drama Amrapali (1966). Her pure yet intricate numbers 

in the film elicit astonishment and awe, even today. Five decades later, think 

Vyjayanthimala, and the first epithet that comes to mind is “legendary dancer,” 

She was also a capable actress, winning three Filmfare Best Actress awards, 

appearing in memorable films opposite the biggest male stars of the 1950s— 

Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, and Raj Kapoor. 

Her debut Hindi film was Bahar (The Spring, 1951). The only formal training 

available to its fifteen-year-old debutant was an early education in the intricate 

and exquisite Indian classical dance form of Bharat Natyam. But when challenged, 

she did “rock ’n’ roll” to Western beats with equal aplomb, as evidenced 

in the cabaret-inspired “Main kya karun” (“Woe my luck for being stuck to 

an old man”) in Sangam (Confluence, 1964). Like a refreshing, unpredictable

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Bollywood FAQ 

spring breeze, she redefined the level of talent needed for Bollywood heroines. 

To achieve this, it has become essential that one train in a classical Indian 

dance form. All the leading ladies who went on to rule the Bollywood box 

office in subsequent decades—Hema Malini (1970s), Sridevi (1980s), Madhuri 

Dixit (1990s), Aishwarya Rai (2000s), and Deepika Padukone (2010s)—did 

indeed train in one or more classical Indian dance forms like Bharat Natyam 

(originating in south India), Kathak (north India), and Odissi (eastern India). 

Vyjayanthimala quit her acting career two decades after her debut; in that 

time she had won four Filmfare Best Actress awards, although she refused the 

one for which she was named Best Supporting Actess: Devdas (1955). She stated 

that her character, Chandramukhi, a courtesan, was equivalent to that of the 

lead, not a supporting role. Following her retirement from films, she became 

an elected member of the Indian Parliament. 

Must Match Movies: Nagin (Snake Woman, 1954), Madhumati (1958), Gunga 

Jumna (Gunga and Jumna, 1961), Jewel Thief (1967), Amrapali (1966), Prince (1969). 

The King and Prince of Experimentation 

S. D. Burman (1906–1975) hailed from a royal family whose passion for music 

became a profession. In the process, his rule was extended over millions of 

hearts beyond his tiny northeastern Indian state of Tripura. He was one of the 

first music directors who also sang in his films, usually a meaningful song in 

a sage-like voice that conveyed the essence, the premise, or the message of a 

film. His was the voice of a bard, a sagacious observer, who had seen life in all 

its shades. These songs established the mood of a film, as in the opening song 

of Guide (1965) with Burman’s “Wahan kaun hai tera” (“Who’s there, O traveller, 

for whom you undertake thy journey?”); the song might state the unstated 

emotional turbulence of a protagonist, as in Bandini’s Imprisoned (1963): “Mere 

saajan hai us paar” (“My lover is yonder”). An entire industry protested when 

he was “ignored” for the Filmfare Best Music Director award for his work on 

Guide. The film’s songs are consistently included in every listing of “All-Time 

Great Bollywood Songs.” But, undoubtedly, his greatest creation and gift was 

his no-less talented son R. D. Burman (1939–1994). 

If S. D.’s music was about distilling the folk traditions of Bengal (especially 

the Bhatiali tradition that depicts mood music with frequent philosophical contemplations), 

the legacy of R. D. Burman, the most revered and listened-to twentieth 

century music director, is in the effortlessness of his fusion of the East and 

the West. He also created new sounds from the most unexpected “instruments,” 

like empty beer bottles, spoons in glasses, or a deep-throated gargle. 

For most of his career, from 1961 to 1994, R. D. was the rebel prince of 

film music. Refusing to limit himself to traditional Indian instruments, he


259 

utilized the electronic synthesizer. Perhaps because of this, he was unfairly 

accused of being “too Western,” as well as a plagiarizer. His first chartbusting 

film music album, Teesri Manzil (Third Floor, 1966) shattered every convention 

that composers and listeners had revered until then. He set new benchmarks 

in the musical-thriller genre, with a background sound unparalleled in its 

novelty and energy. He next gave the hippie generation their anthem of the 

1970s, “Dum maro dum” (“Take a drag, dear”) in Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare 

Krishna (Hail Rama, Hail Krishna, 1971). He was also the music director of 

Sholay (Embers, 1975), a curry western. His classical and “more Indian” creations 

in Amar Prem (Eternal Love, 1971), Ghar (Home, 1978), Sunny (1984) and 

1942—A Love Story (1994), made even his harshest critics admit to his skill at 

understanding and composing all kinds of music. 

Must-Listen Music Albums 

■■ 

S. D. Burman—Pyaasa (Thirsty, 1957), Jewel Thief (1967), Guide (1965), 

Aradhana (Devotion, 1969), Abhimaan (Ego, 1973) 

■■ 

R. D. Burman—Teesri Manzil (Third Floor, 1966), Hare Rama Hare Krishna, 

(Hail Rama, Hail Krishna, 1971), Aandhi (Blizzard, 1975), Masoom (Innocent, 

1983), Ijaazat (Permission, 1987) 

Waheeda Rehman (b. 1938)—She Danced in Beauty 

Her Bollywood debut was in a musical-thriller, CID (1956), wherein she plays 

a moll with shifting morals, who also has some funny takes on dancing to 

lost-love songs, such as “Kahin pe nigahen” (“Looks askance”). Her crowning 

achievement was in Guide (1965), in which she is a stifled married woman 

who leaves her husband to pursue a career in dance. The film has some of 

Bollywood’s most beautifully choreographed sequences, including one in 

which Waheeda performs an intense snake-dance, a pure (and exceedingly 

rare) celebration of form without music. Her latest film, The Song of Scorpions 

(2017) has her as a tribal woman posing as a scorpion singer, bearer of a rare 

talent, who counters the poison of a scorpion bite through her singing. 

Amitabh Bachchan credits Waheeda Rehman as the “face of the most beautiful 

close-up seen on the Indian screen” in the songs of Pyaasa (The Thirsty, 

1957), which has her play a goodhearted streetwalker. In doing so, she lent 

spectacular shades of gray to the beauty of black and white. She has played a 

classical dancer, a professional seductress, a courtesan, an alcoholic socialite, 

and a girl experiencing and expressing the throb of love through her carefree 

dancing. Each of these interpretations has its own distinct approach. Like 

her talented contemporaries of the 1950s, she can express deep reserves of 

joy and sorrow, bypassing mere words when they fail to describe the churning 

beneath the surface. Born to liberal Muslim parents who encouraged her

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Bollywood FAQ 

to learn the Hindu dance form, she made her debut in a regional-language 

cinema after being discovered by a south Indian producer at a public dance 

performance before the last governor-general of India, C. Rajagopalachari. 

Her Bollywood debut came after another chance discovery, this one involving 

her first hit dance number in a Telegu film, Rojulu Marayi (Days Have Been 

Changed, 1955), by auteur Guru Dutt. She was the immediate successor of pioneer 

south-Indian Vyjayanthimala’s legacy. A luminous and intelligent actress 

and dancer, Waheeda Rehman is living proof that no better training exists for 

an Indian heroine than a strong grounding in classical dance. 

Must-Watch Dances: Pyaasa (The Thirsty, 1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers, 

1959), Mujhe Jeene Do (I Want to Live, 1964), Guide (1965), Neel Kamal (The Blue 

Lotus, 1968). 

Shammi Kapoor—the First Rock Star (1931–2011) 

His films were never promoted as serious, thought-provoking, or exercises in 

great acting. They were simply entertaining. 

Shammi, or Shamsher Raj Kapoor, the man who could have been film 

industry’s original SRK, was a superstar in his own right. In film after film, he 

put on display the most disparate range of protagonists, from a Prince (1969) 

to a Junglee (Wild One, 1961), from a Professor (1962) to Janwar (Inhuman, 1965), 

from Latt Saheb (Governor, 1967) to Bluffmaster (1963). Shammi Kapoor entertained 

all with the joie de vivre his lively presence guaranteed. They were all 

boy-meets-girl love stories, where the duo braved parental or class opposition 

to take the story to its predictable happy ending. The only difference in the 

films was in their varied and hummable music scores, as abundantly added to 

Hindi cinema’s list of melodious love songs, sung by Mohammad Rafi (as the 

voice of Shammi Kapoor, always). Wearing weird outfits, like his toga dress 

stitched from a bed sheet with a towel as a hood in “Tumse accha kaun hai . . .” 

(“Bet who’s better than you”), screaming crazy cacophonies (“Yahoo!, suku 

suku, ho la la la . . .”), or jumping, making silly faces, and performing some 

truly uninhibited gyrations. Shammi Kapoor’s every onscreen dance was a 

master class in free-style choreography. 

Shammi’s films were never meant to be cinematic works of art, although 

all of his thrillers were stylish. So, aside from Brahmachari (Bachelor, 1968, for 

which he bagged his only Filmfare Best Actor Award) or a Teesri Manzil (Third 

Floor, 1966), Shammi’s films are best remembered for their energy and robust 

melodies. He would not be offered a straight acting part until Prem Rog (Love 

Sick, 1982), when he was in his fifties. 

But then, some entertainers are destined to be remembered as actors, and 

some, only as stars!


261 

Shammi Kapoor’s Top-Five Dance Numbers 

■ ■ “Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe” (“Let people call me wild,” Junglee, 1961): 

Yaaaahooooooooooo! Need we say more? 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

■ ■ 

“Baar baar dekho” (“Savour again and again the sight of my beloved,” China 

Town, 1962): Its slow swings, laissez-faire attitude and playboy tease played 

a major role in earning Shammi the title of the Indian Elvis Presley. He 

also became the first Indian hero to be labeled a sex symbol. 

“Haseena zulfonwali” (“O beauty of the tresses,” Teesri Manzil, 1966): Easily 

one of the best-choreographed cabarets in Hindi cinema, with the hero 

and the vamp matching steps to a riotous frenzy amid multiple set and 

costume changes. And Shammi’s rock star character creating new beats 

with spoons and empty glasses—unique and irresistible! 

“Badan pe sitare lapete huye” (“Wrapped with stars on your body, my love,” 

Prince, 1969): Casual rock ’n’ roll meets classy ballroom dancing—another 

ace in Shammi’s reputation as Bollywood’s undisputed master of Western 

dance. Those cutting movements with hands became a rage soon after. 

“Muqabla humse na karo” (“Don’t challenge me to a dance bout,” Prince, 

1969): Shammi Kapoor matches steps (and how!) in his own natural, 

unchoreographed style with two of Bollywood’s greatest dancers, 

Vyjayanthimala and Helen. 

Mohammed Rafi—a Divine Melody (1924–1980) 

Besides Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi is perhaps the only other male playback 

singer from Bollywood’s golden age whose songs are still being played. 

In Mohammed Rafi, My Abba—a Memoir. Rafi’s daughter-in-law Yasmin Khalid 

Rafi recalls how Shammi Kapoor, would tell him, “I will act the way you are 

singing.” It was Rafi, again, who played a major role in revealing a soulful 

performer beneath that a care-a-damn dancer persona of Shammi Kapoor in 

some of Bollywood’s hummable, romantic moments like “Deewana hua badal” 

(“The cloud’s gone smitten”), “Ehsaan tera hoga mujh par” (“Your love will be a 

gift”), “Raat ke humsafar thak ke” (“The tired night travelers return home”), and 

that inspiring gem on heartbreak road “Dil ke jharoke mein” (“Resting your 

memory by my heart’s window”). Incidentally, it was Shammi Kapoor’s idea 

that Rafi sing its first verse in one breath. 

Rafi was the voice of every big star from Dilip Kumar to Dev Anand to 

Rajesh Khanna, and even the nemesis of his playback singing career, the “sensational 

and quirky” Kishore Kumar, in some of the latter’s early films as an 

actor, including Shararat (Mischief, 1956) and Ragini (Music, 1958). More importantly, 

for whomever Rafi sang he lent a signature element to his voicing for

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Bollywood FAQ 

Singers Mohammad Rafi and Manna Dey (left to right, behind the mikes) perform live to a composition 

by music director Anandji Virji Shah (extreme left). 


that actor, which would tell a discerning listener just by listening to the actor’s 

specific nuances in his rendering. The joie de vivre in his voice could bring a 

smile to any listener, just as his sad songs pierced deep, in the teenaged angstladen 

songs of Dosti (Friendship, 1964). 

From childhood, Rafi knew that all he wanted in life was to be a singer. He 

came to Bombay in 1942 and lived on railway platforms and on the streets, 

like many strugglers before and after him. Today, he has a street named after 

him in Mumbai’s select suburb of the stars, Pali Hill. His first big break came 

opposite the 1940s singer-actress Noorjehan in Jugnu (Firefly, 1947). Rafi was 

the voice of a young, new actor, one who was going to impact the future of 

Bollywood. Rafi also became the most consistent voice of acting legend Dilip 

Kumar, and that speaks volumes about his caliber, for Kumar chose well. 

Mohammed Rafi will remain unforgettable as long as Bollywood’s golden age 

is remembered!


263 

Men in White : “Jumping Jack” Jeetendra (b. 1942) 

and “Disco King” Mithun Chakraborty (b. 1952) 

Jeetendra and Mithun happen to be two of India’s most prolific actors with 

over two hundred films each to his credit, mostly playing leading roles. But 

while Jeetendra’s acting range has been limited, Mithun has appeared in both 

B-movies and art-house films. However, what’s kept them at the forefront of 

public consciousness is their robust dancing skills. 

To understand this, one need only see Jeetendra—wearing his signature 

white pants and white shoes—in the groundbreaking “Mast baharon ka main 

aashiq” (“I am the lover of the spring of life”) from the thriller Farz (Duty, 1967). 

This was followed by Humjoli (1970) and Caravan (1971), both of which are so 

packed with vigorous jumps and hip shakes that it’s easy to see why he was 

called “Jumping Jack of Bollywood in White.” 

Jeetendra took that imagery to iconic hilarity when, a decade later, he made 

a comeback as a popular hero in social dramas. Wearing a thin moustache and 

his familiar all-white outfit—he performed an energetic, aerobics-style dance 

with a twenty-years-younger, baby-faced Sridevi. These assembly-line reproductions 

of south Indian family 

dramas and love triangle tangles 

became a temporary rage in the 

early 1980s, before a much 

younger Mithun Chankraborty 

turned the focus towards his 

“Disco with Desi” fusion-style 

dancing that became an instant 

hit. 

Mithun’s role in the 1982 

blockbuster Disco Dancer became 

a surprise “rage in Russia,” making 

him the second-most popular 

Indian actor in the Soviet Union, 

after Raj Kapoor. Though Mithun 

went on to become an action star, 

he retained his dancer image with 

producers and directors, finding 

some excuse to make him 

dance a song or two, even in his 

B-grade gore-and-revenge fests. 

White pants, white shirt, and the 

occasional white scarf—Mithun’s 

preferred costume in Disco Dancer 

“Jumping Jack” Jeetendra in his signature white pants and 

white shoes in Farz. 


264 

Bollywood FAQ 

and its similarly themed soul-sequel Dance Dance (1987)—made white the preferred 

color of 1980s boys and men aiming to impress the opposite sex. 

Must-Watch Dance Movies: Farz (Duty, 1967), Himmatwala (The Courageous 

One, 1983), Tohfa (Gift, 1984); Disco Dancer (1982), Dance Dance (1987) 

Jagjit Singh (1941–2011)—The Singer with the Silken 

Voice 

In a nation where 90 percent of the popular music market was (at the time of 

Jagjit’s coming in the 1980s) and still is monopolized by film music, Jagjit Singh 

came, carved a niche, and courted a fan following that remains nonpareil 

for any non-film singer to date. At a time when singing success only meant a 

career as Bollywood playback, Jagjit Singh made his mark in a genre known 

as ghazals (love poetry in Urdu), which was then struggling to stay alive. This 

he achieved on the genius of his unique voice and the inherent mettle of his 

music, to be rightfully crowned the “King of Ghazals.” 

One of the hit songs off Singh’s debut album, The Unforgettables (1976), was 

Baat niklegi (“A revealed old memory, can go a long way”). A long way indeed 

has come the buzz around Jagjit and his songs, taking the elitist art form from 

the limited confines of the Muslim elite to the masses. The ghazal albums of 

his career’s most prolific phase, the 1980s, were the best things to happen to 

popular Indian music in a decade when film music was at its nadir. 

And whenever Jagjit negotiated playback singing, it was always on his 

own terms, his pace, style, and appeal. He is best remembered for Prem Geet 

(Love Song, 1981), Saath Saath (Together Always, 1982), and Arth (Meaning, 1982), 

riding on an enchanting bouquet of everlasting film ghazals like “Hothon se 

chulo tum” (“Touch my song through your lips and make it immortal),” “Tum 

ko dekha to yeh khayal aaya” (“A thought triggered by thy sight”), and Tum 

itna jo muskura rahe ho (“What Sadness Do Your Smiles Hide?”) made Jagjit 

unavoidable for the film fraternity, but he opted out to continue making his 

ghazal, geet (light-musical song) and, later, bhajan (devotional song) albums, 

only occasionally singing a ghazal or two in such films as Dushman (Enemy, 

1998), Sarfarosh (Ferver, 1999), or Tum Bin (Without You, 2001). It was Jagjit’s 

consistent rendering of the works of both literary and popular poets of Urdu 

and Hindi (Mirza Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Nida Fazli, Javed Akhtar, Gulzar) that 

kept alive poetry in the cacophonous 1980s and the puerile 1990s. He thus 

became the natural choice to voice Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 

thoughts in verse when the latter’s collection of poems was released as a music 

album, Samvedna (Empathy, 2003). 

For at least two generations of college students, in the 1980s and 1990s, 

Jagjit Singh’s ghazals playing in the background made those occasional


265 

drunken binges honorable outings, while adding to an already-uplifting 

experience. 

In 1990, Jagjit lost his only son, who was only in his teens, in a car accident. 

Following this tragedy, his wife and singing partner of years, Chitra, quit 

singing in public altogether. 

Many talented singers have recorded many memorable songs. But Jagjit 

Singh gave each recording the “Jagjit Singh Experience”—unique, soothing, 

heartwarming, cathartic, ecstatic. Rummage through the attic of any Indian 

or South Asian ghazal lover from the 1980s and 1990s, and one would probably 

find a cassette or album of songs by Jagjit Singh, stashed away somewhere. 

Govinda (b. 1963)—the Joyous Dancer 

He fought, he romanced, he 

mended broken hearts, united 

warring families, and clowned it 

up in David Dhawan’s assemblyline 

slapstick comedies of the 

1990s. In a decade where every 

aspiring young star was trying to 

woo the middle and NRI classes, 

Govinda brought back some spontaneous 

fun to the cinema with 

his signature take on beats and 

grooves. Today, the only highlight 

in his similarly themed hit parade 

of romcoms from the 1990s are 

his dance moments, matched in 

robust rhythm by his equally talented 

partners Karishma Kapoor 

and Raveena Tandon. Govinda’s 

unflagging energy, innocent 

image, and hugely untapped 

potential for expressive drama 

found an outlet in his emotive 

dancing. According to Helen’s 

biographer Jerry Pinto, “After 

Helen, Govinda is the only other 

actor to match her abandon and 

conviction in dance, and both are 

unrecognised geniuses.” 

Joy forever: Govinda. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Must-Watch Dances 

■■ 

Stop That (The Gambler, 1995) 

■ ■ “Main to raste se ja raha tha” (“I was whiling down the street,” Coolie No. 

1, 1995) 

■ ■ “Kisi disco mein jaayein” (“Let’s go to a disco, Bade Mian Chote Mian, The 

Elder and the Younger Master, 1998) 

■ ■ “Ande ka funda” (“An ode to the egg,” Jodi No. 1, 2001) 

■ ■ “Bol beliya” (“Say, my love,” Kill Dil, 2014) 

Madhuri Dixit (b. 1967)—Dancing Diva 

She danced her way into the national consciousness with an innocent charm 

and inviting energy in the gritty urban thriller Tezaab’s (Acid, 1989) “Ek do 

teen” (“One two three”) song, establishing Bollywood’s last memorable starchoreographer 

partnership with Saroj Khan. Madhuri’s pre-marriage parting 

from Bollywood (Devdas, 2002) and subsequent comeback (Aaja Nachle, 

Come and Dance, 2007) occurred in films where the fine art of dance—or the 

character of a dancer—was the focus. Not since Bollywood’s first dancing 

superstar, Vyjayanthimala, has there been an Indian actress whose repertoire 

is as celebrated for her acting achievements as her dance songs, ranging from 

folk to pop, with competent highlights in classical, and, together, encompassing 

the gamut of the navarasas (the nine primary human emotions as listed in 

Sanskrit drama texts), from love (“Humri atariya pe,” “Come by my porch, my 

love”) to pathos (“Bada dukh dina,” “So much sorrow”) to comedy (“Didi tera 

devar,” “Sister, your brother-in-law has gone crazy”) to awe (“Dola re dola,” “The 

Throb”). 

Must-Watch Dances 

■ ■ “Ek do teen” (“One two three,” Tezaab/Acid, 1989) 

■ ■ “Humko aajkal hai” (“These days of anticipation,” Sailaab/The Deluge, 1990 

■ ■ “Dhak dhak karne laga’ (“My throbbing heart,” Beta/ Son, 1992) 

■ ■ “Que sera sera” (Pukar/The Call, 2000) 

■ ■ 

“Kahe chede mohe” (“Why tease me?”) and “Maar dala” (“Vanquished in 

love”), Devdas, 2002) 

A. R. Rahman (b. 1967)—Making Music Miracles 

When sublime, his music can be an enchanting interaction with divinity; 

when robust, his tunes offer the best grooves in contemporary free-fusing 

music; and when romantic, they become universal ballads with timeless 

appeal. It is a pity that A. R. Rahman’s global fame and first Oscars had to come


267 

Madhuri Dixit becomes the Mona Lisa in painter M. F. Husian’s Gaja Gamini. 


from Slumdog Millionaire (2009), a film that is hardly the best in his eclectic 

repertoire. It’s also unfortunate that many of his lesser-known, non-Bollywood 

Tamil films have yet to be heard by his fans beyond south India. Rahman’s 

contribution to music goes beyond films and entertainment. 

Select strums from his background score in Bombay (1995) have been 

picked up and used by international filmmakers and recording artists. In 

Bollywood, one of his pioneering influences is the inclusion of Sufi strums in 

popular music and his passionate efforts toward the revival of the qawwali. In 

his debut film, Roja (Rose, 1992), at the age of twenty-four, Rahman redefined 

contemporary music with his choice of instruments and the use of technology 

to decentralize the studio system and record-single performers instead of 

ensembles. He normally “constructs” a song in the privacy of his state-of-theart 

studio. He experiments with recordings, tuning them to desired perfection, 

and makes piecemeal recordings of voices and instruments to mix and modify 

them electronically in order to shape new styles in music. His knowledge of 

Hindustani, Western classical, south Indian Carnatic, and Sufi music has 

enabled him to fuse traditional Indian instruments with electronic dance

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Bollywood FAQ 

music. From romantic ballads to energetic rap to a new-age take on national 

anthems—he had done it all, and all with his own distinctive style. 

Must-Hear Albums: Roja (Rose, 1992), Bombay (1995), Rangeela (Colorful, 1995), 

Dil Se (From the Heart, 1998), Rockstar (2011) 

Hrithik Roshan (b. 1974)—Item Boy 

He looked like a million bucks and danced like a dream in his debut film’s 

instant chartbuster, “Ek pal ka jeena” (“Life of a moment”), set in a New Zealand 

pub. With “Kaho naa . . . pyar hai” (“Say . . . you’re in love,” 2000), Indian cinema 

saw the coming of another superstar sensation. Hrithik’s twenty-first century 

debut was as phenomenal as that of Rajesh Khanna, three decades earlier. The 

shy boy who was too embarrassed to speak in public, lest someone mock his 

stammer, became the first six-pack-sporting Bollywood screen hero. Endowed 

with classic Latino features, he set the dance floor ablaze when he danced, 

bare-chested, to “Dhoom machale . . .” (“Let’s make some noise,” Blast 2, 2006) 

in the blockbuster chase-film series Dhoom (2004–2013). The international 

fashion magazine Elle even named Hrithik Roshan the hottest male celebrity 

in the world for the year 2017–2018. 

The four-time Filmfare Best Actor winner, and the most feted among 

Bollywood’s new millennium heroes, has left a mark in every genre—historical 

to super hero, romance to action, and in high drama, too, playing a bedridden 

magician pleading for euthanasia. Yet one attribute common to all his movies 

has been a creatively inserted excuse to get him to emote to do at least one 

dance. Even when playing a paraplegic confined to the bed, a flashback was 

inserted in Guzaarish (Petition, 2010) to fulfill the mandatory Hrithik Roshan 

dance number in a Hrithik Roshan film. Roshan is quite possibly the lone 

Bollywood superstar to be celebrated for his dance, a talent that, at times, has 

unfairly eclipsed his equally competent emoting skills. But if there was ever a 

male embodiment combination equivalent of the “sexiness” of Helen and the 

“sacredness” of Vyjayanthimala—it would have to be Hrithik Roshan! 

Must-Watch Movies 

■■ 

Kaho Naa . . . Pyar Hai (Say . . . You’re in Love, 2000) 

■■ 

Koi . . . Mil Gaya (I Found Someone, 2003) 

■■ 

Dhoom 2 (Blast 2, 2006) 

■■ 

Jodhaa Akbar (Jodhaa and Akbar, 2008) 

■■ 

Kites (2010)

24 

Singing Around the Globe 

Snowy Alaska to the Seven Wonders of the World, Machu Picchu to Loch 

Ness, Corsica to Kabul—no location is off-limits for some Bollywood– 

style singing and dancing if it inspires the vision of its maker, the attention 

of its star, and the faith of its backers. This is an overview of some of the most 

unique, aesthetic, and occasionally bizarre locations that have been the backdrop 

of ambitiously mounted and choreographed song sequences in world 

cinema. 

The Wonders of the World 

“Pyar ajooba hai” (“Love is a Wonder,” Jeans, 1998) is, undoubtedly, the mother 

of all location-driven Bollywood songs. Its sheer diversity of iconic global 

monuments serve as impressive backdrops for the the six-and-a-half-minutelong 

song sequence picturized on Miss World (1994) featuring Aishwarya Rai 

and her co-star and the film’s hero, Prasanth. The song is dedicated to the 

celebration of love, and was shot across seven wonders of the world, from four 

continents. The film’s director, Shankar, along with the leads and a limited 

crew, made a thirty-day trip around the world, stopping to film scenes at (in 

order of appearance) the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, New 

York’s Empire State Building, India’s Taj Mahal, the Egyptian Pyramids, the 

Colosseum of Rome, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The breathtakingly beautiful 

Aishwarya Rai, dancing through these locations in exotic local outfits, was 

cheekily advertised as “the eighth wonder, dancing at the world’s other seven 

wonders!” 

Aishwarya Rai ticked the box of having danced at another artificial wonder 

of the world in another continent, not covered in the above song, as the heroine 

in yet another Shankar-directed visual extravaganza, Robot (2010). The film 

was an unusual love triangle involving a robot and its creator, both of whom 

are in love with Aishwarya’s character. The film has Rai dressed in a tribal 

costume, dancing opposite south Indian superstar Rajinikanth in the ruins

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Bollywood FAQ 

of the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru. The song, “Kilimanjaro,” composed 

by Academy Award winner A. R. Rahman, was shot with a hundred Brazilian 

extras as a stand-alone “item” (dance) song attraction, in no direct connection 

with its narrative’s south Indian location. The sixty-year-old Rajinikanth, 

sporting a contemporary look and costume, matched the energy and enthusiasm 

of the much younger Aishwarya, attired in four of her fifty-seven exotic 

costumes for the film. Incidentally, Peruvian authorities had refused shooting 

permission to the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008), at Machu Picchu, 

three years before the landing of Shankar and his team of dancers. 

Robot also had a softer lead star performing the romantic ballad Pagal 

(“Madly”), shot in another unique and picturesque South American location, 

the oasis-dotted Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in northeastern Brazil. 

Rai can be seen innocently asking her scientist husband, “Tell me, how many 

neutrons and electrons are there in my eyes?” 

Down-Under Destinations 

Australia and New Zealand, the last continental destinations to host a 

Bollywood song, joined the list with two romantic stories, set in the current 

millennium. Sydney, its opera house, and towering skyline served as the perfect 

backdrop for a leisurely paced, boy-versus-girl sung argument in which 

they debate the vices and virtues of falling in love. Shot across Sydney’s waterfronts, 

on metro train tracks, and even in a helicopter hovering over the city, 

the song “Jaane kyun log pyar karte hain” (“Wonder why do people fall in love”) 

is picturized on a “mature-yet-mischievous” Aamir Khan and a bubbly Preity 

Zinta, in the road-movie-meets-romcom Dil Chahta Hai (The Heart Desires, 

2001). A year earlier, in another ambitious romantic thriller spread across 

India and New Zealand, the island nation made its Bollywood song debut in 

Kaho Naa . . . Pyar Hai (Say . . . You’re in Love, 2000), which introduced Hrithik 

Roshan. Lucky Ali’s lilting, crystal-like vocals in the song “Na tum jaano na 

hum” (“Neither you realise, nor me”) had a dapper and vulnerable-looking 

Hrithik articulate his feelings in a musically charged drive off Queenstown’s 

snow-kissed mountain-range of the Remarkables, in the Southern Alps. 

Europe Calling 

The Northern Alps, in Switzerland, had been wooing Bollywood filmmakers 

to shoot many timeless songs celebrating onscreen romance ever since 

“its original showman,” Raj Kapoor, first went to shoot major chunks of the 

outdoor shoots of his Technicolor extravaganza Sangam (Confluence, 1964),


271 

in the European cities of London, Paris, Rome, Venice, and Switzerland. The 

1960s tragic love triangle became a rage across India, triggering a fascination 

among Indian filmmakers to shoot snowy peaks in the West. But it was 

the auteur of grand romances, Yash Chopra, who turned the attraction into a 

beautiful obsession, starting with the songs of Silsila (The Affair, 1981). If he 

chose to shoot amid snowy peaks and autumn leaves as visual metaphors for 

the restrained passion and the reckless love of its lead characters (played by 

Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha) in the song “Yeh kahan aa gaye hum” (“O, how 

far have we come together”), he let their romance rise to the brim, to shine and 

spill over gloriously, in the wishful joy of “Dekha ek khwab” (“Saw a flowery 

endless dream today”). Shot in the Netherlands, in the multi-hued tulip gardens 

stretching endlessly into the beyond, it remains the ultimate Bollywood 

love song. Dedicated to an affair and its players, seen in the joyous ecstasy 

of a momentary dream far from their restricting marriages, they are, in that 

scene, living life and romance in full bloom, much like the resplendent tulips 

surrounding them. 

By the end of the decade, Yash Chopra had made Switzerland and the 

Swiss Alps a required location in every film, starting with Chandni (1989). 

Sridevi danced her way to box-office glory across various locations in the film, 

peaking at the Swiss Alps in the song “Tere mere hothon pe” (“On your lips and 

mine”), to make Chandni a game-changing blockbuster that all but brought an 

end to Bollywood’s bad action movies of the 1980s. The love song, Sridevi, Yash 

Chopra, and the Swiss Alps introduced a new set of essentials to the Bollywood 

romance, with Chopra remaining the genre’s most influential auteur-director 

for at least two more decades. Even after his passing, Bollywood’s fascination 

with picturizing love songs in the snow has continued. Switzerland unveiled 

a statue of Yash Chopra in the central Swiss town of Interlaken in 2016, and 

the country’s Jungfrau Railways named a mountain train after him for making 

this land-locked nation the most preferred honeymoon destination for Indian 

tourists. 

Fascination for Cold Places 

The cold—or the inaccessible—have rarely dented a Bollywood filmmaker’s 

ambition to venture into unexplored places to picturize a song-and-dance 

number. This also highlights the significance and impact of a nicely picturized 

song on a film’s overall box-office take. “Kismat se tum humko mile ho” (“Lucky 

have I been to have you”), from the spy-thriller-cum-vengeful-lover-saga Pukar 

(The Call, 2000), is one such song, where the lead actors Madhuri Dixit and 

Anil Kapoor were taken all the way to Alaska for a dream sequence, though the 

rest of the film is based in India. Shooting in sub-zero weather in the Glacier

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Bollywood FAQ 

Bay National Park and Preserve, it is a miracle to see Madhuri Dixit dance in 

just a blue chiffon sari and still appear hale and hearty! (Kapoor, meanwhile, 

looks comfortably warm in a layered coat and heavy boots.) Always a thorough 

professional, the diva of good dancing makes one stop worrying about the 

icy chill on the inadequately attired heroine and savor instead her resplendent 

blue image in a sea of white. The film has another romantic song, “Sunta 

hai mera khuda” (“My lord listens”), this one featuring its other lead actress, 

Namrata Shirodkar, also with Kapoor, amid the spectacular sandstone arches 

of Utah’s national park. 

Top honors for the most visually breathtaking song in a snowy setting, 

however, must go to “Gerua” (“Paint me saffron”), a spectacularly shot 

riot of colors celebrating the love ballad in Dilwale (The Big-Hearted, 2015). 

Featuring the superstar of romance, Shah Rukh Khan, with his most-successful 

onscreen star partner, Kajol, in their fourth outing together, one cannot but 

be swayed by Iceland’s sweeping vistas, lush mountains tops, waterfalls, and 

rainbows. The song’s eye-catching opening image is of Shah Rukh striking 

his signature arms-akimbo pose near the wreckage of a white airplane. This, 

in actuality, is the debris of a C-47 Sky Train, which belonged to the U.S. 

military. In November 1973, the plane was landed safely on south Iceland’s 

Sólheimasandur’s black sand beach, sparing the lives of all its passengers. 

Singing in Spain and the UK 

Europe’s many natural and artificial pristine locales have served as memorable 

backdrops to heighten the emotion impact of many a modern Bollywood song. 

But taking the recreation of European landmarks to a new level was the first 

Bollywood road movie to be shot in Spain, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You Only 

Live Once, 2011). For one of its adventure songs, “Ik junoon” (“An obsession”), 

the La Tomatina festival of Buñol was recreated with sixteen tons of tomatoes, 

worth ten million rupees (or $150,000), procured from Portugal for the shoot. 

In the film’s picturization of the popular Hindi-Spanish song “Señorita,” the 

locals (including the mayor) of Alájar, a small town in the province of Huelva, 

served as extras. 

Bollywood film crews have frequently gotten away with shooting complex 

dance numbers with hundreds of extras in some of the most serious, least 

filmic, locations. For the film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Sometimes Happiness, 

Sometimes Sorrow, 2011), Karan Johar shot “Deewana hai dekho” (“He is crazy”) 

at the Natural History Museum, the Tower Bridge, and Trafalgar Square. 

The museum staff received some public disapproval for allowing the landmark’s 

hallowed halls to be used as the setting for elaborate song-and-dance


273 

sequences. Nevertheless, London remains the top draw of favored foreign 

locations for Bollywood films. 

The American Calling 

The United States of America was first explored as a potential location for 

Indian films by actor-director Raj Kapoor, in Pacchi’s Around the World (1967). 

Kapoor’s character sets out on a global tour with just eight dollars in his 

pocket, taking various odd jobs along the way to fund his travels. Starting in 

Tokyo and skirting (briefly) through most of Europe, it is in the U.S. that the 

adventures truly unfold. One of the earliest Bollywood films to visit signature 

American destinations, including Niagara Falls in upstate New York, and 

Disneyland in Southern California, the film’s title song, “Around the World in 

Eight Dollars,”—a parody of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days— 

even lists the names of prominent U.S. cities and tourist destinations: “Los 

Angeles, Hollywood, Disneyland, Washington, and New York” in its lyrics. 

That cursory introduction to American life on the Indian celluloid, however, 

had to wait for another three decades for a film by another showman/ 

filmmaker, Subhash Ghai in Pardes (Foreign Shores, 1997), revolving around 

Indian-Americans. 

Bollywood films set in the U.S., however, still have a long way to go in 

terms of exploring the locational diversity of the subcontinent-sized nation. 

This could be due to the fact that America’s beautiful vistas have been overexposed 

in Hollywood films, thus reducing their novelty potential for Indian 

audiences. Perhaps that explains why the Hindi film song has opted to unfold 

across some of the least expected U.S. locales, like “busy” Manhattan streets 

or a “quiet” National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research 

center in Swades (Homeland, 2004). 

Most Indian films set in the U.S. tend to be inward-looking communityexploration, 

as opposed to inter-community, narratives. Two releases from 

2010 manage to buck this trend. Brett Ratner presented Kites (2010), starring 

Hrithik Roshan and Mexican actress Barbara Mori, features locations from Las 

Vegas and New Mexico during the road song “Zindagi do pal ki” (“This ephemeral 

life”); the other film, My Name is Khan, tells the story of an autistic man 

(Shah Rukh Khan) who travels from his home in San Francisco to Washington, 

D.C., to meet the president of the United States. The trials and tribulations of 

his journey on a meager budget are poignantly articulated in the theme song, 

“Noor-e-khuda” (“O god of light”), picturized across some landmark locations 

on America’s West Coast.

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Bollywood FAQ 

A poster depicting some iconic action scenes of Khuda Gawah shot in war-torn Afghanistan. 

 


Africa and the Middle East 

Protagonists undertaking budget-restrictive travels, however, have rarely 

diluted the ambition or the scale of experience in their journeys, as evidenced 

in Bollywood’s first musical-thriller-cum-travelogue, Jagga Jasoos (Detective 

Jagga, 2017). Its grooving songs, including “Ullu ka pat-tha” (“Good for nothing”), 

by music director Pritam, were shot in Marrakech and Morocco. The 

sunny landscapes of Africa, from the “cool” Cape Town to the “hot” Deadvlei 

(Dead Pan) desert of Namibia, and the historic relics of the Middle East—all 

are now destinations for ambitious Bollywood filmmakers. These locations 

have served as backdrops for some spectacular-looking song sequences, 

despite the recent spate of attacks by radical Islamic terrorists. But even in 

these uncertain times, fear has rarely managed to limit the collective 

Bollywood imagination, be it a classic clan-clash drama set in Afghanistan, 

Khuda Gawah (God is the Witness, 1992) or battling ISIS-like outfits in a contemporary 

spy-drama set in Iraq, Tiger Zinda Hai (Tiger is Alive, 2017). 

For Bollywood, everything is indeed fair game in the making of a song, 

whose happening can be possible anywhere, love or war notwithstanding!

25 

Dancing in the Rain! 

The Indian culture reveres water. This is understandable, given the fact 

that the country is a rain-dependent, agrarian economy, where more 

than half the population survives on farm produce. One of the most celebrated 

literary classics is an ode to a cloud, to be an exiled nature spirit’s messenger 

to his far-away wife (Sanskrit poet-dramatist Kalidasa’s Meghadutam, or The 

Cloud Messenger). And dating back to the industry’s earliest films, water has 

been a metaphor for onscreen romance and sensuality. Consider the scene in 

the first Indian feature film, Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra, 1913), 

in which its female characters indulge in jalakrida (water play). The implied 

eroticism of drenched women in a state of gay abandon went on to become 

an acceptable trope of post-Independence Indian cinema. Given the Indian 

Censor Board’s strong morality-driven suggestions, the nature and its “worshipped” 

fundamental elements like fire, wind, and water (as rain) also help 

lend sanctity to matters of the soul and the heart. Bollywood’s most adored 

and critically acclaimed moment of onscreen passion (in retrospect) happens 

under an umbrella featuring its first star pairing of Raj Kapoor and Nargis in 

Shree 420 (Mr. 420, 1955), singing “Pyar hua” (“Love happened”). 

The Erotics of the Wet Sari 

The nature of the picturization and reaction to the “Pyar hua” song established 

another essential element of the Bollywood rain song—the wet sari. Nargis 

(Shree 420, 1955) simmered in one; Padmini frolicked in one in Jis Desh Mein 

Ganga Behti Hai (The Country Where the Ganges Flows, 1960); and Mandakini 

became the talk of the nation by getting drenched in one in Ram Teri Ganga 

Maili (O Rama, Your Ganges Has Become Impure, 1985), leaving little of her 

lissom anatomy to the imagination. Each of the above-mentioned, unforgettable 

sari affairs bore the signature of showman-filmmaker Raj Kapoor, 

who made a fashion character out of the wet sari as Bollywood’s permissible 

metaphor for sexuality. While nudity is frowned upon by conservatives, it is

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Bollywood FAQ 

acceptable to have a heroine in a wet sari clinging to her body. Titillation, however, 

became the name of the game, and the rain songs started getting exploitative 

when traders and money lenders—not genuine filmmakers—began to 

call the shots in the 1980s. These filmmakers used rain songs to circumvent 

censor board guidelines. But by drenching young and struggling actresses in 

their micro-minis and bikini tops, the aesthetic intent of the rain song took 

a temporary beating. After all, the sari is the key. Otherwise, it’s just about 

seeing the female body, and there is no dearth of this in other films. 

In an interview with the author (“Rain Drain,” Sunday Express, June 10, 

2007), Sari-clad Raveena Tandon, who performed one of the most sensual rain 

songs of all time, “Tip tip barsa paani” (“Tip, tip the raindrops fall”) in Mohra 

(Pawn, 1994), noted, “The sensuality of the sari cannot be matched by bikini 

tops. When the heroine is half clad in any case, who needs the rains? Also, 

there are no actresses like Madhuri Dixit or Sridevi, who can carry off the 

sensuality without making it sexual.” 

While the vamps bared, dared, and revealed more in Western outfits, the 

wet sari became the heroine’s sizzle-quotient through most of Bollywood’s 

sexual evolution in the twentieth century. The parallel cinema movement has 

its wet saris, too, though these are used clinically, as an allegory to depicting 

poverty, à la Smita Patil bathing on the pavement of a slum in Chakra (The 

Wheel, 1981). 

Controlling Lust Triggers 

While earlier screen heroes would strive to avert their gaze from their soaking-wet 

sari-wearing leading ladies, seventies’ superstar Rajesh Khanna, in 

Aradhana (Devotion, 1969), had an altogether different reaction. Eyeing the 

doe-eyed Sharmila Tagore in her drenched sari became an excuse for some 

premarital sex. 

Two decades later, Yash Chopra, an auteur of pristine romances, “returned 

the sanctity” to the wet sari, as he drenched his virginal ladies in white in 

film after film, celebrating the beauty (over lust) of a nubile heroine dancing 

and enjoying herself outdoors on rainy evenings in a wet sari, occasionally 

watched from afar by a noble hero retaining that distance. A monsoon highlight 

from Chopra’s ouvre is of a handsome and lonely Vinod Khanna fondly 

remembering his “dead wife” Juhi Chawla’s sensual swaying in the rains in 

Chandni (1989). Memoralizing the beloved has rarely been so alluring. 

Chopra’s son, Aditya, in his take on his dad’s “lady in white in the 

rains” imagery, added aggression to the abandon of the rain-soaked lass 

in Mohabattein (Love Stories, 2000). He instructed his lead actress, Preiti


277 

Jhangiani, to do a Tandav, a vigorous dance form sourced to the Hindu God of 

Dance, Lord Shiva. 

A memorable rain song has always been a responsible team achievement 

involving the director, the choreographer, the dancing actor, and the cameraman, 

as even a slight change in the camera angle can make one look either 

beautiful or vulgar. In an interview with the author for the “Rain Drain” article, 

veteran Bollywood choreographer Saroj Khan stated: 

If you recall Madhubala in the song “Ek ladki bheegi” (“A girl 

drenched”), and the way she is clutching her sari, there is no touch or 

kiss between the actors, and yet it’s so sensuous. Similarly, in Sridevi’s 

frolicking in the rain to the “Kaaten nahin kat te” (“The time doesn’t 

pass”) song choreographed by me in Mr. India (1986), there is no vulgarity, 

only sensuousness with the boy coming and going. She is dancing 

with him and yet not with him. . . . If you wear a bra and mini-skirt 

or a bikini and get drenched, then what will you wet? You must be 

wearing some clothes in the first place to get them wet! In that lies the 

necessity and the unique appeal of the fully covering the body, wet 

sari as the ultimate rain song apparel! 

The United Kingdom’s first professor of Bollywood studies, Rachel Dwyer, 

in her paper on the erotics of the wet sari in Hindi cinema, writes: 

Directors, whether seeking sensual or pornographic effects, may well 

wish to maximise the eroticism of the female body, and they have 

found the most successful way to do this in the famous “wet sari” 

sequences. The semantics of the sari, the form of the female body come 

together in ways which can be construed as “tasteful” by the family 

audience, the most important audience for the box-office, and the censors, 

while being simultaneously erotic. 

Take-5: Wet, You Bet—Sizzlers in the Rain 

Nargis: The original “lady in white” was also the original “lady in the white 

wet sari.” Barsaat (Rains, 1949), Awara (The Vagabond, 1951), Shree 420 (Mr 420, 

1955), Chori Chori (Stealthily Stealthily, 1956)—if Raj Kapoor was a master in 

picturizing the rain song, he couldn’t have asked for a better model and muse. 

Madhubala: The sight of a dripping-wet Madhubala had the hero coo, “Indagi 

bhar nahi bhulegi woh barsaat ki raat . . .” (“Will never ever forget that beauteous 

vision on a rain-soaked night”) in a 1960 Bollywood classic, Barsaat Ki

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Bollywood FAQ 

Raat (A Rainy Night, 1960.) Her nervous “Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi” in another 

rain-washed song, two years earlier, established that allure. 

Zeenat Aman: Only she could have wriggled in the rain in a two-piece sari in 

a temple singing bhajans (Satyam Shivan Sundaram, Love Sublime, 1978) and 

gotten away with it. Zeenat was a scorcher in all her rain songs. 

Sridevi: From Chandni (The Moonlike, 1989) to Lamhe (Moments, 1991), she was 

auteur Yash Chopra’s most famous and favorite “lady in white in the rains.” No 

one has ever looked sexier or more sensual—yet still vulnerable—than Sri, in 

the erotically danced rain song “Kate nahin kat te.” This occurred, incidentally, 

in a children’s film, Mr. India (1986). 

Kajol: She is the only leading lady from Bollywood’s twenty-first century brigade 

to have at least one hit rain song in each of her blockbuster films, from 

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will Take Away the Bride, 1995) 

to Fanaa (Destroyed in Love, 2006). More importantly, she has also performed 

them with aplomb and the right mix of sensuality and expressive emoting, 

akin to the classic song-acts of her “natural-acting” star mother (Tanuja) and 

aunt (Nutan) from the golden age. 

Monsoon Melodies 

The following is a list of songs that celebrate timeless Bollywood rain 

moments, cleverly used to portray both love and lust. Some of these also opted 

for innovative choreography to aesthetically convey erotisism while staying 

within the high moral codes of a puritanical censor board. Most importantly, 

they reinforce an obvious fashion statement—no other Indian apparel beats 

the seductive impact of a dancer in a wet sari! 

“Pyar hua ikrar hua” (“Love happened, got reciprocated”)—Shree 

420 (Mr. 420, 1955) 

The simmering-yet-controlled passion of Raj Kapoor and Nargis, in this alltime 

favorite rain song, played a major role in fueling the rumors involving 

independent India’s first major onscreen romantic pair being in love offscreen 

as well! Nargis, drawing close to Raj Kapoor and yet shying away from his 

touch under an umbrella on a rain-drenched pathway, is an intense and unforgettable 

rain-soaked memory for fans of every generation. This is evidenced 

by the countless tributes to the song by subsequent generations of actors, 

including Ranbir and Sonam Kapoor in Saawariya (My Love, 2007), five 

decades later. It also yielded a choreography template for on-location performance 

and off-location editing techniques adopted by subsequent filmmakers


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Raj Kapoor and Nargis sing “Pyar hua ikrar hua” in Bollywood’s most iconic rain song from the film 

Shree 420. 


while committing a rain song to film—from Bimal Roy (Parakh, Evaluation, 

1960; Prem Patra, Love Letter, 1962), and Shakti Samanta (Aradhana, Devotion, 

1969) to Shekhar Kapur (Mr. India, 1986) and Mani Ratnam (Roja, Rose, 1992; 

Guru, 2007). 

“Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si” (“A runaway girl, drenched 

on the way”)—Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (What Moves Is a 

Vehicle, 1958) 

Kishore Kumar ogles Madhubala as she tries to dry herself. There is no touching 

or kissing, and yet it’s a sexually charged screen moment. Rains are the 

catalyst to their mutual attraction, as well as an excuse for their previously 

unsaid feelings. Indeed, certain things need to be left to the imagination for a 

rain song to be truly sensual.

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“Aha rimjhim ke ye pyaare pyaare geet” (“O, the wonderful 

songs of pitter-patter”)—Usne Kaha Tha (He/She Had 

Said, 1960) 

The rolling beats, the energetic vocals of Lata Mangeshkar and Talat 

Mehmood, and composer Salil Chaudhry’s hummable folk-based tune captured 

the bounce of a rain-soaked song. This is not to discount a handsomely 

soaked Sunil Dutt, and a drifting-with-the-wind Nanda, in inviting abandon. 

“O sajna barkha bahar aayi” (“Dear love, the rains have 

come”)—Parakh (Evaluation, 1960) 

Heroines had been drenched many times before and since this song was committed 

to film, but rarely has a rain song taken such an elegiac and elegant 

pause to just soak in the beauty of a drizzle! The Bimal Roy–directed song, 

shot on an innocently beautiful Sadhana, stands out not only for its subtle picturization 

of a demure lass awaiting her lover in the rains, but as a melancholic 

melody for all seasons. Those black-and-white close-ups of Sadhana singing to 

raindrops and reacting to them as they slip off her hut’s corners, make for a 

unique sight of classic beauty in all its monsoon glory. The song has been cited 

as the favorite by no less than the “Voice of India,” Lata Mangeshkar. 

“Deewana hua badal” (“And when the clouds got high”) 

—Kashmir Ki Kali (The Girl from Kashmir, 1964) 

It isn’t exactly raining in this song, nor is a cloudburst imminent. But clouds 

become integral elements in bringing out the romantic undercurrents that had 

been creating a riot within each of the protagonists. Songs like “Deewana hua 

badal” subtly used rain and clouded skies as symbols of sexual passion. 

“Allah megh de paani de” (“O Allah! Give us water”)— 

Guide (1966)/ Palkon Ki Chhaon Mein (Eyelids of Desire, 

1977) 

The opening line—Allah megh de paani de—is a traditional plea sung by bards 

and wandering mendicants with their own improvisations, articulating the 

culmination of a farmer’s prayer for rain. S. D. Burman’s vocals took the song’s 

message to a spiritual level in Guide to make a contemplative narrative commentary. 

Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle, in their more zestful rendition of a 

somber melody composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal in Palkon Ki Chhaon Mein, 

depict the intimate and integral presence of rain in the life of rural India.


281 

Water is revered, as shown through a brief ritual of worshipping a well, and is 

as eagerly awaited as a much-loved family member returning from an annual 

sojourn. The song begins with a warning about the many possible despairs 

of delayed rains, and ends with an entire village dancing in joyous ecstasy 

following a satisfying downpour. 

“Hai hai ye mazburi” (“O, sigh, my helplessness”)—Roti, 

Kapda aur Makaan (Food, Clothes and Shelter, 1974) 

The sexy Zeenat Aman, dancing in a drenched sari, invites a shy and pondering 

Manoj Kumar for premarital sex . . . It’s hard for any man to stay dry after 

that. 

“Rim jhim gire saawan” (“Pitter-patter, the monsoon 

comes”)—Manzil (Destination, 1979) 

Two lovers walk by rising sea waves which meet the falling rain showers off 

the “Golden Necklace” stretch of Mumbai’s Marine Drive. The young man 

(Amitabh Bachchan), an expensively attired executive, and the young lady 

(Moushumi Chatterjee) happily wade through fresh puddles left by the first 

Monsoon rains. 

“Zindagi ki na toote ladi” (“The chord of life may never 

break”)—Kranti (Revolution, 1981) 

Bollywood’s “Dream Girl,” Hema Malini, chained and wriggling on the floor, 

and playback singer Nitin Mukesh’s fresh vocals (performed onscreen by 

actor/director Manoj Kumar) are the highlights of this “part-patriotic, partinspirational” 

rain song that has its lead actors tied to a rain-splashed ship 

deck by their British captors. Unmindful of their dire circumstances, they 

sing to profess their undying love for each other. This would have been Manoj 

Kumar’s take on Raj Kapoor’s famous “lady in white” imagery, but Malini, the 

reigning queen of the Bollywood box-office in the 1970s, had refused to get 

drenched in a transparent white sari. A blue sari, although less revealing than 

the white one, did not compromise the song’s aesthetic appeal. 

“Aaj rapat jayen” (“If we hug today”)—Namak Halaal 

(The Loyal One, 1982) 

Fun in the rain—unabashed, unreserved, and in your face. Parallel cinema’s 

poster girl, Smita Patil, courted commercial glory with this hot song. Sadly,

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Patil immediately regretted having given in to commercial cinema’s demands 

for articulating eroticism in a wet sari. She reportedly shed buckets of tears the 

moment the director yelled, “Cut!” 

“Kaate nahin kat te” (“The time doesn’t seem to pass”) 

—Mr. India (1986) 

Dancer-actress Sridevi professing her love to an invisible lover who’s now 

present, now gone, ranks among the most sensual moments in Hindi cinema, 

rain or no rain. It was choreographer Saroj Khan’s idea to have the diva dressed 

in deep blue and nothing light. As she explained in an interview with the 

author, under the lights, “a white sari reflects skin, while a dark-colored blue 

sari helps hide the skin.” Mr. India was touted as a children’s film, after all! 

Rarely since, however, have the semantics of the wet sari and the form of the 

female body come together in a way that could be construed as “tasteful” for 

family audiences. 

“Tip tip barsa paani” (“Tip tip, the raindrops fall”)— 

Mohra (Pawn, 1994) 

The pristine heroine of yore finally sheds all coyness and inhibitions to 

demand love from her rain-soaked handsome lover (Akshay Kumar) on a 

rain-lashed evening in this lust-charged rain song with matching thrustingheaving-pouting-pulling-and-tearing 

choreography. Raveena Tandon sizzled— 

almost scorching the raindrops—while performing her gyrating seduction 

number, rhythmically cut to heighten the passion in the song. The lead pair 

does not kiss, adhering to the censorship limits of the time, but who cares? 

When Kumar eventually responds to the heroine’s demands for lovemaking by 

the song’s last stanza, nothing is left to the imagination concerning the throbbing 

beneath their figure-hugging shirt and sari. Incidentally, Tandon was on 

antibiotics while shooting the dance sequence, battling a fever of 103 degrees. 

(Ironically, Gene Kelly famously had a 103-degree fever while shooting his 

iconic “Singin’ in the Rain” number for the 1952 MGM film of the same title. 

Something about rain songs seems to bring out a performer’s sense of duty.) 

“Mere khwabon mein jo aaye” (“The visitor in my 

dreams”)—Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) 

Rain, as a symbol of youth and freedom, found expression in Kajol’s dance of 

gay abandon in Aditya Chopra’s blockbuster. She went on to perform some 

more memorable rain numbers in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Fanaa (2006).


283 

“Geela, geela paani” (“Aha! The wet, wet water”)—Satya 

(Truth, 1998) 

A modern-day rain song that’s hailed as a classic, it features the 1990s’ “sizzler” 

actress Urmila Matondkar, portraying a simple, sari-wearing girl-next-door. 

Taking a break from her busy urban life, she savors the city’s first date with 

the annual Monsoon showers. “Geela, Geela Paani” is the lone sentimental 

moment in this dark and brooding Mafia masterpiece. 

“Ghanana ghanana dekho ghir aaye badra” (“Savour how 

the dark clouds gather”)—Lagaan (Land Tax, 2001) 

After Guide (1965), rain as a major element in a film’s overall storyline appeared 

quite possibly for the only other time in Ashutosh Gowariker’s cricket saga 

Lagaan. It is a winning, multi-rhythm composition from A. R. Rahman, set to 

Javed Akhtar’s rustic lyricism. In a country where more than 50 percent of the 

population is still involved in agriculture, the rains are not only a lifeline, but 

a symbol of joy and prosperity. An authentic recreation of that shared sense of 

joy at the sight of rainfall, as seen in the song, reinforces a centuries-old tradition 

which, according to its writer, Akhtar proves once again that “genetically, 

deep down, all of us [Indians] are farmers still.” 

“Bhaage re mann” (“And races the mind”)—Chameli 

(2003) 

At a time when rain songs had turned increasingly into unimaginative excuses 

to showcase a heroine’s heaving body set to robust gyrations with a party of 

people dancing in the background, Kareena Kapoor’s solo dance in the rain 

was an ode to freedom, celebrating a childlike reaction to the season’s first 

rains. Rain is also integral to the entire plot of Chameli: its two stranger protagonists 

would not have met otherwise. 

“Yeh saazish hai bundon ki” (“It’s a conspiracy of the 

rain drops”)—Fanaa (Destroyed in Love, 2006) 

This brilliantly filmed rain song (shot at 300 frames per second) has Bollywood’s 

twenty-first century superstars, Aamir Khan and Kajol, recreate its favorite formula 

for articulating love in a style of the classics, at a time when the limits on 

the depiction of onscreen sexuality had become far less discrete. The technological 

advancements in the medium make this song a collage of many beautiful 

rain-spattered frames, enhancing its lead pair’s intensity. This is, indeed, 

a welcome template for future rain songs—high on gloss, and romance too!

Section 4 

The Lists

26 

The Auteurs 

The first Indian feature filmmaker, Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, singlehandedly 

produced, directed, and edited the nearly one hundred features 

and twenty-five short films he made in a career spanning two decades. 

Enjoying absolute control over his creative output, he was Bollywood’s first 

auteur filmmaker, setting a precedent for subsequent directors. The following 

is an introduction to eminent Bollywood auteur-directors who, while creating 

an eclectic variety of cinematic high art, also discovered and nurtured some 

of Bollywood’s greatest talents in every discipline—acting, writing, singing, 

and composing. 

Franz Osten (1876–1956) 

Long before Shah Rukh Khan became a darling 

of German housewives, Franz Osten—a 

German journalist, World War I soldier, and 

photographer-turned-filmmaker—became 

one of India’s greatest silent and talkie-era 

directors, with nineteen films spanning 1926 

to 1939. His knack for epic retellings of history 

and myths culminated in the first 

Indian film to be an international blockbuster, 

The Light of Asia (1925), a lavishly 

mounted silent classic depicting incidents 

from the life of the Buddha. It was the first in 

a trilogy of Indo-German productions 

directed by Osten and produced by 

Himanshu Rai; the other two being Shiraz 

(1928) and A Throw of Dice (1929). 

Osten made a successful transition 

to sound films, working in India’s most Franz Osten. Photo courtesy of NFAI

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technically advanced studio, Bombay Talkies. He directed eleven hit romanticsocial 

dramas for the studio that made Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar the 

most popular onscreen pair of the 1930s. One of the world’s first Orientalists, 

Osten was the architect of a unique cross-cultural narrative bridge that 

attempted to connect the modern techniques of German silent filmmaking 

with the rich iconography of Indian tradition—that refined the Hindi cinema 

template for realistic dramas with good music, made to international technical 

standards. Osten’s Indian career was abruptly cut short during the production 

of Kangan (The Bangle, 1939). His membership in the Nazi Party led to his 

arrest and deportation to Germany by British colonial officials. Despite his 

frail health and advanced age (sixty-two), he became the head of the casting 

department of Bavaria Studios after the war, and died a few weeks short of his 

eightieth birthday, in 1956. 

Notable Works: The Light of Asia (1925), Prapancha Pash (A Throw of Dice, 1929), 

Acchut Kanya (Untouchable Girl, 1936), Janmabhoomi (Mother Land, 1936), Izzat 

(Honor, 1937) 

Vankudre Shantaram (1901–1990) 

The first filmmaker of the talkie era to achieve repeated international acclaim, 

V. Shantaram is that rare actor-director whose realistic early films made significant 

impact on the social system. Charlie Chaplin, who saw Shantaram’s 

Manoos (Man, 1939) at a film festival screening, was so taken with the humanist 

tragedy exploring alcoholism and the rehabilitation of prostitutes, that 

he sought out the filmmaker to lavish him with praise. Shantararam had 

an impressive lists of “firsts” to his credit: He made Bollywood’s first biopic, 

the first Indian film with color scenes, the first Indian film to be commercially 

released in the United States, and he was the first Indian director to 

blend contemporary sensibilities with traditional tales. Shantaram’s was a 

classic rags-to-riches tale, starting with Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film 

Company, where he did odd jobs before becoming an actor. It was as a director, 

however, that he found true acclaim, making realistic films with a strong 

reformist agenda. In 1929, he co-founded Prabhat Films—one of the three 

most influential studios of the early talkie era. Never one to forget his roots, he 

employed some of the very masters who had trained him in the craft. In 1942, 

Shantaram started his own studio banner, Rajkamal Kalamandir, and continued 

to produce films with social relevance. In addition, he began making 

escapist Technicolor musicals dedicated to celebrating India’s classical and 

folk-dance traditions. These featured his third wife, dancer-actress Sandhya, 

in the lead. Shantaram is one of those rare early cinema auteurs whose works

The Auteurs 

289 

have survived the test of time as humanist documents warranting multiple 

viewings. 

Notable Works: Amrit Manthan (Churning of the Ocean, 1934), Aadmi (Man, 

1939), Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (The Immortal Story of Dr. Kotnis, 1946), Jhanak 

Jhanak Payal Baje (The Beating of the Anklets, 1955), Do Aankhen Baarah Haath 

(Two Eyes, Twelve Hands, 1957) 

Mehboob Khan (1907–1964) 

A pioneer of modern Indian cinema, Mehboob Khan is best remembered for 

his dramatic classic Mother India (1957), which was the first Indian film to be 

nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award. The versatile director, who 

had run away from his home with dreams of becoming an actor, made several 

other groundbreaking films across genres, from revolutionary social epics 

to historical features, apart from pioneering the genre of mature, romantic 

musicals. A fan of Hollywood-style musicals, Khan incorporated Westernstyle 

orchestrations into some of his urban-centric films, while skewing the 

local influence towards folk music in his reformist rural-centric films. In the 

costume-drama genre, Khan recreated the grandeur of Hollywood historicals 

with Humayun (Emperor Humayun, 1945), a medieval Indian courtroom drama, 

at a time when other filmmakers were recreating historical events through 

grand romances only. 

Notable Works: Aurat (Woman, 1940), Roti (Bread, 1942), Anmol Ghadi (Precious 

Moment, 1946), Andaz (Style, 1949), Mother India (1957) 

Raj Kapoor (1924–1988) 

Actor-producer-director Raj Kapoor was the first Indian filmmaker to be called 

“The Showman,” as he rarely failed to entertain his audience. His films were 

unapologetic celebrations of love in all its physical and philosophical splendor, 

thus establishing him as a romantic auteur. Their stories, like those of most of 

his contemporaries debuting in the golden age, always had a message. His later 

films passionately championed women-centric social issues, with such diverse 

topics as widow remarriage and prostitute rehabilitation. His unfinished last 

project, Henna (completed by Raj’s elder son Randhir Kapoor), is a poetic plea 

for harmony and friendship between warring neighbors India and Pakistan. 

Kapoor unabashedly prioritized cinema’s need for entertainment and 

proudly bore his reputation as an entertainer of the masses. Critically acclaimed 

as well, he won four out of his six Best Director Filmfare nominations, along

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with multiple wins in the categories of production, editing, and acting. At 

twenty-four, he made his directing debut under his own production banner, 

RK Films, with Aag (Fire, 1948). The radiance of his creativity rarely dimmed, 

keeping him relevant even four decades later, with his final film being the biggest 

blockbuster of his career: Ram Teri Ganga Maili (O Rama, Your Ganges Has 

Become Impure, 1985). 

A dreamer at heart, Raj Kapoor romanticized poverty and social inequity 

in his films in a way with which every section of the society, especially the 

common man, could empathize. His films in the melodrama genre always had 

top-notch performances and groundbreaking moments of onscreen sensuality, 

be it the exploration of a sensitive theme like adolescent romance, or bringing 

back the “kiss” to the Hindi film. Although he was accused by critics of 

unabashed exploitation of the female form, the retrospect review of his works 

has celebrated him more as a Master of Aesthetic Onscreen Sensuality. The 

greatest bequest of Raj Kapoor’s legacy, however, are the timeless melodies 

that were the highlight of his every film, irrespective of their box-office performance. 

Kapoor had a refined ear for music, which is evident from the fact 

that, globally, the most recognizable Hindi film song, “Awara hoon” (“I am a 

vagabond”), is the title track of his film Awara (The Vagabond, 1951). 

Notable Works: Awara (The Vagabond, 1951), Shree 420 (Mr. 420, 1955), Sangam 

(The Confluence, 1964), Mera Naam Joker (My Name is Joker, 1972), Ram Teri 

Ganga Maili (O Rama, Your Ganges Has Become Impure, 1985) 

Raj Kapoor (left) and V. Shantaram. 


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291 

Bimal Roy (1909–1966) 

The recipient of seven Filmfare Best Director awards, Bimal Roy literally won 

every time he was nominated for this high honor. He is also is the only director 

to have the unique distinction of winning the award thrice in a row, twice 

(1954–1956 and 1959–1961). 

Inspired by Italian neorealism, Bimal Roy’s films were realistic treatments 

of social issues, featuring gritty, unforgettable protagonists. His debut 

Hindi film, Do Bigha Zameen (Two Acres of Land, 1953), inspired by Vittorio 

De Sica’s poignant Bicycle Thieves (1948), had a similar impact on other Indian 

filmmakers attempting realism. This debut effort brought him his first Best 

Director Filmfare award, along with special prizes at international film festivals 

like Cannes and Karlovy Vary. Most of Roy’s onscreen dramas were 

adapted from literary sources, turned into eloquent articulations of burning 

social issues that still connect for their competent achievement in every 

department of filmmaking. His biggest blockbuster, the supernatural romantic 

thriller Madhumati, held the record for the most Filmfare nominations and 

wins over a three-decade period. Searing visuals, distinct mood lighting, a 

perceptive camera, expressive close-ups, and poetic lyrics set to memorable 

folk music telling dramatic tales around multi-layered women characters, 

remain the signature attributes of Bimal Roy’s auteurship. In a way, he could 

well be called India’s first feminist filmmaker. The roles of Meena Kumari in 

Parineeta (The Married Woman, 1953), Kamini Kaushal in Biraj Bahu (Bride 

Biraj, 1954), Vaijayanthimala in Devdas (1955), or Nutan in Sujata (1959) and 

Bandini (Imprisoned, 1963), display his empathetic eye for nuanced feminism. 

Needless to add, each of the above films won acting awards for their leading 

ladies. 

Notable Works: Do Bigha Zameen (1953), Parineeta (1953), Devdas (1955), 

Madhumati (1958), Bandini (1963) 

Guru Dutt (1925–1964) 

Actor-director Guru Dutt, a rebel genius, also known as the “Orson Welles of 

Bollywood,” will forever remain one of Indian cinema’s greatest auteurs. His 

distinct creative voice superbly echoes through his introspective films, which 

elevate the celluloid experience with their engaging narratives, aesthetic use 

of lighting, and groundbreaking black-and-white cinematography. His detailed 

and researched mise-en-scène, lucidly in sync with his screenplays, helped delicately 

unearth the many layers to his characters as they battle, cope with, and 

celebrate the complexities of human existence. A consistent critic of social 

hypocrisy and its effect on the underprivileged, Guru Dutt’s artistic charm lay

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Bollywood FAQ 

Actor-director Guru Dutt in Pyaasa. 


in his making his comments through lyrical, intense films within the songand-dance 

conventions of popular Indian cinema. 

His most ambitious, semi-autobiographical, and dispassionate capturing of 

the highs and lows of those living under the arc lights, Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper 

Flowers, 1959)—which now plays to capacity crowds at art-house re-releases in 

such diverse locales as Germany, France, and Japan—failed miserably on its 

first release. This caused the sensitive filmmaker to bid adieu to his career, just 

as he was starting to ride the crest of his craft. Although his films are today 

considered required viewing, Guru Dutt was tragically under-appreciated 

during his lifetime. Death came, by his own hand, in 1964. 

Notable Works: Baazi (The Bet, 1953), Aar Paar (This or That, 1954), Mr. and Mrs. 

’55 (1955), Pyasa (Thirsty, 1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959)

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293 

Yash Chopra (1932–2012) 

Yash Chopra is that rare filmmaker who traversed two contrasting film genres, 

action and romance, remaining relevant and busy throughout a five-decade 

career as a director-producer. He gave to Bollywood the film that made megastar 

Amitabh Bachchan the face of the “angry young man” genre, Deewar (The 

Wall, 1975). It pioneered a trend for working-class, underdog heroes in gritty 

urban dramas. A year later, he again gave Amitabh one of his most restrained 

roles, as a mature romantic hero who convincingly ages onscreen from a young 

poet to a resigned parent, in Kabhie Kabhie (Sometimes, Sometimes, 1976). The 

film also marked Chopra’s foray into a genre with which his legacy has become 

synonymous—inspiring tales of love in its myriad elements. 

Gorgeous-looking films, shot in picturesque locales, told elegantly via dialogue 

rich in clever one-liners, illuminated by hummable music and poetic 

lyrics—essayed by a charming leading lady (often introduced in white) and a 

gentleman hero—remain the characteristic attributes of his auteurship. Yash 

Chopra made some of his finest films, like the first multi-star Bollywood production, 

Waqt (Time, 1965) and the first songless color film, Ittefaq (Coincidence, 

1969), riding on the Technicolor and technological revolutions of the 1960s. 

By the time he signed off with Jab Tak Hai Jaan (As Long as I Live, 2012), aspirational 

romance in Bollywood had almost relocated to a new landscape, the 

beautiful European vistas, especially of Switzerland. But Chopra never let the 

flow of his poetic tales be disturbed by his vision, which has always remained 

gentle, low-key, and unobtrusive, with indulgent awe. 

Notable Works: Dhool Ka Phool (The Sullied Flower, 1959), Daag (The Blot, 1973), 

Deewar (The Wall, 1975), Silsila (The Affair, 1981), Lamhe (Moments, 1991) 

Vijay Anand (1934–2004) 

Vijay Anand, younger brother of star Dev Anand and director Chetan Anand, 

was one of Bollywood’s first modern directors who blended a refined sense of 

narrative with an unfailing grasp on editing techniques and a master’s flair 

at conceiving a musical scene. This lent to the Indian noir a unique attraction 

of some spectacularly choreographed dance numbers with racing rhythms 

heightening the thrilling impact of his narratives. Constantly inventive with 

his camera angles, in Teesri Manzil (Third Floor, 1966), for example, he captures 

the lead pair from the inside of a guitar, and has the hero serenading the heroine 

through windows of all shapes and sizes in the song “Pal bhar ke liye” (“For 

a moment, please”) in Johny Mera Naam (My Name is Johny, 1970). Anand’s song 

picturizations were in league with the best of Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor, and 

it was not just about a cabaret or a style experiment in an urban thriller. He

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Bollywood FAQ 

also helmed Guide (1965), one of Bollywood’s finest dance-dramas revolving 

around a classical dancer. 

Notable Works: Kala Bazar (Black Market, 1960), Guide (1965), Teesri Manzil 

(1966), Jewel Thief (1967), Johny Mera Naam (1970) 

Hrishikesh Mukherjee (1922–2006) 

Simple, succinct, and relatable, the films of Hrishikesh Mukherjee exude a 

heartwarming charm that can make you laugh and cry. Equally distant from 

the escapist frills of glamor and the hopeless laments of realism, he became the 

master of “middle cinema,” showcasing the little dramas in daily life, usually 

unfolding amid a changing middle-class ethos. He understood human nature, 

especially its shortcomings, to make some memorable characters instantly 

likable. A master storyteller with a brilliant sense of comedy, his narratives, 

like those of Woody Allen, rarely ventured beyond his favorite city, Mumbai, 

but always told deeply observant tales with a universal echo. 

Notable Works: Satyakam (Believer in Truth, 1969), Anand (Joy, 1970), Abhimaan 

(Ego, 1973), Bawarchi (The Cook, 1972), Gol Maal (Confusion, 1979) 

Ramesh Sippy (b. 1947) 

The fact that he made Sholay (Embers, 1975), arguably the greatest Bollywood 

film ever, is reason enough for his entry in any list of Indian auteurs. The 

Filmfare Awards acknowledged his influence in retrospect by honoring him 

with the Best Film of Fifty Years Award at its Golden Jubilee awards ceremony 

in 2005. But Sippy’s repertoire goes beyond this one achievement. His other 

films cover a wide swath of human drama—a mature love story around two 

single parents (Andaz, Style, 1971); a comedy of errors featuring identical twins 

(Seeta aur Geeta, 1972); a heartbreaking romantic musical (Saagar, The Sea, 

1985); a multi-star thriller (Shaan, Pride, 1980); and a superbly acted tale of 

generational confrontation featuring the greatest star-actors of two eras of 

Indian cinema, Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, in Shakti (Power, 1982). 

And when he turned his attentions to the small screen, he gave Indian television 

one of its finest, best-loved melodramas, Buniyaad (The Foundation, 1987). 

This grand family saga of migration and rehabilitation played out against the 

backdrop of the rarely explored partition of India. 

Notable Works: Seeta aur Geeta (1972), Sholay (1975), Shaan (1980), Shakti (1982), 

Saagar (1985)

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295 

Gulzar (b. 1934) 

Born Sampooran Singh in west Punjab (now Pakistan), Gulzar’s has been one 

inspiring, almost movie-like journey from a car mechanic to becoming one of 

India’s most quoted and revered writers, lyricists, and filmmakers. His is also 

the second-most admired voice in Hindi cinema for recitation, after Amitabh 

Bachchan. 

At the time that Gulzar entered the Hindi cinema, it had already started 

renegotiating the traditions of its golden age, the 1950s. Though the influence 

of Urdu language in film songs penned by poet-lyricists had yet to wane, “pure” 

Hindi had begun its search for a linguistic assertion of its own in the songs by 

Shailendra and Anand Bakshi. Gulzar juggled that linguistic diversity, fabulously 

countering a “Mora gora ang . . .” (“Take my fair complexion for your dark 

lure”—lyrics from the 1963 film Bandini [Imprisoned]) with a “Tere bina zindagi 

se koi” (“No regrets sans you, yet no life without you”—lyrics from the 1975 film 

Aandhi [Blizzard]) playing to the public, but never compromising on matters 

Poet-director Gulzar directs Rekha on the sets of Ijaazat. 

 


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of class. This inherent sensitivity of a poet lent to the films Gulzar directed (as 

opposed to those for which he only wrote the songs) multi-layered conjurings 

of simple, day-to-day imagery and profound messages of love and loss. In 

their universal echo, U.K.–based film critic Mark Cousins describes Gulzar as 

one of world cinema’s most underrated filmmakers. His protagonists, too, in 

complete contrast to the ubiquitous angry young men of the 1970s, were soft, 

unassuming split images of the poet-director himself, in films like Parichay 

(Introduction, 1972) and Khushboo (Fragrance, 1975). 

Unlike his contemporaries Yash Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, and Prakash 

Mehra, none of Gulzar’s films were blockbusters. But they were consistently 

good. It’s difficult, in fact, to find a weak film of his, despite his juggling 

between genres—thriller (Achanak, Suddenly, 1972), drama (Aandhi, Blizzard, 

1975), comedy (Angoor, Grapes, 1982), devotional (Meera, 1979), terrorism 

(Maachis, Matches, 1996), simple children’s adventures (Kitaab, Books, 1977), 

complex adult tangles (Ijaazat, Permission, 1987), and media—film, television 

(Mirza Ghalib, 1988) and music albums (Sunset Point). Most critics rate Mausam 

(Seasons, 1975)—for which Gulzar wrote, produced, directed, and supplied the 

lyrics—as his best. 

Notable Works: Koshish (Effort, 1972), Mausam (1975), Aandhi (1975), Kitaab 

(1977), Ijaazat (1987) 

Shyam Benegal (b. 1934) 

A pioneer filmmaker of Bollywood’s second New Wave Cinema Movement of 

the 1970s, Benegal engaged his audiences with interesting stories sourced from 

a diversity of Indian milieus. These films, unlike other art-house experiments 

of the time, are narrated in a simple, straightforward manner, to make realistic 

cinema accessible and commercially viable. They represent Indian social realities 

through a stock set of survivor and oppressor characters, such as the cruel 

landlord, the corrupt official, the vulnerable tribal woman, the struggling 

farmer, the misunderstood artist, the prostitute and her poor migrant paramour. 

Criss-crossing regions, timelines, literature, life stories, and milieus, 

his keen observation and objective research is reflected in his revelatory takes 

across a gamut of genres. Spotting and showcasing talents across every discipline 

of filmmaking, Benegal’s other great contribution remains his nurturing 

of three of the four star-pillars of the 1970s’ parallel/art-house cinema movement—actresses 

Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, and the “Bachchan of Art 

Cinema,” Naseeurddin Shah. 

Notable Works: Ankur (Seedling, 1974), Nishant (Night’s End, 1975), Manthan (The 

Churning, 1976), Kalyug (The Age of Vice, 1981), Mandi (Market, 1983)

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Shyam Benegal. 


Subhash Ghai (b. 1945) 

Ghai is the last of the twentieth-century filmmakers to be rewarded with 

the title of showman. His films provide a nostalgic yet contemporary bridge 

for the stars and styles of the golden age to smoothly transition through the 

disco era. The result is a group of of actors who understand and celebrate the 

masala film. The maestro serves up this concoction with its finest ingredients: 

big stars, bigger canvases, grand dialogue, grandiose songs picturized with 

panache, attractive leads and unforgettable villains, in nearly three-hour-long 

epic extravaganzas. 

Notable Works: Karz (Debt, 1982), Karma (Duty, 1986), Ram Lakhan (Ram and 

Lakhan, 1989), Saudagar (Merchants, 1991), Yuvraaj (Crown Prince, 2008) 

Ram Gopal Varma (b. 1962) 

His production house is called the Factory, and like an assembly-line operator, 

Ram Gopal Varma, known in the film industry as RGV, has been making 

films and introducing new talent on a continual basis for years . A maverick 

filmmaker with an iconoclast’s attitude, RGV has brought a rebel’s spin into 

every Bollywood genre he’s tackled. Organized-crime movies, zany romances,

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and horror films remain his notable calling cards. However, it was his Mumbai 

Mafia–inspired and Sarkar political-thriller trilogies that established him as 

a fine raconteur of the urban underbelly with a master’s understanding of the 

underplayed crests and faults of its most attractive triad—the police officer, the 

politician, and the popular goon. 

Notable Works: Shiva (1988), Rangeela (Colorful, 1995), Satya (Truth, 1998), Bhoot 

(Ghost, 2001), Sarkar (The Ruler, 2003) 

Sanjay Leela Bhansali (b. 1963) 

Bollywood’s latest epic maker, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, is a filmmaker whose 

sensibilities evoke the golden era—even the building in Mumbai where he 

stays is called the Magnum Opus. His every film, irrespective of its box-office 

fate, is a visual masterpiece. Even his harshest critics line up to see “how much 

bigger” his new release is over the last one. His characters, whether based in 

reality or literature, inhabit a parallel universe that exists only in the director’s 

imagination. All are beautiful and lonely men and women inhabiting 

grandiose houses, wasting away to the mysterious indecisions of love unrequited 

and the madness of self-destruction, singing heart-touching melodies, 

achieving catharsis in spectacularly mounted operatic dance sequences. Soap 

operatic and magnificent, his films are choreographed with passion. No one in 

twenty-first century Bollywood can conceive and picturize songs like Sanjay 

Leela Bhansali. Only recently, he has begun to create his own music, which 

effectively embodies the soul of his dreamlike cinema. 

Notable Works: Khamoshi The Musical (1996), Devdas (2002), Black (2005), 

Saawariya (Beloved, 2007), Padmaavat (2018) 

Notable Others 

Sohrab Modi (1897–1984) 

The original epic maker, Sohrab Modi was also an influential artist whose 

compelling works reflect the best traditions of theater and cinema. 

Must Watch: Pukar (The Call, 1939), Jhansi Ki Rani (Queen of Jhansi, 1953), Mirza 

Ghalib (1954)

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Kamal Amrohi (1918–1993) 

The czar of costume-dramas, Kamal Amrohi understood better than anyone 

the class and characters of the aristocratic Muslim milieu. His attention to the 

minutest detail might involve actions as seemingly simple as the wave of a 

hand or the subtlest of glances. 

Must Watch: Mahal (The Palace, 1949), Daera (Limits, 1953), Pakeezah (1972) 

Raj Khosla (1925–1991) 

A master of Bollywood noir, with an ear for catchy melodies, he knew how to 

use music to heighten the impact of his thrilling stories. 

Must Watch: CID (1956), Woh Kaun Thi? (Who Was She?, 1964), Mera Saaya (My 

Shadow, 1966) 

Basu Chatterjee (b. 1930) 

A critically acclaimed, popular, middle-cinema 

auteur of the 1970s, he 

made films of human drama, unfolding 

from seemingly mundane 

moments in the lives of common, yet 

memorable, men and women. Think 

short stories, not novels; simple 

moments, not epic life-changing 

events—but all remarkably effective. 

Must Watch: Rajnigandha (Tuberose, 

1974), Chitchor (Heart-Stealer, 1976), Ek 

Ruka Hua Faisla (A Pending Decision, 

1986) 

Manmohan Desai (1937–1994) 

Action-adventures with plenty of 

romance and boisterous comedy were 

his specialty. A popular filmmaker 

of the seventies and early eighties, 

Manmohan Desai’s films enhanced 

and established the masala film, a 

genre exclusive to Indian cinema. Manmohan Desai. Photo courtesy of NFAI

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Must Watch: Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Naseeb (Fate, 1981), Coolie (1983) 

Prakash Mehra (1939–2009) 

Slightly Westernized in treatment, Prakash Mehra’s masala films skewed 

towards angst and intense romance and were essentially hero-driven narratives 

starring Amitabh Bachchan. 

Must Watch: Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973), Muqaddar ka Sikandar (Conqueror of 

Destiny, 1978), Sharaabi (Drunkard, 1984) 

Mahesh Bhatt (b. 1948) 

His films have established a unique brand of intense relationship cinema, rare 

in Bollywood. His unapologetic and self-deprecating autobiographical films, 

which explore the personal angst of his childhood illegitimacy to adulthood 

experiences with infidelity, have established Mahesh Bhatt as an uninhibited, 

unconventional, altogether daring filmmaker. 

Must Watch: Arth (Meaning, 1982), Saaransh (Essence, 1984), Zakhm (Hurt, 1999) 

Ashutosh Gowariker (b. 1964) 

Serious, incisive, thoughtful, and meticulously researched, the Academy 

Award–nominated films of Ashutosh Gowariker are an extension of his personality, 

irrespective of whether the backdrop is medieval Mughal India or a 

modern space station in the United States. 

Must Watch: Lagaan (The Tax, 2001), Swades (Homeland, 2003), Jodhaa Akbar 

(2008) 

Rajkumar Hirani (b. 1962) 

Full of life, relaxed, and laced with a strong social message, Rajkumar Hirani’s 

films never preach. An accurate observer-raconteur of urban middle-class 

characters, he stylishly blends well-meant idealism with comedy, even in the 

darkest and most disturbing moments of our time. 

Must Watch: Lage Raho Munnabhai (Carry On, Munna Bro, 2006), 3 Idiots 

(2009), Sanju (2018) 

Vishal Bharadwaj (b. 1965) 

The Bard of Avon’s most consistently accomplished Indian adaptor, Vishal 

Bharadwaj has brought back to popular cinema the essence of India’s

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301 

hinterlands and has done so with élan. That apart, his strong female protagonists, 

his explorations into the gray and the dark themes of vengeance, sexuality, 

love, and deceit, and his rich and raw, self-composed music scores make 

him an auteur to watch in the new millennium. 

Must Watch: Maqbool (2003), Saat Khoon Maaf (7 Murders Forgiven, 2011), 

Haider (2014) 

Farah Khan (b. 1965) 

The lone female filmmaker on the list, Farah Khan is the most successful 

twenty-first century upholder of the best traditions of the masala film musical, 

adapted to modern viewing sensibilities. 

Must Watch: Main Hoon Naa (I Am There, 2004), Om Shanti Om (2007), Happy 

New Year (2014) 

Karan Johar (b. 1972) 

Critics may dismiss his blockbusters as cotton candy, but rarely has anyone 

among his contemporaries been as emotionally accurate in capturing the 

conflicts and connections between urban life and the “Great Indian Family.” 

Must Watch: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens, 1998), Kabhi Khushi 

Kabhie Gham (Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow, 2001), My Name is Khan 

(2010) 

Anurag Kashyap (b. 1972) 

His character-driven cinema is all about presenting substance with style. 

The “Quentin Tarantino of Bollywood,” however, has carved a distinctive creative 

voice, articulated through strong characters, gritty storylines, inventive 

camera angles, unexplored milieus, and a raw, throbbing score that make him 

a unique, lone “glamor maker” in modern Indian Indie cinema. 

Must Watch: Black Friday (2004), Gulaal (Colors, 2009), Dev D (2009)

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Class Acts 

Dancer-actress Waheeda Rehman describes the experience of good 

acting as “a needle that should pierce your heart and sew your wounds 

all the way up.” The effect could be a throbbing pain that gives pleasure in 

retrospect, or just a cathartic joy forever. The following is a countdown of 

Bollywood’s finest and most memorable portrayals, representing the gamut of 

human emotions—anger to pathos, comic to disgust, courage to fear, and love 

to wonder—in a narrative tradition that seeks to move its audience while still 

appealing to their collective intellect. 

Raj Kapoor as Raj Raghunath (Awara/The Vagabond, 

1951) 

Director: Raj Kapoor 

Creating a strange hybrid metaphor of the young and hopeful immigrant and 

the country bumpkin who is corrupted by the big city, Raj Kapoor took an 

essentially American stereotype—the vagabond—and gave it a Chaplinesque 

sensibility with dollops of desi (Indian) flavor and morality moorings with a 

universal appeal. Even today, the name Raju (as Raj Kapoor’s Raj Raghunath 

is affectionately called in the film) conjures a sense of fun, innocence, and 

humanism. Little wonder then that Richard Corliss in Time (January 19, 2000), 

in one of the magazine’s review lists of the most iconic movie performances of 

the twentieth century, declares: “To most of the planet, Raj Kapoor (in Awara) 

was India in all its vitality, humanity and poignancy.” 

Wow Moment 

“Awara hoon”—the song, the mood, the triumph of the tramp, and the arrival 

of Hindi cinema’s greatest showman, Raj Kapoor!

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Balraj Sahni as Shambu Mahato (Do Bigha Zameen/ 

Two Acres of Land, 1953) 

Director: Bimal Roy 

Balraj Sahni’s landmark portrayal of a displaced farmer in Bimal Roy’s breakthrough 

Hindi film, also celebrated for pioneering the Indian wave of neorealism, 

is often hailed as its first realistically acted performance. Long before 

Aamir Khan talked about “method acting,” Sahni had spent months with 

Kolkata’s rickshaw pullers to get his performance right to its last nuance. At a 

time when stylistic stage acting was in vogue, Sahni opted for a naturalness 

and subtlety, making a resounding impact. 

Wow Moment 

The now-iconic rickshaw-pullers’ race takes the poignant scene far beyond 

its innovative filming to emerge as a haunting metaphor for how an honest, 

hardworking, rural individual can be reduced to the level of an animal in the 

inhuman grind of the urban milieu. 

Nargis as Radha (Mother India, 1957) 

Director: Mehboob Khan 

Nargis quit the banner (RK Films) that had made her a star and parted ways 

with the romance of her life (Raj Kapoor) after a decade-plus association to 

make Mother India. At the peak of her career, the industry’s leading actress and 

“Queen of Romance,” risked playing against type by taking on the role of the 

mother to actors only a year her junior (Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar). The 

glamor icon of 1950s cinema also did her own stunts in the film, including a 

scene in which she had to grapple for days in mud and muck, and was nearly 

killed while filming a scene involving a fire! Following the release of Mother 

India, Nargis became a national icon and the first actor to be nominated to the 

Parliament. From a beautiful belle in love to an abused beast of burden, from 

an abandoned, lonely wife to a raging mother taking on an entire village— 

Nargis deservedly won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for her performance. 

Since then, she has been the ideal of every Indian actress. 

Wow Moment 

As her bandit son, Birju (Sunil Dutt), kidnaps the villain’s daughter from her 

marriage ceremony, Nargis pleads, cajoles, and warns him not to tamper with 

a young woman’s honor. He gallops away, confident that his mother would

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Nargis in Mother India. 


never harm her favorite son. She gathers herself, strengthens her resolve, and 

shoots him down. As Birju tumbles to his death, the brave mother crumbles. 

Madubala as Anarkali (Mughal-e-Azam/The Great 

Mughal, 1960) 

Director: K. Asif 

Madhubala hastened her own death to play Anarkali in Indian cinema’s 

most ambitious and melodious costume-drama. The actress, who had been 

diagnosed with a hole in her heart, refused to let a body double replace her 

in a prison sequence wherein she was dragged in heavy chains so as not to 

compromise on the moment’s authenticity or impact. Despite a failed, offscreen 

love affair with Dilip Kumar, she gave to her onscreen tryst with Prince 

Salim (Kumar) some of Hindi cinema’s most romantic moments. And when she 

danced, throwing caution to the wind while singing “Pyar kiya to darna kya” 

(“Why fear in love”), rebellious love got its most inspiring icon, a slave girl with 

the daring of a queen. Madhubala was born to immortalize Anarkali!

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Wow Moment 

Seemingly countless Anarkalis sing and dance in the endless reflections of 

glass mirrors in the Mughal court’s Sheesh Mahal (Glass Palace) as a stunned 

Akbar looks on. 

Dilip Kumar as Gunga (Gunga Jumna, 1961) 

Director: Nitin Bose 

Dilip Kumar’s “farmer turned dacoit,” Gunga, is a frequently referenced character 

by Indian actors due to its nuanced details, emotional range, character 

growth, and its star’s fabulous mastery of a vernacular dialect (Bhojpuri). 

Kumar’s village bumpkin, Gunga, became an overnight folk hero for his critical 

questioning of social loopholes in relatable, common man’s lingo. The angst 

of his post-interval outlaw character was a major (and admitted) influence on 

Amitabh Bachchan for his performance in Deewar (The Wall, 1975). Kumar not 

only produced the film, he is rumored to have ghost-directed it. The holder 

of the highest tally of Best Actor Filmfare Awards (eight), however, narrowly 

missed the honor (to Raj Kapoor for Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai) in his greatest 

acting triumph. 

Wow Moment 

“Nain lad gayi hai . . .” (“Oh, our eyes have met and the throb peaks . . .”)—only 

the thespian could give an earthy yet lingeringly romantic ode to love in a 

tragic dacoit-drama. 

Meena Kumari as Choti Bahu (Sahib Biwi Aur 

Ghulam/Master, Wife and Servant, 1962) 

Director: Abrar Alvi 

Years after she drank herself to death onscreen as Choti Bahu in Sahib Biwi 

Aur Ghulam, Meena Kumari met a similar fate in real life. The tragedy queen 

never reached that level of tragic impact again, not even in her brilliant swan 

song, Pakeezah (The Pure One, 1972). Choti Bahu appears moments before the 

film’s interval, but as the camera goes in for a close-up, the awe experienced by 

her employee, Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), echoes the audience’s gasp as well. And 

then begins the fall. Never again would a glorious character’s crumble to ignominy 

be documented with such a painfully precise performance. Meena 

Kumari earned her third Best Actress Filmfare Award for the role in a year in

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Bollywood FAQ 

Meena Kumari in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam. 


which all the Best Actress nominations were hers alone. That record remains 

unbeaten. 

Wow Moment 

The entire “Na jao saiyan . . .” (“Don’t wriggle out of my embrace tonight”) song 

sequence, followed by that heart-piercing lament of loss, regret, and realization 

of complete doom for committing a forbidden act—drinking alcohol by 

the daughter-in-law of an aristocrated Hindu household. Try to recall a more 

impactful drunk act by any other actress (or actor) anywhere. 

Nutan as Kalyani (Bandini/Imprisoned, 1963) 

Director: Bimal Roy 

A compassionate village girl takes an extreme moral plunge to poison the 

shrewish wife of her lover. He remains unaware of her love or sacrifice, however, 

as she happily approaches her prison sentence. Rehabilitation beckons 

in the form of a marriage proposal from a handsome prison doctor, but she 

throws everything away to return to nurse her ailing first love. Inspired by a 

true incident from the prison diaries of a pre-Independence era jailor, Nutan 

delivers a power-packed performance replete with nuanced shades. No wonder

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307 

poet-director Gulzar—whose first film song, “Mora gora ang” (“Color my fair 

beauty in Krishna’s dark complexion”), was dramatized by Nutan in Bandini— 

hailed her performance as a “monument of acting.” Nutan won the third of her 

five Best Actress Filmfare Awards for Bandini. 

Wow Moment 

Negotiating the thin line between a moment’s weakness and lifelong calumny, 

Kalyani steels her resolve and inches closer to her unsuspecting victim with 

her poisoned drink. The sheer conviction of Nutan’s interpretation makes us 

willing accomplices to a vendetta-driven act of violence. 

Waheeda Rehman as Rosie Marco (Guide, 1965) 

Director: Vijay Anand 

Waheeda Rehman took up the character of Rosie, a rehabilitated devadasi 

(temple dancer), a role that had been rejected by every leading actress of the 

day. The character does everything that pristine Hindi film heroines couldn’t 

even imagine—she puts identity and career over marital security, commits 

adultery, embarks on a live-in relationship, and then abandons her lover 

Waheeda Rehman, with Dev Anand (left) and Kishore Sahu, in Guide. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

mid-way on his journey to self-destruction. Yet, it is Rehman’s heartfelt realization 

of Rosie that makes the viewer empathize with her. Feeling, demanding, 

and faulting, Rosie is a real woman in mainstream Hindi cinema’s plethora 

of uni-dimensional heroines in idealized roles of lover, wife, and mother. The 

character’s other iconicity lay in her elaborate Indian classical and folk-based 

dance sequences. 

Wow Moment 

Savor Waheeda Rehman’s effervescence in the entire song sequence of “Aaj 

phir jeene ki” (“I want to live again today”)—never has the abstract feeling of 

freedom been so effectively realized. 

Rajesh Khanna as Anand Sehgal (Anand/Joy, 1971) 

Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee 

Anand not only remains one of Bollywood’s most loved characters, he is also 

the highest acting note in superstar Rajesh Khanna’s tragic-romantic oeuvre. 

The performance is that rare cinematic achievement of a great character finding 

its perfect actor, as the eternally positive character gets to bask in Khanna’s 

radiant interpretation. A lasting date with love, sacrifice, and subtle romance, 

Anand marks an unforgettable peak for Khanna, who walked away with his 

second Best Actor Filmfare Award for his portrayal. 

Wow Moment 

Anand’s death scene is unquestionably one of the best-written and best-performed 

scenes of its kind, where the voice takes over the memory to mindblowing 

effect. That an undying persona like Anand gets to have the last 

hurrah of his life is a narrative masterstroke—his voice lives on moments after 

his death, playing on a recorded tape, lending the scene an imaginative twist 

in which the dead consoles the bereaved. 

Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh (Sholay/Embers, 1975) 

Director: Ramesh Sippy 

Here we have a villain who not only matches but bests the lasting recall of 

many screen heroes. Amid a deluge of memorable parts by leading stars of the 

day (Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, and Sanjeev Kumar), 

newcomer Amjad Khan, despite not making his entrance until nearly an hour

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309 

Amjad Khan in Sholay. 


into the film, makes an impact like none other. An unsettling presence with a 

demonic laugh and a chilling voice, Gabbar Singh’s sadistic monstrosity is 

evil’s most attractive and compelling onscreen double! 

Wow Moment 

Gabbar narrating his own fear fable to his henchmen as a loyalty-instilling 

ritual—“For miles around my presence, when a baby cries, the mother consoles, 

‘Go to sleep or Gabbar will come.’” Need we say more? 

Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay Verma (Deewar/The Wall, 

1975) 

Director: Yash Chopra 

He resists charity with a vengeance. He never bows before God, nor does he 

enter the temple. One never sees him share a smile or loosen those frayed 

nerves. Raging and revolting, angry and hurting, Amitabh Bachchan builds 

upon his “explosive anger” from Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973) to lend an arresting 

quality to his mature outlaw’s angst in Deewar. Vijay’s many shades of anger 

continue to impress in the twenty-first century, in films like Black (2005) and 

Pink (2016). But one should never forget that it peaked long ago, with Vijay 

Verma in Deewar.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar. 


Wow Moment 

Vijay’s first assertion of his physical power and nonconformist mettle when he 

singlehandedly battles a bunch of goons is perhaps Bollywood’s most convincing 

dishoom-dishoom (fist-to-fist) fight scene ever. 

Smita Patil as Usha (Bhumika/The Role, 1977) 

Director: Shyam Benegal 

Inspired by the life and times of Hansa Wadkar, an iconoclast Marathi actress 

of the 1930s and 1940s, the film’s protagonist, Urvashi, is a bundle of contradictions, 

who in the process of living different roles forgets to live her own life. For 

the success in interpreting the story of an ordinary girl-next-door, Usha, who 

becomes actress Urvashi by chance, not choice, credit must go to Smita Patil. 

She believably internalizes her character’s emotional insecurities to portray 

the real vulnerability beneath the seemingly confident and compulsive relation-hopping 

young woman. “For vividly drawing the dual roles of woman and 

actress, the private life and public visage; with rare sensibility and a perpetual 

sense of the ironic,” Smita Patil won her first Best Actress National Award. 

Wow Moment 

After three failed marriages, when true love finally appears in the form of 

smitten co-star Ranjan (Ananth Nag), Urvashi’s one-line rejection of him summarizes 

the irony of her famed life: “You are the only one who has always 

given all along . . . I don’t want to lose you by marrying you.”

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Smita Patil in Bhumika. 


Amol Palekar as Ram Prasad Dashrath Prasad 

Sharma (Gol Maal/Confusion, 1979) 

Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee 

Effortlessly switching between acting for the film (as Ram Prasad) and in the 

film (as Ram’s fictitious non-conformist brother Laxman Prasad), Amol 

Palekar’s delightful and deliberately confusing date with double trouble 

proves that one can be impactful without going over the top. Credit goes to 

him for matching, frame for frame, Utpal Dutt’s towering performance in the 

film’s many onscreen confrontations. 

Amol Palekar won his lone Best Actor Filmfare Award for his convincing 

take on the idea of split personality, à la a desi Dr. Jekyll and (a no-less charming) 

Mr. Hyde. 

Wow Moment 

Gol Maal’s climactic chase sequence of a disheveled Utpal Dutt in crumpled 

pajamas with his bumbling sister (Shubha Khote) in tow, running after a

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Bollywood FAQ 

harried and “exposed” Ram Prasad, is easily one of the most imaginative, 

funniest sequences in cinema. Running around the house has never been such 

fun, and Palekar oscillating between his sober brother and reckless twin is a 

comic delight. 

Naseeruddin Shah as Anirudh Parmar (Sparsh/Touch, 

1980) 

Director: Sai Paranjpye 

To a character with tremendous emotive potential, Naseeruddin Shah as the 

blind principal of a blind school, lends fabulous restraint. He makes the restlessness 

of his internal battles over his sighted girlfriend’s “imagined” intentions 

of pity, palpable and pervasive enough to make us empathize with the 

darkness shaping his ominous personal decisions. Whether it’s his confident, 

natural connection with the institute’s kids or in that vulnerable guarding of 

his infirmity—his character lends a tactile dimension to the onscreen tension. 

Naseeruddin Shah won his first Best Actor National Award for Sparsh. 

Wow Moment 

Anirudh’s attempts to comprehend the beauty of his lover on their first date, 

using the strength of the senses (touch, not sight) privy to him, capture a 

romantic moment that’s subtle, natural, and yet memorable. 

Rekha as Umrao (Umrao Jaan, 1981) 

Director: Muzaffar Ali 

The courtesan has been a primary bearer of strong and radical female presences 

in Hindi cinema—an attractive fictional mix of grit and passion, beauty 

and sacrifice. Rekha’s Umrao Jaan was all of that and more, with the character’s 

appeal being sourced from reality. Rekha became the first actress to win the 

Best Actress National Award in a glamorous role for effectively capturing the 

tragedy of a nineteenth-century poetess and a thinking woman ahead of her 

times, who just happens to be a courtesan! 

Wow Moment 

“In ankhon ki masti” (“The play in my eyes”), “Dil cheez kya hai” (“What a 

thing, this heart is”) . . . Rekha’s every song performance is a master class in 

gestured emoting that tells a standalone story. Still considered a benchmark

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313 

role, when director Ali was recently asked if he would ever reattempt his classic, 

he said, “Even if I decide to remake Umrao Jaan, where is the actress to play 

the part? Just by pouting into the camera you cannot become a legend!” 

Om Puri as Anant Welankar (Ardh Satya/Half Truth, 

1983) 

Director: Govind Nihalani 

There have been rule-breaking cop roles before, and more since, but a freshfrom-acting-school 

Om Puri’s seething portrayal of a conscientious police 

officer tested by inner conflict is a test-case study for every actor on how to 

portray anger in all its manifestations—repressed, suppressed, suicidal, and 

primal. Om Puri won his second, well-deserved Best Actor National Award 

for his fiery portrayal in a film whose documentary-like realism has made it a 

curriculum initiation exercise for police academy recruits. 

Wow Moment 

The catastrophic climax, when Welankar’s perennially simmering anger 

boils over after one insult too many from the corrupt politician Rama Shetty 

(Sadashiv Amrapurkar). As he strangles him to death with his bare hands, shot 

in disturbing real-time, his handicapped rage of a lifetime achieves chilling 

assertion. 

Shabana Azmi as Pooja Malhotra (Arth/Meaning, 

1983) 

Director: Mahesh Bhatt 

Three decades since its release, Arth remains a crowning jewel in five-time Best 

Actress National and Filmfare Award-winning Shabana Azmi’s crown. Pity to 

courage, love to disgust, rage to calm—Pooja Malhotra is that rare character 

vehicle that enables the “Meryl Streep of Bollywood” to play a voluble gamut 

of human emotions. For this performance, Shabana Azmi won her second Best 

Actress National and Filmfare Award. 

Wow Moment 

When Pooja first sees her husband, Inder (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), with his 

mistress, Kavita (Smita Patil), at a party, hurt and betrayal hurtle into unrestrained 

verbal abuse, triggering the subsequent undoing of Kavita.

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Kamal Haasan as Srinivas and Sridevi as Viji (Sadma/ 

Shock, 1983) 

Director: Balu Mahendra 

Srinivas (Kamal Haasan) is a young school teacher who, on a trip to the city 

(Chennai), is lured by a friend to visit a madam’s house for some “loosening 

up” fun. There, he meets a childlike adult girl, Viji, the brothel’s new acquisition, 

whom he realizes is not what she appears to be. She was a city girl, 

Bhagyalakshmi, who had been waylaid from a mental hospital, where she was 

being treated for selective amnesia after an accident had erased her memory 

from the age of seven, thus making her behave like someone of that tender 

age. Srinivas rescues her from the brothel and escapes to his home in the hills, 

where he lovingly nurtures her, hoping that, someday, the two lonely souls will 

eventually become each other’s family. Srinivas is Viji’s best friend, parent, 

teacher, and guide, fulfilling every need a seven-year-old could have. But once 

Viji is cured, her past returns at the cost of her immediate present, completely 

wiping away her memories of Srinivas. 

Wow Moment 

In the heartbreaking climax, as Viji is now returning to the city as “adult” 

Bhagyalakshmi, Srinivas, without regard for his own dignity, desperately 

recreates every antic from their childish pranks to elicit some miraculous 

recognition. But the kind Bhagyalakshmi merely mistakes Srinivas for a mad 

beggar and tosses him a banana. The sight of a disheveled, broken, and physically 

battered Srinivas, limping and crying behind the exiting train, could 

move even the toughest heart to tears. The performance marked his induction 

into the pantheon of acting legends. Sridevi’s childlike woman protagonist 

catapulted the popular regional star to national fame, subsequently making 

her Bollywood’s number-one heroine of the 1980s. 

Shah Rukh Khan as Rahul Mehra (Darr/Fear, 1993) 

Director: Yash Chopra 

“Tu haan kar, ya na kar tu hai meri Kiran!” (“Whether you say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ 

you still will be ‘My Kiran’”)—declared the obsessed lover in Darr. Baazigar 

(Gambler, 1993) and Anjaam (Outcome, 1994) may have been darker and less 

forgiving, but it was Darr that won the most fans for the narrative’s stalker / 

anti-hero.

Class Acts 

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Wow Moment 

The standout scene must be the chillingly shot Holi sequence, where the jilted 

stalker comes to “leave a personal mark” on his love! Although contrary to 

logic, he manages to convince the viewer to empathize with his unsavory 

intentions as he turns a “molestation” threat into an act of right. 

Seema Biswas as Phoolan Devi (Bandit Queen, 1994) 

Director: Shekhar Kapur 

Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal called Bandit Queen “possibly the greatest 

film ever made in India.” Biswas’s onscreen take on the abused and valorized 

bandit queen of Chambals, Phoolan Devi, is a genuinely raw and disturbing 

performance. Its depictions of the scars of caste and child abuse, the psychological 

damage of gang rape and public dishonor are almost too real for passive 

viewing. Seema Biswas won a Best Actress National Award for her portrayal of 

the dacoit-turned-politician. 

Seema Biswas as “Bandit Queen” Phoolan Devi. 


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Wow Moment 

A mature Phoolan, now a dreaded gangster, returns to her in-laws’ village to 

exact revenge on her first predator—her husband. As she beats, claws, and literally 

tears him apart, there are tears in her eyes and blood on her hands, She 

shouts that no one should ever marry off a little girl. And with that, a lifelong 

scar is bandaged. 

Vidya Balan as Silk (The Dirty Picture, 2012) 

Director: Milan Luthria 

In yet another groundbreaking biopic on the life and times of an iconic 1980s 

B-Grade actress, Silk Smitha, Vidya Balan not only makes a life in “dirt” beautiful 

by lending vulnerability, credibility, and dignity to the character of a social 

outcast, but also by molding and abusing her body to capture the pleasure and 

pain of an ambitious achiever’s unconventional life. With The Dirty Picture, 

Vidya Balan became the third Indian actress—after Shabana Azmi (Arth) and 

Smita Patil (Chakra)—to win both the Best Actress Filmfare and National 

Awards for the same performance. 

Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture. 


Class Acts 

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Wow Moment 

Silk’s tough-talking, pre-interval acceptance speech—“Some make their names 

through their work, I achieved fame through the infamy of mine”—at a film 

award ceremony, attacking the moral double standards of an exploitative patriarchal 

society. 

Notable Others 

■■ 

Fearless Nadia (Hunterwali / The Lady with the Whip, 1935) 

■■ 

Shanta Apte (Duniya Na Mane / Denied By the World, 1935) 

■■ 

Sunil Dutt (Mujhe Jeene Do / I Want to Live, 1963) 

■■ 

Prithviraj Kapoor (Mughal-E-Azam / The Great Mughal, 1965) 

■■ 

Dev Anand (Guide, 1966) 

■■ 

Jaya Bhaduri (Guddi, 1971) 

■■ 

Sanjeev Kumar (Koshish / Effort, 1972) 

■■ 

Balraj Sahni (Garam Hava / Hot Winds, 1974) 

■■ 

Suchitra Sen (Aandhi / Blizzard, 1975) 

■■ 

Sharmila Tagore (Mausam / Seasons, 1976) 

■■ 

Anupam Kher (Saaransh / Essence, 1984) 

Suchitra Sen and Sanjeev Kumar in Aandhi. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

■■ 

Aamir Khan (Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar / The Winner Takes All, 1992) 

■■ 

Sunny Deol (Damini / Lightning, 1993) 

■■ 

Madhuri Dixit (Mrityudand / Death Sentence, 1997) 

■■ 

Rani Mukerji (Black, 2005) 

■■ 

Abhishek Bachchan (Guru, 2007) 

■■ 

Kareena Kapoor (Jab We Met / When We Met, 2007) 

■■ 

Ranbir Kapoor (Barfi!, 2012) 

■■ 

Farhan Akhtar (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag / Run, Milkha, Run, 2013) 

■■ 

Kangana Ranaut (Queen, 2015)

28 

101 Bollywood Movies 

and Songs to See! 

How does one select 101 notables, from a film corpus in the thousands, 

and song and dance numbers in the lakhs, spanning more than a century? 

This list features a mix of masterpieces, representative works across 

genres, some cult surprises, and few hidden gems awaiting global discovery—each 

one containing some moment that assures unforgettable viewing 

pleasures for both first-timers and repeat fans. Most importantly, they all are 

digitally accessible vignettes, ranging from timeless classics of aesthetic high 

art to the rare, experimental, and evergreen blockbusters, each one contributing 

to the good, the bad, and the spectacular in Indian cinema today. 

1. Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra, 1913) 

Director: Dadasaheb Phalke; Cast: D. D. Dabke, Salunke, Bhalchandra 

D. Phalke 

This silent film, one of but ten surviving classics from India’s silent era, 

has been digitally restored. Though only two of its four reels are available, 

featuring the opening and closing sequences, they highlight the ambitions, 

the cinematic achievements, and the concern for realism in the filmmaking 

styles of the Father of Indian Cinema. It revolves around the righteous King 

Harishchandra, who first sacrifices his kingdom, followed by his wife, and 

finally, his child, to honor his promise to a powerful sage Vishwamitra. In the 

end, moved by his nobility and sense of ethics, the gods return his possessions, 

heightening his earthly glory forever. 

Many fundamentals of the Bollywood film were established with Raja 

Harishchandra, including “entertainment with a message” and a “happy 

ending.” Advertised as “a performance with 57,000 photographs and a picture 

two-miles long for rupees three annas only,” the film has an all-male cast 

(young boys were cast in female parts) and was an instant success, establishing 

Phalke as Indian cinema’s first producer, director, and editor. The negative was

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Bollywood FAQ 

processed in a makeshift darkroom in the kitchen of Phalke’s Bombay home. 

A family production, Phalke’s wife, Saraswatibai, perforated the film stock 

at night, and his son Bhalchandra made his acting debut as Harishchandra’s 

progeny. The making of the film was the focus of a critically acclaimed Marathi 

language feature film, Harishchandrachi Factory (2009) by first-time director 

Paresh Mokashi. 

2. The Light of Asia (1925) 

Director: Franz Osten; Cast: Himanshu Rai, Seeta Devi 

Innovatively integrating the epic aspirations of semi-historic legends and 

mythical adventure films of early Indian cinema, The Light of Asia (Prem 

Sanyas, in Hindi) is a memorable account of the life of Gautama Buddha, 

adapted from Edwin Arnold’s poetic work The Light of Asia (1879). It describes 

the journey of Prince Gautama becoming the Buddha, or the “Enlightened 

One!” Firoze Rangoonwalla, in A Pictorial History of Indian Cinema (London: 

Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1979) describes it as “a courageous co-production 

with Germany that took Indian cinema into the world arena, even if only 

for a short while.” Made as a German-Indian collaboration between Munichborn 

Franz Osten and actor-filmmaker Himanshu Rai, the film opens with 

a gorgeously bedecked elephant looking straight into the camera, preceding 

an intertitle alluding to the West’s fascination with “romantic India.” Other 

intertitles perpetuate Western clichés about India in early twentieth century— 

a land of elephants, snake charmers, and ascetics! The maharajah of Jaipur 

(from the west Indian state of Rajasthan) had provided his own (as well as 

state) resources, including priceless costumes, retinues of retainers, troops of 

elephants, camels and horses, and access to his palaces for the film’s shooting. 

The filmmakers were therefore able to make the claim: “This unique film was 

produced entirely in India, without the aid of studio sets, artificial lights, 

faked-up properties or make-up.” Presented as a movie landmark, another of 

the film’s intertitles informs the viewer as to how its cast and crew (members 

of the Indian Players Company) gave up their respective careers “as doctor, 

lawyer, engineer and professor to bring about a renaissance of the Dramatic 

Art of India.” Celebrated as a major critical achievement in Germany, the film 

also ran for ten months in London. A special screening was organized for King 

George V and his family at Windsor Castle on April 27, 1926. 

3. Amrit Manthan (The Churning of the Ocean, 1934) 

Director: V. Shantaram; Cast: Chandra Mohan, Shanta Apte 

A reformist drama unfolding as a palace intrigue with gigantic sets and a large 

cast of characters, the film attempts an intense exploration of the extremities 

of religious fanaticism. A reformist king and his daughter are pitted against a

101 Bollywood Movies and Songs to See! 

321 

fanatical head priest, the Rajguru (Mohan), who gets the king assassinated for 

banning human and animal sacrifices to the gods. When the truth behind the 

Rajguru’s complicity is revealed, he cuts off his own head in sacrifice, rather 

than surrender. The black-and-white film is brilliantly lit to convey the changing 

moods of the characters. Shot in the expressionist style of German cinema, 

a telephoto lens was used for the first-time in Indian cinema to highlight the 

hypnotic, mesmerizing powers of the Rajguru on his “cult-like” followers. 

Chandra Mohan’s Rajguru, evil incarnate yet “respectable,” is compelling in his 

ability to evoke fear, making him one of the most memorable villains in Indian 

cinema’s early talkie era. Amrit Manthan was the first Indian film to celebrate 

a Silver Jubilee run of twenty-five weeks at the box-office. 

4. Hunterwali (The Lady with the Whip, 1935) 

Director: Homi Wadia; Cast: Nadia, Sayani, Boman Shroff 

Madhuri (Nadia) is the daughter of a righteous, but weak and aging, king. His 

ambitious prime minister, Ranamal (Sayani), in a coup undertaken during a 

hunting expedition, kidnaps the king and officiates as the ruler. Madhuri is 

allowed to remain a figurehead sovereign, with Ranamal hoping to marry her 

to naturalize his succession to the throne. She rebuffs his offers, only to learn 

of the incompetence and injustices of the new regime. In a dramatic moment of 

resolve to safeguard her citizens, she decides to take on the role of a “benefactor 

in disguise,” merging the noble intentions of Robin Hood with the bravado 

and costuming of Zorro. In film after film, Fearless Nadia confronted her male 

opposition, fighting, beating, lifting, and throwing large men left, right, and 

center, to become Indian cinema’s first superhero. 

5. Achhut Kanya (Untouchable Girl, 1936) 

Director: Franz Osten; Cast: Devika Rani, Ashok Kumar 

The England-returned, well-groomed, radiant beauty Devika Rani barely 

looked the “untouchable” Dalit (downtrodden) girl she was portraying in 

this caste-crossed love story between a Dalit girl and a Brahmin (the highest 

in India’s caste-based social pecking order) boy. Newcomer Ashok Kumar 

and Devika Rani, blushing and singing the still-remembered “cootchie-coo” 

anthem “Main ban ki chidiya” (“I am a jungle bird”), instantly captured moviegoers’ 

hearts, remaining at the top of the box office until the end of the 1930s. 

Saraswati Devi, a pioneer female music composer, created some soulful melodies, 

while director Osten’s intense mob scenes hurtling to the film’s tragic 

ending can still give the viewer goosebumps.

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Bollywood FAQ 

6. Duniya Na Mane (The Unexpected, 1937) 

Director: V. Shantaram; Cast: Shanta Apte, Keshavrao Date 

One of the earliest feminist films, made long before the term was coined, it has 

a spirited Shanta Apte refuse to consummate her marriage with the elderly 

man she has been tricked into marrying. A searing criticism of the social ills of 

May–December marriages, the film stands out for not making a villain of the 

suitor. Apte’s husband commits suicide to free his young wife, little realizing 

that widowhood is an even worse fate to befall a young, beautiful woman in a 

conservative society. 

7. Sikandar (Alexander, 1941) 

Director: Sohrab Modi; Cast: Prithviraj Kapoor, Sohrab Modi 

A grand historical epic, its battle scenes feature thousands of extras with 

horses, elephants, and chariots. Movie mogul Sohrab Modi plays Indian 

king Porus, pitted opposite the handsomest actor of the talkie era, Prithviraj 

Kapoor, who has a compelling take on the young Greek conqueror, Alexander 

the Great. 

8. Kismet (Fate, 1943) 

Director: Gyan Mukherjee; Cast: Ashok Kumar, Mumtaz Shanti 

Featuring a suave (but shady) urban hero and a lead actor in a double role, it 

was the first film to explore the “lost-and-found” plot that was to become a formula 

for future masala films. In this, characters separated by a tragedy early 

in their childhood eventually come together in their adulthood courtesy of 

the film’s “happy ending.” Newcomer Ashok Kumar’s natural acting stands in 

noticeable contrast to his melodramatic old-school heroine, Mumtaz Shanti. At 

one point in the film, Shanti enacts a patriotic song which inspired a cult-like 

following, “Dur hato aye duniyawalon” (“Step aside, O foreigners, India belongs 

to us”). It is sung by Ameerbai Karnataki with fulsome gusto, with a map of 

undivided India in the backdrop. The British Censor Board thought the film’s 

lyricist, Pradeep, was writing anti-German and anti-Japanese slogans in the 

middle of World War II, but Indian audiences understood its true meaning, 

with the film’s release coming just a year after Mahatma Gandhi launched the 

“Quit India Movement” against the British government in 1942. By the time the 

British authorities realized their oversight, it was too late; Kismet was an all- 

India blockbuster that ran in a Calcutta theater for a record three-plus years, 

with the song playing a major role in attracting repeat viewers. Music maestro 

Anil Biswas introduced chorus singing into film music.


323 

Lobby card for Neecha Nagar. 


9. Neecha Nagar (Lower City, 1946) 

Director: Chetan Anand; Cast: Kamini Kaushal, Uma Anand, Rafiq 

Anwar 

An ever-relevant comment of the disparities in a capitalist society where millions 

have next to nothing while wealth is monopolized by a few, left-leaning 

director Chetan Anand’s film debut shared the Grand Prix du Festival Award 

at the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946. 

The story involves a rich landowner who lives on a hillock with access to 

fresh water; the poor, meanwhile, starve in a village in the valley below, known 

as the Neecha Nagar. The landowner’s sewage flows around the poor people’s 

huts, spreading disease. Eventually, the rich man dies from a heart attack. 

Considered in retrospect as the granddaddy of India’s parallel cinema 

movement that was to kick off two decades later, the film stands out for its several 

high- and low-angled shots, heightening the story’s emotional intensity. 

Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar made his movie debut as the composer. 

10. Jab dil hi toot gaya (Song: “When My Heart Broke”; 

Shahjehan, 1946) 

Director: A. R. Kirdar; Music: Naushad; Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

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Bollywood FAQ 

What is it about this lament of a broken heart that is still sung, referenced, 

and even parodied, decades after its making, given the plethora of equally sad 

songs that have been composed down the decades? The answer is obvious—it 

is the pensive vocals of its actor-singer K. L. Saigal, Indian cinema’s first singing 

superstar. The impact of his character’s pain was heightened by the natural 

melancholy tone in his voice. Incidentally, the song heralded the end of Saigal’s 

reign, as he died a year later from cirrhosis of lever; it also marked the rise of 

two talents—music director Naushad and lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri. They 

went on to compose many more popular songs over the next five decades, but 

to a Dil hi toot gaya impact, perhaps never again. 

11. Kalpana (Imagination, 1948) 

Director: Uday Shankar; Cast: Amala Shankar, Uday Shankar 

A surreal dance-fantasy, conceived, scripted, directed, and starring dancing 

legend Uday Shankar, the film depicts the struggles involved in establishing a 

dance academy. It is an integrated composition, featuring a rare collage of the 

seven Indian classical dance forms in combination with various folk and tribal 

dances, with exclusive use of Indian instruments. For the first time, songs were 

created to suit the camera instead of the camera following the dancer. 

Shankar’s individualistic choreography, while creating an extraordinary work 

of music, dance, and drama, remained a rarely repeated experiment in Indian 

cinema, beyond a few song sequences (e.g., Chandralekha’s drum dance and 

Awara’s dream-song sequence), making it a standalone achievement compared 

favorably with Citizen Kane (1941). 

Kalpana. 



325 

12. Drum Dance (Chandralekha, 1948) 

Director: S. S. Vasan; Music: S. Rajeshwar Rao 

In an otherwise straightforward adventure story about two warring princes 

fighting for their father’s kingdom and the love of a gypsy girl, the highlight of 

Chandralekha is this mammoth dance sequence (the only one on this list not 

to include lyrics), featuring multiple dancers performing in tandem on giant 

drums, to rousing choreography. It gravitates from subtle moves of graceful 

dancing to an energetic war dance to create an unforgettable audio-visual 

spectacle. While the film’s score features a fusion of various local and global 

music traditions, the dance sequence starts with a marching trumpet score 

with gongs, piano, and double bass violins to culminate with an array of beating 

drums from Africa, Egypt, and Persia. 

13. “Mere piya gaye Rangoon” (Song: “My Love Has 

Gone to Rangoon”; Patanga / The Kite, 1949) 

Director: H. S. Rawail; Music: C. Ramchandra; Lyrics: Rajinder Krishan 

This duet, sung against the backdrop of World War II, features a husband who 

has traveled to Rangoon. While there, he finds himself missing his wife, whom 

he left in the north Indian hill town of Dehradun. The success of the song, 

picturized as a long-distance call between comedian Gope and the cheerful 

Nigar Sultana, started a trend for songs featuring comic actors. Shamshad 

The iconic “drum dance” sequence in Chandralekha. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Begum’s playful vocals in “My love has gone to Rangoon” found a new life as a 

post-2000 remix favorite. 

14. Andaz (Style, 1949) 

Director: Mehboob Khan; Cast: Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Nargis 

The mother of all romantic triangles features a dream cast of Nargis, Dilip 

Kumar, and Raj Kapoor (in their only onscreen pairing together). Andaz is a 

complex study of male-female relationships, challenging patriarchy’s reservations 

and restrictions against a free-spirited, modern woman. Offering a 

layered study of love, passion, and jealousy—represented by the characters 

of Dilip Kumar, Nargis, and Raj Kapoor, respectively—this tragedy showcases 

some extraordinary camera work by cinematographer Faredoon Irani. 

Music director Naushad heightens the drama with elaborate Western-style 

orchestrations and challenges convention by making Mukesh, the regular 

playback voice of Raj Kapoor, sing for Dilip Kumar, and Kumar’s onscreen 

voice, Mohammad Rafi, sing for Kapoor. 

15. “Aayega aanewala” (Song: “The awaited one will 

come”; Mahal / The Mansion, 1949) 

Director: Kamal Amrohi; Music: Khemchand Prakash; Lyrics: Nakshab 

Dark night, long shadows, empty mansion, lonely corridors, and a wary, suitclad 

hero guardedly exploring, then suddenly coming across a self-portrait 

with a menacing look . . . and then a voice wafts in, a lady with a candle slowly 

descends a staircase, followed by the fleeting apparition of a girl. This noirthriller 

marks the first Bollywood horror film with a reincarnation twist, and 

stars Ashok Kumar and Madhubala. Lata Mangeshkar arrives on the popular 

music scene with this haunting melody and goes on to rule the female playback 

scene for four more decades. Khemchand Prakash insisted that she walk 

from a corner of the recording studio towards the microphone (located in 

the center of the room). The director’s intent was to complement the song’s 

visual feel of a voice coming from afar, ending with a deafening echo when 

near. German cinematographer Josef Wirsching utilized expressionist cinema 

techniques to heighten the film’s gothic appeal. 

16. Awara (The Vagabond, 1951) 

Director: Raj Kapoor; Cast: Prithviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Nargis 

Exploring the classic debate of nature versus nurture, the film unfolds as a 

long flashback that has Raj, a vagabond, on trial for the attempted murder of 

Judge Raghunath (Prithviraj Kapoor). He is defended by a beautiful young


327 

lawyer, his love interest, Rita (Nargis). Raj is revealed to be the son of the 

judge’s poor, estranged wife; their poverty leads Raj into a life of petty crime. 

Indian cinema’s first global commercial success, Awara was dubbed in 

Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Russian; in Turkey, it was remade as Avaray, and 

in Teheran, Kapoor was even conferred with an honorary degree. But it was in 

Russia that the film’s lead pair of Raj Kapoor and Nargis acquired cult status, 

making Kapoor the most popular Indian in the country, second only to Prime 

Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Raj Kapoor’s title song, “Awara hoon” (“I am a vagabond”), 

which had him don a Chaplinesque costume, marked the beginning of 

his “lovable tramp” image. The song remains Bollywood’s first internationally 

popular hit, one that is still played in the erstwhile Soviet Union, China, and 

the Middle East. Indeed, every song from the film, including the ten-minutelong 

Bollywood dream-sequence song, “Ghar aaya” (“My wandering traveler 

has returned”), was a hit, awakening the entertainment world to the potential 

of a parallel industry in film music. It made stars out of composers Shankar 

and Jaikishan, lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri, and singers Mukesh and 

Lata Mangeshkar. 

17. “O duniya ke rakhwale” (Song: “O saviour of the universe”; 

Baiju Bawra / Crazy Baiju, 1952) 

Director: V. J. Bhatt; Music: Naushad; Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni 

Three Muslim talents—music director Naushad, lyricist Shakeel Badyuni, and 

singer Mohammad Rafi—come together to create one of the greatest Hindu 

bhajans (prayer songs) ever in popular culture. Rafi scales new heights of playback 

brilliance as his voice steadily rises in pitch, providing a worthy onscreen 

voice of Baiju, who had challenged the might of the famed fourteenth-century 

Mughal court singer Tansen. 

18. Do Bigha Zameen (Two Acres of Land, 1953) 

Director: Bimal Roy; Cast: Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy 

In the film’s most moving scene, Shambhu (Sahni), a rickshaw puller in 

Calcutta, is enticed by a customer to overtake his lover’s rickshaw. The promise 

is a reward greater than expected. As the bait makes the impoverished man 

run beyond his physical abilities, his degradation to that of an animal becomes 

complete, reduced, as he was, to a beast of burden in the eyes of the customer. 

A tragic tale of the suffering Indian farmer, ignored by the state and 

exploited by moneylenders, the film depicts the journey of a self-sufficient 

farmer who loses his land to an industrialization plan. He moves to the city 

with his son, hoping to earn some money in order to retain their land. After 

years of harsh city life working as a rickshaw-puller, with his son a shoeshine 

boy, they return to the village to an even harsher reality: finding a factory in

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Bollywood FAQ 

place of their farm. The film is an ode to the migrating farmer by his fellow 

village men urging him to brave it out and stay at home, instead of leaving his 

roots for the painful gains of a place unknown. Balraj Sahni achieves a rare 

act of human empathy, depicting the emotions of a man who loses it all—land, 

life, and livelihood—all with tremendous restraint. Bimal Roy’s humanist 

plea for respecting a hardworking man’s dignity enjoys universal echoes. And 

left-leaning composer Salil Choudhury, borrowing elements from Russian 

patriotic tunes to Indian folk music, provides an evocative, memorable score. 

19. Boot Polish (1954) 

Director: Prakash Arora; Cast: Naaz, Ratan Kumar, David Abraham 

Cheulkar (billed simply as David) 

Producer Raj Kapoor’s socialist leanings come to the fore in this heart-warming 

drama about two homeless children. Baby Naaz and Master Rattan stand out 

with their utterly natural performances as shoe-shining siblings. There is also 

an unforgettable cameo by character actor David as a kindly bootlegger. Their 

hopeful song, “Nanhe munhe bachche” (“What’s in your hand, O little kid”), 

offers an intimate humanist portrait of how the destitute care for one another, 

despite having nothing at their disposal. 

20. “Aye dil hai mushqil jeena yahan” (Song: “Oh, dear, 

surviving this city is quite a fear; CID, 1956) 

Director: Raj Khosla; Music: O. P. Nayyar; Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri 

This is Bollywood’s ultimate tribute to trials, tribulations, charms, and heartaches 

of living in the “City of Dreams,” Bombay (now Mumbai). It focuses 

on one of its everyman denizens, portrayed with fantastic comic timing by 

comedian Johnny Walker. One of the earliest Hinglish songs, “Oh, dear . . .” has 

simple, rhyming lyrics, set to O. P. Nayyar’s foot-tapping music, and the joie de 

vivre in Mohmmad Rafi’s voice make some profound, still-valid observations 

on urban loneliness: “Kahin building, kahin trame, kahin motor, kahin mill” 

(“Buildings, trams, motor cars and mills . . . Everything you can get to your 

heart’s desire, but a beating heart, you never will!). 

21. Do Aankhen Barah Haath (Two Eyes, Twelve Hands, 

1957) 

Director: V. Shantaram; Cast: V. Shantaram, Sandhya 

A humanist film that achieved immense global acclaim, inspired by a real-life 

open-jail experiment, it showcases a unique style of prisoner reform. An idealist 

jailor makes good human beings out of six hardened criminals through a 

Gandhian approach at attempting reformation through genuine repentance


329 

instead of the fear of punishment. The liberties the jailor gives his prisoners 

make for hopeful, inspiring cinema. The film also has an unspoken love story 

unfolding between the jailor and a village girl. The fifty-six-year-old actordirector 

V. Shantaram’s eyes were injured when he quite literally took a bull by 

the horns in an action scene. He made a quick trip to the hospital, where he 

was patched up, after which he returned to finish the shoot, much to the relief 

of his crew and the industry in general. 

22. Mother India (1957) 

Director: Mehboob Khan; Cast: Nargis, Jeevan, Raaj Kumar, Sunil Dutt 

This all-time favorite concerning the grit of the Indian farmer achieves a rare 

and convincing balance between realism and epic vision. Five hundred acres 

of actual farm land were flooded for a scene, with the resultant exodus being 

shot with three hundred bullock carts and more than two hundred real farmers. 

The film revolves around the tragic, trouble-filled life of a poor but courageous 

village woman named Radha (Nargis). Despite losing her husband 

(Raj Kumar) and a child, Radha survives against all odds, both natural and 

man-made, to bring up her two sons (Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar) with 

strong moral values. Despite her hardships, she sets a goddess-like example 

of the “ideal” Indian woman. In the end, she makes the agonizing decision to 

(Left to right): Sunil Dutt, Rajendra Kumar, and Nargis in Mother India. Photo courtesy of NFAI

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Bollywood FAQ 

shoot her own son, a bandit who is intent on doing harm to others. He dies 

in his mother’s arms. Director Mehboob Khan propagates a leftist worldview 

with usage of socialistic iconography, including the now-classic shot of Nargis 

juxtaposed against a plough with fellow farm couples singing while holding 

sickles. 

23. Pyaasa (Thirsty, 1957) 

Director: Guru Dutt; Cast: Guru Dutt, Mala Sinha, Rehman, Waheeda 

Rehman 

Pyaasa remains a crowning achievement in the robust spurt of questioning 

artistry that spearheaded creativity in India’s post-Independence cinema. 

Vijay (Dutt) is an unpublished poet, doubted by family and dismissed by his 

girlfriend. He finds acknowledgment and admiration in another social outcast, 

a prostitute named Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman). In a twist of fate, Vijay is 

presumed dead and his poetry becomes “posthumously” lionized. 

A poignant portrait of an artist’s isolation heightened to unforgettable 

impact through evocative music, the film serves as a critique of a capitalist 

society’s opportunistic moorings. Vijay’s Christ-like resurrection as a silhouette 

awash in light and standing at the doorframe of a grand theater to 

denounce the world and its ephemeral glories is one of the most haunting 

climaxes in cinematic history. 

24. Madhumati (1958) 

Director: Bimal Roy; Cast: Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanthimala, Pran 

On a stormy night, a traveler named Devendra (Dilip Kumar) and his friend 

take shelter in a decrepit, deserted mansion. There, Devendra sees a portrait 

of its owner, a cruel local ruler Ugra Narayan (Pran), hanging on a wall. A 

tool (or visual trigger) often used in the psychoanalytic technique of past life 

regression therapy is explored to rekindle memories of Devendra’s previous 

existence as a foreman of Ugra Narayan’s plantation. He had fallen in love 

with a beautiful tribal girl named Madhumati (Vyjayanthimala), but their love 

story was abruptly cut short by Ugrasen’s lust-driven violation of Madhumati, 

leading to her suicide. The haunting black-and-white spookiness, the authentic 

depiction of tribal life, the atmospheric songs, and the supernatural twist at the 

climax make it a memorable Bollywood experiment in the horror genre. Critic 

and film historian Ashok Banker declares it “the most effective reincarnation 

film ever made in the world.” Decrepit mansions, thunderstorms with frequent 

flashes of lightning, lashing rain, desolate jungles, misty mountains, echoing 

voices, shadows creeping across crumbling walls—all the techniques of early 

ghost films or Hollywood’s gothic noir are used, albeit in a unique, Indian 

way. This can be attributed to a large degree to a mesmerizing soundtrack. The


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film’s opening road song, “Suhana safar . . .” (“A beautiful journey embarked 

under a bountiful weather”), with chirping birds and a chorus singing of village 

women on their way to work, a shepherd guiding his flock, merges into 

a flute prelude to lyricist Shailendra’s soulfully penned tribute to nature. The 

film’s other “haunting” melody is character Madhumati’s introductory song 

“Aja re pardesi . . .” (“Come hither, O traveler . . . ”) voicing a young girl’s anticipation 

of, and expectations from, first love. Lata Mangeshkar won her first Best 

Playback Singer Filmfare award for her rendition of the song. The film itself 

swept the Sixth Filmfare Awards ceremony, winning eight additional trophies, 

including those for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Music. 

25. Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers, 1959) 

Director: Guru Dutt; Cast: Guru Dutt, Waheeda Rehman 

A classic among a handful of Bollywood films dissecting the film industry, 

it unfolds in flashback, which depicts a famous director, Suresh Sinha (Guru 

Dutt), whose marriage is on the rocks. When Suresh meets debutante Shanti 

(Waheeda Rehman), he falls heads over heels in love, only deepening the rift 

in his marriage. Things take a turn for the worse when Shanti throws away 

her career in a bid to salvage Suresh’s marriage. But she is forced back into 

films because of a contract that gives Suresh a chance to make a comeback. 

But Suresh, by then, is too far gone for redemption. As the final scene unfolds, 

Suresh remembers his glorious past and dies in an empty film studio in the 

director’s chair, a forgotten man. This depiction of the highs and lows of Tinsel 

Town all but mirrored director Guru Dutt’s own troubled marriage to singer 

Geeta Dutt, due to a rumored affair with his discovery, the film’s leading lady 

Waheeda Rehman. 

India’s first film to be shot in Cinemascope, it benefits greatly from V. K. 

Murthy’s black-and-white cinematography. This technically brilliant melancholic 

treatise on life’s illusions has a sepulchral sublimity that is epitomized 

by an immortal ditty to the vagaries of fate—”Waqt ne kiya” (“What a beautiful 

calamity time has wrought; you are no longer you, I am no longer me”). The 

artistic merit of this film, along with Pyaasa, was confirmed by critics in the 

West, years after Guru Dutt’s alleged suicide, earning him a place in the hallowed 

pantheon of world cinema auteurs. 

26. Kanoon (Law, 1960) 

Director: B. R. Chopra; Cast: Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Nanda 

A prosecuting attorney who is trying a murder case suspects the presiding 

judge of having committed the crime. A successful Bollywood film without 

songs is as rare today as it was in 1960. This makes Kanoon the first songless

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Bollywood FAQ 

Indian courtroom drama, although it does have an exemplary background 

score by Salil Choudhury. 

27. Mughal-e-Azam (The Great Mughal, 1960) 

Director: K. Asif; Cast: Prithviraj Kapoor, Madhubala, Dilip Kumar 

A grand historical-fiction, and a true classic of epic proportion, it remains the 

costliest Hindi film ever produced (when adjusted to inflation). Its climactic 

battle sequence alone featured two thousand camels, four thousand horses, 

and eight thousand troops, many borrowed from the Indian Army. It’s a simple 

tale about a doomed palace romance between a beautiful courtesan, Anarkali 

(Madhubala), and a battle-hardened Prince Salim (Dilip Kumar), which is 

crushed by his father, Emperor Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor). Yet the film created 

a frenzied draw rarely repeated, with tickets being bought and sold on the 

black market for Rs 100 at a time when an average movie ticket cost Rs 1.50! 

Regal characters, opulent sets, subdued expressions, poetic songs, and dramatic 

exchanges—all were accomplished by a simple man with no formal education, 

doggedly helming the project for more than twelve years. Flawless and 

seamless, the film, with its sheer emotional energy and imperishable caliber 

of cinematic achievement, make Mughal-e-Azam a truly timeless classic, whose 

every imposing frame is an artifact of priceless period nostalgia. Its pièce-derèsistance 

moment, however, remains Madhubala’s clarion call of defiant love 

in Akbar’s court, the song “Pyar kiya to darna kya” (“Why fear in love?”), sung 

by Lata Mangeshkar. As the echo effect in Lata’s vocals match the simmering 

visuals of dozens of dancing Madhubalas on an intricate set made of glass 

pieces, and Anarkali suffers and perishes happily for love, one wonders if there 

could ever be another epitome of dignified beauty like Madhubala, or a song 

that can do justice to someone so divinely beautiful. 

28. “Kisi ki musqurahaton pe” (Song: “Falling for someone’s 

smile”; Anari / The Naïve One, 1959) 

Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee; Music: Shankar and Jaikishan; Lyrics: 

Shailendra 

A sunshine song with inspiring lyrics and complementing acts of kindness—even 

without subtitles, its simple, positive message will bring a smile 

to the viewer. Raj Kapoor, in yet another simpleton role in his lovable Trampinspired-social 

dramas, reacts to the sights and sounds of a bumpy walk down 

city streets. Marching along on a road, he abruptly stops to avoid stepping on a 

grasshopper. He gently places it on a leaf as the lyrics express the very essence 

of life—“Fall if you can, for someone’s smile; borrow if you can, someone’s 

strife . . . if you can love all, equally and fair, you have lived a life good and 

rare.” Kapoor sings along, matching steps with happy little girls, whistling


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cyclists, borrowing berries from a kind vendor and passing them on to a blind 

beggar, setting off a chain of good deeds by strangers, for strangers. 

29. “Abhi na jao chodkar . . .” (Song: “Don’t go so soon”; 

Hum Dono / We Both, 1961) 

Directors: Amarjeet and Vijay Anand; Music: Jaidev; Lyrics: Sahir 

Ludhianvi 

A part of the film’s silent opening scene unfolds as a conversation through the 

eyes of a young couple in love. He’s been waiting; she’s slightly late. She wins 

him over with a surprise gift. She puts a cigar in his mouth and fondly lights 

the lighter that plays a hummable tune. She indulgently watches him enjoy his 

smoke. Time flies. Just when she is about to leave quietly without disturbing 

her now-sleeping lover, she realizes her pigtail is tied to a piece of cloth whose 

other end is in his hand. Awakened by the gentle pull, he pleads for her not 

to leave so soon. She replies that however long she may stay, it will never be 

long enough for him. The charming Dev Anand and the Audrey Hepburn–like 

Sadhana have made a memorable date song for all time, one that tells everything 

one could wish to know about the lovers. Filmed on a starry night, the 

song epitomizes romance while beautifully articulating a lover’s yearning. 

Anand re-released a digitally colorized version of the much-loved black-andwhite 

classic, Hum Dono, in 2011. 

30. “Sampoorna Ramayana” (The Complete Ramayana, 1961) 

Director: Babubhai Mistry; Cast: Mahipal, Anita Guha, Lalita Pawar, 

Helen 

The only Bollywood adaptation of the entire epic of Ramayana, featuring the 

reunion of King Rama and his exiled sons Lava and Kusha. This mythological 

costume-drama was directed by Indian cinema’s original special-effects man, 

Babubhai Mistry, and produced by Homi Wadia, best known for his series 

featuring Fearless Nadia. The film stands out for its progressive articulation 

of the status of women in family and society. When Prince Rama declines his 

wife Sita’s initial request to join him in exile, she argues, “By not taking me you 

are not fulfilling Mother Kaikeyi’s demand to the full, because, as your wife, I 

am a fifty percent stakeholder in everything that defines you. Without me you 

are incomplete.” 

In another sequence, when King Rama is asked to remarry for the successful 

completion of a religious sacrifice, he asks his priest, “Do the scriptures 

allow a wife to take many husbands?” 

The shocked priest declares, “It’s unthinkable!” 

Rama reasons, “Then how can it be righteous for a husband to take many 

wives?”

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Bollywood FAQ 

The characters of Sita and Ravana in Sampoorna Ramayana. 


The film, through many similar conversations, humanizes the godly protagonists 

in an epic that has been an influential co-traveler in the journey of 

the Indian civilization from cradle to consciousness. It interprets the 

Ramayana as a tragic love story of its two protagonists, condemned to a lonely 

life, living up to the expectations of “ideal” conduct. The highlight is the castigation 

of the citizens of Ayodhya by the sons of Rama who, in a movingly 

rendered song, warn, “Bharat ke sitaon ke dukhde” (“Unless the rights and 

hurts of every Sita in India are addressed and assuaged, O King Rama, your 

Ramayana will never be complete). Using a religious Hindu text as backdrop, 

the song is a clarion call for state-sponsored restoration of the rights and dignity 

of women, while arguing that truth and fair play, instead of a please-all 

attitude, should be a ruler’s most trusted counsel. 

31. “Itna na mjuh se tu pyar” (Song: “Don’t love me so 

much”; Chhaya / Shadow, 1961) 

Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee; Music: Salil Chowdhury; Lyrics: 

Rajendra Krishan 

An enduring Mozart melody, the molto allegro from Symphony No. 40 (in G 

minor) is the inspiration behind this most famous instance of a Western classical 

composition becoming a popular Bollywood love song, one which everyone


335 

knows and sings. Talat Mehmood’s wavy vocals accentuate the song’s rumbling 

cloud–influenced mood. The action concerns two neighbors—a handsome 

Sunil Dutt and a double-pig-tailed Asha Parekh—articulating their feelings for 

each other on either side of a window. 

32. “Yahooooooooooo!” (Song: “Yahoo”; Junglee / The 

Wild One, 1961) 

Director: Subodh Mukherjee; Music: Shankar Jaikishan; Lyrics: 

Shailendra 

“Yahoooooooooo!” is the exuberant cry of freedom that ushered in the “swinging 

sixties” and its rebellious break from tradition. Shammi Kapoor unleashed 

his rebel-hero persona to become the biggest star of the decade, while his 

energetic, uninhibited, unbridled, and unchoreographed dancing broke new 

ground. The success of the song made its actor, composer, and singer-collaborators, 

Shammi Kapoor-Shankar-Jaikishan-Mohammad Rafi, an inseparable 

hit quartet, and Yahoo a household word—three decades before the internet 

hit India! Beauty queen Saira Banu made her acting debut, while the beautiful 

Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir had its Technicolor debut, becoming 

Bollywood’s hottest backdrop for songs and romances for the next two 

decades. 

33. Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (Master, Wife and Servant, 1962) 

Director: Abrar Alvi; Cast: Rehman, Meena Kumari, Guru Dutt 

A glowing testament to the brilliance of film, this is one of Bollywood’s finest 

literary adaptations as well. It stands out for its mesmerizing acting, haunting 

cinematography, and unforgettable music. Set in the eastern Indian state of 

Bengal—under the British Raj—it unfolds as a narrative by a servant named 

Bhootnath (Guru Dutt), about a long-suffering lady, Chhoti Bahu (Meena 

Kumari), in an aristocratic household. She longs for the love and acceptance 

of her wayward landlord-husband (Rehman). Bhootnath, a simpleton villager 

who doubles as Chhoti Bahu’s confidante and secret supplier of alcohol, is fascinated 

by their lavish feudal lifestyle and empathetically drawn to the tragic 

woman. She drinks and sings for her husband in a desperate bid to prevent 

him from visiting courtesans. Hindi cinema got one of its most enigmatic 

heroine characters, while lead actress Meena Kumari deservedly became its 

ultimate “Tragedy Queen.” Chhoti Bahu’s craving for sexual satisfaction in an 

era when it was taboo to even talk about sex, her alcoholism, and the degradation 

she endures to maintain her husband’s fidelty have contributed to the 

film’s legacy as a timeless tragedy, an epic dirge to decadence.

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34. Haqeeqat (The Reality, 1964) 

Director: Chetan Anand; Cast: Balraj Sahni, Priya Rajvansh 

Set during the Sino–Indian War of 1862, Haqeeqat is that rare Bollywood film 

that depicts war in all its gruesome reality, without jingoism. Recreating a 

nation’s nightmare—India’s defeat by China—it attempts an authentic depiction 

of battle fatigue and unpreparedness, with unforgettable images of brave 

soldiers holding empty rifles and staring blankly at death as they are charged 

by hordes Chinese soldiers. Shot on location in the mountainous Ladakh 

region in north India, the bleak landscape is shot in exquisite black and white, 

with soldiers of understated machismo adding to its credibility. From the 

helplessness of the numb-with-cold, poorly equipped soldiers posted on a 

harsh mountain terrain, to the apathy of a government that was busy fighting 

other countries’ wars, Chetan Anand has made Bollywood’s best Indian war 

movie to date. It not only evokes a sense of pride, it inspires sadness as it takes 

the viewer through the personal turmoil of soldiers who willingly sacrifice 

their lives for the motherland. Balraj Sahni, as the commanding officer, and 

Dharmendra, as the valiant soldier, are brilliant in their roles. Adding to the 

overall effect is Kaifi Azmi’s wonderfully penned ode to the soldier: “Kar chale 

hum fida . . .” (“We are finished sacrificing our lives and bodies, companions; 

Unto you, now we entrust the country, companions”). 

35. Guide (1965) 

Director: Vijay Anand; Cast: Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman 

Vijay Anand seamlessly extracts two memorable, flawed characters from R. K. 

Narayan’s layered novella, mixing spiritualism with song and dance to tell a 

beguiling tale of love, deception, and redemption. The film, which broke with 

many Bollywood conventions, portrays an adulterous heroine, a live-in relationship, 

and a spiritual (instead of a romantic) resolution. Raju (Dev Anand), 

a freelance guide, falls in love with Rosie (Waheeda Rehman), the talented wife 

of an inattentive archaeologist. Raju helps to guide Rosie out of a suffocating 

marriage and into a super career as a dancer. Both Dev Anand and Waheeda 

Rehman were applauded for their performances, with Guide being the first 

Hindi film to sweep the top four Filmfare awards for Best Film, Best Director, 

Best Actor, and Best Actress. Liberally sprinkled with a variety of expressive 

Indian classical and folk-dance forms, which unfold through some spectacular 

solo and collaborative dances, the highlight remains Waheeda’s ecstatic performance 

of “Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai . . .” (“I wish to live again today”) as a 

majestic fort becomes the stage for a liberated soul. Her spontaneous dancing 

during the song made an unforgettable movie memory of a heart in flight.


337 

Lobby card for Gumnaam depicts a moment from the “Jan pehchan ho” song. 

 


36. “Jaan pehechan ho” (Song: “We should know each 

other”; Gumnaam/The Unnamed, 1965) 

Director: Raja Nawathe; Music: Shankar Jaikishan; Lyrics: Shailendra 

Seven winners of a lucky draw gather in a pub before flying off on a journey, 

from which only one returns alive. Before certain death, sourced from a 

common past, engulfs the stranger-travelers, they are treated to a psychedelic 

dance in a club. Laxmi Chhaya gyrates, shakes, and sighs among a bevy of 

masked dancers, well choreographed by Herman Benjamin, who’s also seen 

singing the song. A classic example of the recurring rock ’n’ roll style of dancing 

in Bollywood songs from the swinging sixties, it brought its music to wider 

attention in the West after the entire video of the song was included in the 

opening credits of Ghost World (2001). Bits and pieces of the song have repeatedly 

surfaced in commercials (Heineken’s “The Date,” 2011) and video games 

(Far Cry 4 by Ubisoft). 

37. Waqt (Time, 1965) 

Director: Yash Chopra; Cast: Balraj Sahni, Sunil Dutt, Raaj Kumar, 

Sadhana, Shashi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore 

Picturesque locations, palatial residences, fast cars, fashionista heroines, and 

trendy heroes—Waqt truly heralded a trend for stylishly told stories about the

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Bollywood FAQ 

rich and the famous in “color,” toplined by glamorous, good-looking actors. 

Bollywood’s first multi-star film with an ensemble cast comprising the who’s 

who of the 1960s, it revolves around the separation and eventual reunion of 

the family members of a proud patriarch played by Balraj Sahni. Sahni gives 

the film’s young, dapper heroes a run for their money in his spirited ode to 

mature love, “Omeri zohra jabeen” (“O, my beauteous one!”). Waqt is also a 

coming-of-age tale of sorts, by a new nation and its image builders, keen on 

an aspirational examination beyond the aesthetics of austerity and issues of 

disparity. 

38. “Hothon pe aisi baat” (Song: “The silent tale on my 

lips”; Jewel Thief, 1967) 

Director: Vijay Anand; Music: S.D. Burman; Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri 

Hitchcock meets James Bond in this tautly crafted, flamboyant thriller with 

a clever script, popular stars, an unexpected twist, and many memorable 

songs. But the film’s pièce-de-résistance moment happens toward the climax 

in a groundbreaking song sequence, shot in the Himalayan state of Sikkim. It 

features an array of dancers in colorful costumes and masks, playing drums. 

The song is a masterpiece of edgy choreography by B. Sohanlal. Actress 

Vyjayanthimala’s skill as a dancer has rarely been surpassed as she moves 

seamlessly within the parameters of a dynamic and a relentlessly moving 

camera, going from one mark to another, maintaining her expression while 

dancing splendidly. A masterclass in photographed choreography, at one point 

the camera literally swivels 360 degrees, zigzagging through a bevy of dancers 

and onlookers to follow Vyjayanthimala’s scintillating moves in one continuous 

shot—with no cuts. 

39. Ram aur Shyam (Ram and Shyam, 1967) 

Director: Tapi Chanakya; Cast: Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman, 

Mumtaz, Pran 

A pair of identical twins (played by Dilip Kumar) are separated at birth. One 

grows up as the timid Ram, who is afraid of villain Gajendra (Pran); the other 

becomes a boisterous and daring Shyam. Circumstances lead to their switching 

places, while still maintaining their identities. Each is frequently mistaken 

for the other, even by their girlfriends, providing for some memorable comedyof-errors 

moments. Essaying his first dual role, veteran actor Dilip Kumar 

picked up his seventh Best Actor Filmfare award, while setting a template for 

subsequent actors and actresses attempting similar acting opportunity.


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(Left to right): Mumtaz, Dilip Kumar (in double), and Waheeda Rehman in Ram Aur Shyam. 

 


40. Upkar (Gratitude, 1967) 

Director: Manoj Kumar; Cast: Pran, Manoj Kumar, Prem Chopra, Asha 

Parekh 

Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri requested actor Manoj Kumar to make a 

film on his slogan, “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” (“Hail the Farmer, Hail the Soldier!”). 

Kumar acquiesced, writing the story for Upkar in a night-long journey from 

Delhi to Mumbai; he went on to make his critically acclaimed directorial debut 

in this tribute to farmers and soldiers. Depicting the realities of the 1960s, 

when hoarders were profiting from food scarcity, the film makes a strong plea 

for self-reliance and dignity. The song, “Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle” (“My 

country’s land produces gold”) became a parallel national anthem, which 

showed that patriotism can also be demonstrated through selfless service, 

beyond a call for sacrifice, or as a backdrop for war. Kumar’s innovative camera 

angles are greatly appreciated, whether viewing the farm and fields through 

an anklet, the protagonist glimpsing his refection in the mirror of a blouse, or 

a tribute listing of the nation’s founding leaders. The film’s blockbuster success 

ensured that Kumar, who took the screen name of Bharat (India), emerged as 

Bollywood’s most patriotic filmmaker, fondly nicknamed Mr. India.

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Bollywood FAQ 

41. “Muqabla humse na karo” (Song: “Don’t challenge 

me”; Prince, 1969) 

Director: Lekh Tandon; Music: Shankar and Jaikishan; Lyrics: Hasrat 

Jaipuri 

How do you pick just one representative song from the swinging sixties? The 

presence of three of the greatest all-time dancing talents of Indian cinema— 

Vyjayanthimala, Helen, and Shammi Kapoor—competing in a dance-off is 

reason enough to pick “Muqabla humse.” It starts with Vyjayanthimala (arguably 

the best female classical dancer in Bollywood) performing Bharatnatyam 

in a red costume, countered by Helen, playing a European countess in black 

tights and an orange top, doing a modern/Western dance. Vyjayanthimala 

shifts to Kathak and Kathakali, while Helen challenges with Flamenco and 

belly-dancing. Bollywood’s first classically trained heroine is pitted against its 

best cabaret dancer with its most free-styled dancing talent, Shammi Kapoor, 

acting as the adjudicator. Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, and Asha Bhosle 

lend their voices to this dreamlike dance sequence, with music ranging from 

the traditional ghatam, flute, tabla, and mridangam, to elements of rock, percussion, 

guitar, bongo, and Middle-Eastern rhythms. 

(Left to right): Helen, Shammi Kapoor, and Vyjayanthimala match steps in the “Muqabla 

humse na karo” song from Prince. 



341 

42. Mera Naam Joker (My Name is Joker, 1970) 

Director: Raj Kapoor; Cast: Simi Garewal, Kseniya Ryabinkina, 

Padmini, Raj Kapoor 

With a running time of over four hours, this was only the second Indian film 

to have two intervals. Made over a six-year period with much of the fortune of 

Bollywood’s most influential film studio, RK Films, this childhood-throughretirement 

tale of a clown, Raju (Raj Kapoor), who makes others laugh at the 

cost of his own happiness, was a box-office disaster. In retrospect, it is celebrated 

as the most intimate and finest film of Bollywood’s greatest showman. 

Raju’s story unfolds in three chapters, each resulting in heartbreak. The first 

has an adolescent Raju (played by the star’s son Rishi Kapoor) experience 

sexual awakening in his infatuation for his teacher (Simi Garewal); the second 

has him as a circus clown falling in love with a visiting trapeze artist from 

Russia; and the third (inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight) has Raju mentor 

an aspiring actress (Padmini), who abandons him for a superstar (Rajendra 

Kumar). The heartbreaks culminate in a marvelous display of showmanship in 

two of Bollywood’s most inspiring songs—an ode to love, lust, and loss (“Jaane 

kahan gaye woh din,” “Wonder where those days have gone, ” lyrics by Hasrat 

Jaipuri) and the delirious and destructive attraction of showbiz (“Jina yahaan 

marna yahaan,” “Be cherished here, perish here, for there’s no other world to 

go from here . . . ,” lyrics by Shailendra). Part autobiography, part-commentary 

on the fleeting loyalties in glamorous callings, like Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper 

Flowers), it remains an insightful, heartwarming, and ambitious film that 

celebrates auteur Raj Kapoor as a world cinema legend. 

43. “Dum maro dum” (Song: “One smoke more”; “Hare 

Rama Hare Krishna” / “Hail Rama, Hail Krishna,” 1971) 

Director: Dev Anand; Music: R. D. Burman; Lyrics: Anand Bakshi 

A hypnotic guitar riff opens the song, which features a multi-ethnic cast of 

bona fide hippies with unkempt beards, loose tunics, flower garlands, huge 

sunglasses, long chillum shots, and kissing couples amid flashes of “Free Love” 

signs. It was shot in the hippie communes of Kathmandu, with the “hippest” 

heroine to hit the Indian screen, “Miss Asia” Zeenat Aman, enacting the hedonist 

chant dum maro dum. Sung by Asha Bhosle with her “dulcet” tones, the 

song took the nation by storm. The hash-smoking Aman became an instant 

youth icon, heralding the arrival of the sexy, modern heroine. And the song’s 

rock-and-kirtan (a Hindu prayer chant) mix established R. D. Burman as the 

“fusion” maker of the 1970s.

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44. Anand (Joy, 1971) 

Director: Hrishikesh Mukherjee; Cast: Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh 

Bachchan 

A film that left an entire nation in tears, Anand is also Bollywood’s most positive 

ode to life, unfolding as a paean to friendship. Rajesh Khanna brings a 

rare joie de vivre to the title role of a cancer patient who views death as just 

another adventure. In his final few months, he lives several lifetimes, all the 

while imparting valuable life lessons to others, especially his caring doctor, 

Bhaskar Bannerjee (Amitabh Bachchan). “Loosen up and embrace life!” he 

exhorts him. “Life should be grand, not long.” He also laughs, sings, plays 

pranks, and befriends strangers. Bachchan’s restrained performance as the 

disillusioned, short-tempered doctor—he feels tremendous frustration that 

he is unable to mitigate his patient’s suffering—is a perfect foil to Khanna’s 

infectious exuberance. Not surprisingly, they won the lead and supporting 

actor Filmfare awards for the year. Anand remains an ageless film of timeless 

value and values! 

45. “Chal chal chal mere haathi” (Song: “Push the 

car, my friend elephant”; Haathi Mere Saathi / My 

Companions, the Elephants, 1971) 

Director: M. A. Thirumugam; Music: Laxmikant and Pyarelal; Lyrics: 

Anand Bakshi 

In this song of fun and friendship, by Kishore Kumar, the bond between the 

elephants and an adult Raju (Rajesh Khanna) is evident as they help pull his 

stranded girlfriend’s car to a gas station. Beautifully choreographed to four big 

and small elephants parading to rhythmic symphonic music, they are a delight 

to watch as they solve a real-life crisis with the song, providing ample evidence 

of the movie’s enduring appeal. 

46. Chetna (Consciousness, 1971) 

Director: B. R. Ishara; Cast: Anil Dhawan, Rehana Sultan, Shatrughan 

Sinha 

Revolving around the theme of rehabilitating prostitutes, it was one of the first 

Indian films to feature a hard-drinking, hard-talking prostitute with no tragic 

back story. In one scene, she candidly admits, “Ye sab mujhe bahut pasand hai” 

(“I really like everything about my job”). She is there for the money because it’s 

easy and convenient—until she falls in love. A controversial film for its time, it 

featured a young and virginal-looking hero, Anil Dhawan, and a smart newcomer, 

Rehana Sultan. The film’s success triggered a brief trend in sex-based


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The “controversial” poster for Chetna, which shows Anil Dhawan staring at Rehana 

Sultan’s legs. 


films with daring new actors. Sultan, the first actress from an acting institute 

to land a lead role and win a National Film Award (albeit for another film, 

Dastak [The Knock], 1971) found herself typecast, leading to an early and abrupt 

end to a once-promising career. 

47. Pakeezah (The Pure One, 1972) 

Director: Kamal Amrohi; Cast: Meena Kumari, Ashok Kumar, Raaj 

Kumar 

An authentic musical masterpiece in the courtesan film and the Muslim social 

genre, it tells the story of a tawaif (courtesan) Sahibjaan (Meena Kumari), 

whose mother was a courtesan who was spurned by her aristocratic lover. 

Sahibjaan is raised by her aunt, a brothel madam named Nawabjaan (Veena). 

Forest ranger Salim Ahmed Khan (Raaj Kumar) is enthralled by Sahibjaan’s 

innocence, falling in love at the sight of her beautiful, uncovered feet. He 

convinces her to elope with him, but wherever she goes, the famous Sahibjaan 

is recognized by her fans. Salim renames her as Pakeezah, meaning “the pure 

one,” and takes her to a priest to be legally married; but she refuses and returns 

to the brothel. In the film’s climax, Nawabjaan recognizes Sahibjaan’s father

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Bollywood FAQ 

and calls him to witness the irony of his own daughter being employed to 

entertain his family. 

The film took nearly fourteen years to complete, starting when the lead 

actress, Meena Kumari, and the director, Kamal Amrohi, were married. The 

production survived the actress’s failing health and separation from her husband, 

to be released just days before her untimely demise at thirty-nine. 

Filmgoers flocked to the cinemas to see it. Like precious dewdrops of radiant 

poetry unfolding amid opulence in its last glorious burst, Pakeezah’s world of 

poetic conversations in the Urdu language, elaborate salutations, the delicate 

manner of aristocrats, grand egos, grandiose hurts, and the courtly gatherings 

of exquisite singing and intricate dances—all of these elements helped to 

capture a bygone era, carefully constructed from Amrohi’s memories of his 

youth in north India. 

48. Ankur (The Seedling, 1973) 

Director: Shyam Benegal; Cast: Shabana Azmi, Ananth Nag, 

Sadhu Meher 

At the box office, Ankur earned ten million rupees, or twenty times its cost, 

and pioneered a new wave of realistic filmmaking in the 1970s, known as 

Shabana Azmi and Ananth Nag in Ankur. 



345 

the parallel cinema movement. The winner of three national and over forty 

international awards, it features authentic accents, natural sounds, unheroic 

heroes, psychological realism, no songs, no dances, and no happy ending. 

Without any pretense of sugar-coated hope, the film depicts life in a traditional 

south Indian village, where the landlord’s word is law. A young landowner 

named Surya (Ananth Nag) has an intimate relationship with his “untouchable” 

house-help, Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi), but refuses to acknowledge their 

illegitimate child. His excessive reaction towards Lakshmi’s alcoholic husband 

(Sadhu Meher) sows the seeds of rebellion and change. 

Shabana Azmi made her film debut in this groundbreaking role, which 

achieved a new level of authenticity, whether playing sweet, suffering, or 

fierce, reflecting her adherence to method acting. Azmi deservedly picked up 

the first of her five Best Actress National Awards, while Meher won for Best 

Actor. 

49. Garm Hava (Hot Winds, 1973) 

Director: M. S. Sathyu; Cast: Balraj Sahni, Farooque Sheikh 

Garm Hava is unanimously hailed as India’s best and most significant film 

on the theme of partition (the division of the Indian subcontinent into 

Balraj Sahni in Garam Hava. 


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Bollywood FAQ 

Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan at the time of its independence). 

The film has no villains, only ambiguous characters who are merely 

creations of circumstance. The real villain, it seems, is the partition itself. 

Shot at authentic locations in Agra (home to the world-famous Taj Mahal), 

the film is unveiled as a documentary on the life and times of a Muslim family 

in post-partition north India. Garm Hava’s protagonist, Salim Mirza (Balraj 

Sahni), represents every Indian whose every loss—both personal and professional— 

is the price India paid for its freedom. Mirza’s decision offers a counter 

perspective to the majority of Muslims who did not subscribe to the two-nation 

theory based on religion, with more Muslims opting to remain in India than 

the numbers who went to Pakistan. Based on a short story by an important 

feminist voice of twentieth century literature, Ismat Chugtai, the film benefits 

from the dialogue of another revolutionary littérateur, Kaifi Azmi. Azmi and 

Chugtai’s leftist leanings can be read in the film’s concluding shots depicting 

integration as seen under a more humane, red umbrella. 

50. Zanjeer (The Chain, 1973) 

Director: Prakash Mehra; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Pran, Jaya Bhaduri, 

Ajit 

This surprise hit probably changed the course of Bollywood more than any 

single film to herald the “angry young man” as a genre unto itself. The lanky, 

brooding Bachchan is its biggest star, and Salim-Javed the genre’s most successful 

screenwriter. The trends established by this film include vengeance 

as a guiding theme, male bonding, and a song dedicated to friendship, a 

mandatory qawwali in place of the cabaret, and the marginalization of the 

heroine to a few songs in a romantic subplot. Honest, principled, and troubled 

inspector Vijay Khanna (Amitabh Bachchan) seeks vengeance for the murder 

of his parents; his only memory of the culprit is a chain worn at the time of 

the killing. He finds support in the knife-sharpening Mala (Jaya Bhaduri) 

and a gutsy Pathan, Sher Khan (Pran). Bachchan’s brilliant portrayal of the 

brooding, temperamental hero who is haunted by recurring nightmares made 

audiences sit up and take notice, while his credible enactment of psychological 

complexities put him on the wish list of every major director of the day. When 

Prakash Mehra took the hero of his much-rejected art film to the premiere in 

Kolkata, the crowd initially ignored him. Post-screening, however, a star was 

born—lanky, dark, and handsomely volcanic. Also established was Bachchan’s 

most recurring screen name, Vijay.


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51. “Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho” (Song: “If you 

and I were locked in a room and the keys get lost”; 

Bobby, 1973) 

Director: Raj Kapoor; Music: Laxmikant and Pyarelal; Lyrics: Anand 

Bakshi 

At a time when middle-aged heroes were still trying to pass themselves off as 

young adults in romantic films, Bobby’s teen leads, Rishi Kapoor and Dimple 

Kapadia, were as fresh as youth itself! Cute, lovable, and innocent, their first 

moment of togetherness was explored as a sung conversation concerning 

uncommon scenarios in a question-and-answer format. The easily hummable 

song played a valuable role in making national heartthrobs of the doe-eyed 

Dimple and the infectiously charming Rishi. Each of the film’s eight songs was 

a chartbuster, with Laxmikant and Pyarelal’s score claiming Indian music’s 

first Gold Record. Bobby became the template for many teen romances featuring 

second-generation-star son-and-daughter debuts (albeit rarely as spectacularly), 

making Rishi Kapoor the only romantic hero of the 1970s to survive into 

the 1980s. 

52. “Chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko” (Song: “Stolen 

my heart, you have”; Yaadon Ki Baraat / Caravan of 

Memories, 1973) 

Director: Nassir Hussain; Music: R. D. Burman; Lyrics: Majrooh 

Sultanpuri 

That famous opening clink of wine glasses, the now-famous guitar strum, a coy 

yet confident Zeenat Aman in white with flowing tresses, and a naughty yet 

virginal cad played by debutant actor Vijay Arora—these elements personify 

charm and youth. Add to this Asha Bhosle’s lilting vocals matched in melody 

by Mohammad Rafi’s voice and what you get is the crown jewel in the oeuvre of 

the music director of the decade, R. D. Burman. But the song is also about celebrating 

the mood of “a young and free” India—featuring the first generation 

of Indians in their twenties, born after independence. An all-time bohemian 

rhapsody to love and romance, the tune in its opening lines, incidentally, 

bears a slight resemblance to the English song, “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be 

Belgium,” from the soundtrack of the 1969 film of the same name.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Vidya Sinha and Amol Palekar in Rajnigandha. 

 


53. Rajnigandha 

(Tuberose, 1974) 

Director: Basu Chatterjee; 

Cast: Amol Palekar, Vidya 

Sinha, Dinesh Thakur 

At a time when Indian films 

were focused on two major categories—star-studded 

spectacles 

and grim art films—Rajnigandha 

brought an altogether different 

viewing experience: a slice-oflife 

film that engaged, entertained, 

and made you think! 

Revolving around seemingly 

mundane yet some life-changing 

dilemmas, Rajnigandha depicts how a woman seeking true love eventually 

finds a way to bring stability to her emotional wanderings. Basu Chatterjee’s 

film calls for multiple viewings to fully appreciate its tribute to imperfection 

in its most perfected attributes. The only film to win the Filmfare Best Film 

Award in the popular and critical choice categories, it strengthened the middle-cinema 

trend of simple stories, no interior sets, modest budgets, and 

decent box-office returns. 

54. Sholay (Embers, 1975) 

Director: Ramesh Sippy; Cast: Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Amitabh 

Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bhaduri, Amjad Khan 

Sholay (Embers, 1975) is, in the words of Jordan S. Harris, “one of the world’s 

most-watched favorite movies.” The Filmfare Awards, which had conferred on 

Sholay a token, though fully deserved, Best Editing award in 1976, honored the 

film (and its director, Ramesh Sippy) more fully by naming it the “Best Film 

of 50 Years” at the fiftieth awards ceremony in 2005. Highlighting Sholay’s 

continuing impact on the Indian film industry, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur 

divided its history into two eras—the one before the release of Sholay, and the 

one after. Liberally borrowing its confrontational moments from Hollywood 

and Italy’s spaghetti westerns and popular dacoit-themed Hindi films, screenwriters 

Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar managed to create an original tale of 

revenge, wherein a retired police officer, Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), hires two 

daredevil petty criminals, Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra), 

to capture dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), who had murdered 

every member of his family, including a grandchild.


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Each of its independently 

popular subplots have achieved, 

according to Subhash K. Jha, 

“a throbbing autonomous life 

of their own”—the spectacular 

train robbery in the beginning; 

comic encounters with 

a British jailor who sports a 

Hitler-like moustache; villain 

Gabbar Singh’s game of Russian 

Roulette in the ravines with his 

scared henchmen; his massacre 

of Thakur’s family; Veeru’s suicide 

drama atop a high water 

tower; the poignant death of 

Imam’s son; Radha’s unspoken 

love; Jaidev’s heroic sacrifice; 

and Thakur’s climactic felling 

of Gabbar, using only his legs. 

Sholay’s myriad characters and 

their intriguing personal stories 

encompass a range of contrasting 

human instincts. According 

to Javed Akhtar: 

This poster of Sholay boasts a veritable “who’s who” of 

Bollywood’s leading stars from the 1970s. 

 


Thakur is clean shaven, his 

hair is made, he is crisp and to the point. On the other side, Gabbar is 

dirty and gregarious. You have two friends, one is extremely boisterous, 

and the other is sober and deep. You have two girls in the film, one 

is extremely talkative, and the other is totally silent. These foils are 

perfect [opposites] and, because you have both ends of the spectrum, 

the story covers almost all kinds of emotions. 

Sholay became the template for the ideal masala film. Opening to critical 

panning and lukewarm audience response, Sholay gained in favor through 

word-of-mouth, ultimately becoming Bollywood’s biggest twentieth century 

blockbuster (inflation adjusted), running for five continuous years in Mumbai’s 

Minerva Theatre, from its initial release on Indian Independence Day, August 

15, 1975.

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Bollywood FAQ 

55. Aandhi (The Blizzard, 1975) 

Director: Gulzar; Cast: Suchitra Sen, Sanjeev Kumar 

A rare political-drama with an intense personal story, Aandhi begins with 

the arrival of a female politician, Aarti Devi (Suchitra Sen), in a dusty town 

for an election campaign. Her party workers book accommodation in a hotel 

unknown to them, which is managed by her estranged husband (Sanjeev 

Kumar). Through flashbacks, we learn how Aarti’s politician father had encouraged 

her to trade in a life of domestic bliss for the hurly-burly world of politics. 

A fierce fighter in public, it is only when she is in private that she reveals, 

through some poignant songs, her still-extant, unstated affection for her 

former husband. The film was famously banned during the Indian Emergency 

(1975–1977) for the protagonist’s uncanny resemblance to Prime Minister 

Indira Gandhi in attitude, style, and sartorial choices, with a scene or two mirroring 

her troubled marriage. A precious tragedy with some finely restrained 

lead performances, Aandhi raises an ever-relevant question—don’t celebrities, 

political leaders, and especially women, have the right to privacy, and how 

justified is the media and social opinion in critiquing personal choices of 

public lives? 

56. “Main to aarti utarun re” (Song: “I perform mother 

Santoshi’s worship”; Jai Santoshi Maa/Hail Goddess 

Santoshi, 1975) 

Director: Vijay Sharma; Cast: Kanan Kaushal, Bharat Bhushan, Leela 

Mishra, Anita Guha 

A prayer song dedicated to Mother Santoshi (the Goddess of Satisfaction), an 

avatar of the Feminine Supreme in Hindu mythology, it exemplifies through 

some deft camerawork the traditionally performed practice of offering prayers 

to a deity through song and dance. This is also the experience of darshan, or 

the act of seeing and being seen by a deity in a reciprocal act of visual communion 

performed by Hindu devotees in a temple. A prayer song is choreographed 

to two popular western Indian folk dance forms performed by a group 

of women in circles (garba) and with sticks (dandia) to rising pace and rhythm. 

This low-budget film—featuring now-forgotten actors—tells the mythical tale 

of the jealousies emanating from the heavens, which wreaked havoc in the life 

of Mother Santoshi’s greatest devotee on earth. It was one of the highest-grossing 

releases of 1975, on par with multi-star successes like Sholay (Embers) and 

Deewar (The Wall). While critics and scholars were bewildered by this surprise 

religio-cultural phenomenon that made a pan-Indian goddess out of a local 

north Indian deity, millions of women flocked to the theaters to see it. These 

female moviegoers loved the film’s folksy story about a simple ritual to win the


351 

Anita Guha (left), as goddess Santoshi, comes to the rescue of a devotee in Jai 

Santoshi Maa. 


blessings of an “easily pleased” goddess. A rare revival of the mythological 

genre in the midst of social and action dramas, it became a cult favorite that 

had viewers turning theaters into temporary temples. Many even left their 

footwear at the door and greeted Goddess Santoshi’s onscreen appearance by 

tossing flowers and coins. 

57. Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) 

Director: Manmohan Desai; Cast: Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, 

Amitabh Bachchan 

A crazy but immensely entertaining film about three “lost-and-found” brothers, 

it is director Manmohan Desai’s signature take on the masala entertainment 

formula. The film presents—and celebrates—India’s inherent religious 

pluralism in all its glory, with its three protagonists hailing from the three 

dominant faiths of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. Amar, Akbar, and 

Anthony are three brothers who were separated in childhood, thereby growing 

up in different homes with different religions. 

The film’s success firmly established Amitabh Bachchan as Bollywood’s 

leading male entertainer. He manages to steal the show with his lively, flamboyant 

performance as a happy-go-lucky Catholic, Anthony Gonsalves, who 

lives on the edge of law. Incidentally, the actor, known for his angry and

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Bollywood FAQ 

(Left to right): Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, and Amitabh Bachchan in (and as) Amar Akbar 

Anthony. 


brooding roles, won his first major acting award, the Filmfare Best Actor 

trophy, for this attempt at comedy. 

58. “Chaap tilak sab chini re” (Song: “You’ve taken away 

my looks, my identity, by just a glance”; Main Tulsi Tere 

Aangan Ki / The Basil in Your Garden, 1979) 

Director: Raj Khosla; Music: Laxmikant and Pyarelal; Lyrics: Amir 

Khusro 

A fourteenth-century romantic poem addressed to the Lord/Guru as “beloved” 

by Sufi mystic Amir Khusro, gets a twentieth century reimagining as an erotic 

love song performed by two gypsy girls, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Asha 

Bhosle. The scene opens with the leads, Deb Mukherjee and Neeta Mehta, 

awakening to an acknowledgment of their mutual passion. That’s when the 

love song wafts in, giving voice to their throbbing desires and leading to its 

consummation. Director Raj Khosla offers a master class in how to depict 

heightening passion through a series of expressive close-ups of active body 

movements from two disparate, unconnected scenes.


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59. Junoon (Obsession, 1978) 

Director: Shyam Benegal; Cast: Shashi Kapoor, Jennifer Kendal, 

Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Nafisa Ali 

Adapted from Ruskin Bond’s novella A Flight of Pigeons, Junoon offers an unbiased 

take on the many brutalities that bloodied India’s social fabric during its 

first “failed” war for independence from the British, in 1857. It was triggered 

by a mutiny by Indian sepoys/soldiers against their foreign masters. Based on 

the memoirs of a British woman who had survived the mutiny, director Shyam 

Benegal keeps his characters ambiguous, and has as the narrator a wandering 

mendicant with no social bonds. As a result, one tends to identify with the 

concerns of every character, from the fair to the fanatic, just as the characters 

identify and empathize with one another’s individual junoons (obsessive 

passions). 

This simmering historical film examines its sweeping subject matter 

through an intimate study of the interactions of a few people. Between the 

Muslim nobility and the British imperialists is the status quo, the Hindu 

merchant class, as represented by Lala Ramji Lal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), 

who tries his best at maintaining a please-all survival path without antagonizing 

either of his opposing political masters. Shabana Azmi, who plays 

the neglected wife of the film’s Pathan hero, Javed Khan (Shashi Kapoor); 

Naseeruddin Shah, the vengeance-seeking fanatic; and Sushma Seth as the 

practical, elder woman of the house, serve as engaging, multi-dimensional 

distractions to hero Javed’s unidirectional obsession for a British girl (Nafisa 

Ali) in his captivity. But it’s Jennifer Kendal who leaves the longest-lasting 

impression, guarding her daughter like a tigress in the face of the Javed Khan 

threat. Benegal deliberately juggles realism with the theatrical, giving the 

audience constant high drama. At his disposal is an engaging cross-cultural 

love story to which he gives every narrative device, especially the fantastic 

minstrel soothsayer, echoing the Shakespearian tragedies, while keeping the 

film grounded in its authentic settings. 

60. Sparsh (The Touch, 1980) 

Director: Sai Paranjpye; Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, 

Om Puri 

Two handicapped people, one physically and the other emotionally, cross each 

other’s paths to build, break down, and rebuild their lives through existential 

scars. Anirudh Parmar (Naseeruddin Shah) is the principal of a school for 

blind children. He is a blind but inspiring crusader who values his independence 

and protects his non-dependency on others to the point of obsession.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Kavita (Shabana Azmi), a young widow with creative talents, stays in a withdrawn 

cocoon of misery, resigned to the past. 

Sparsh is a sublime human story which celebrates the sense of touch. It is 

about touching life in its myriad manifestations—through pleasure, pain, hurt, 

and hope. It even explores the possibilities of being touched by a life-changing 

human angel! It is the writer-filmmaker Sai Paranjpye’s finest ode to human 

frailty in an eclectic ouvre of entertaining, meaningful slice-of-life stories told 

with a touch of sentimentality. 

61. “Ye kahaan aa gaye hum” (Song: “How far and where 

have we come?”; Silsila/The Affair, 1982) 

Director: Raj Khosla; Music: Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad 

Chaurasia; Lyrics: Javed Akhtar 

Yash Chopra describes Silsila as “one of the biggest and most challenging 

castings to have been done in the history of Indian cinema.” The film features 

Amitabh Bachchan, his wife Jaya, and actress Rekha in a reel-life triangle at the 

peak of Amitabh and Rekha’s much-speculated-about real-life affair. Ironically, 

the film’s stars resonate more than its storyline. The result includes flashes 

of poetic brilliance, some unforgettable moments of poignant restraint, and 

arguably the ultimate love song as sung by the “King of Baritones,” Amitabh 

Bachchan, and the “Queen of Melody,” Lata Mangeshkar, in the song “Ye 

kahaan aa gaye hum.” Poetry and dialogue have punctuated songs before, but 

in Bachchan’s recitation is the essence of his characters’ dilemma and the soul 

of the lyrics. Starting with philosophical musings, it graduates to a passionate 

declaration of his love, and his feelings concerning the obstructions of convention. 

Into his reflective pauses comes a background crescendo of violins and 

guitars, before Lata Mangeshkar’s escalating melody takes love and longing 

to the heights of ethereal rapture. Rekha’s luminous visage, Bachchan’s joyous 

abandon amid beauteous frames of floral abundance—every frame depicting 

the song is an unforgettable ode to romance! 

62. “I Am a Disco Dancer” (Song: “Disco Dancer,” 1982) 

Director: Kamal Amrohi; Music: Bappi Lahiri; Lyrics: Anjaan 

If disco set the mood and rhythm for the eighties, then this song—with its fans, 

frenzy, psychedelic lights, and background dancers—was its template, right 

down to the shining white suit worn by its dancing star Jimmy (Mithun 

Chakraborty). “Disco Dancer Jimmy” earned him a shrine in Tokyo, statues in 

Russia, fans across Asia, and Jimmy-themed parties in Europe. There have 

been similar songs and dancing stars aplenty, but Mithun and the song’s composer, 

Bappi Lahiri, remain the trendsetting dancer-composer team of the


355 

Mithun Chakraborty performs the song “I am a disco dancer.” 


decade. The song’s interactive lyrics ensure that everyone would be familiar 

with the expanded meaning of the abbreviated D-I-S-C-O: 

D for Disco, 

I for Item, 

S for Singer, 

C for Chorus, 

O for Orchestra! 

63. “O babua, ye mahua” (Song: Boy o boy, behold this 

intoxicating flower”; Sadma / Shock, 1983) 

Director: Balu Mahendra; Music: Ilaiyaraaja; Lyrics: Gulzar 

Southern sex symbol Silk Smitha makes her Bollywood debut in an erotic 

dream song choreographed to ample celluloid heat, accentuated by the sensual 

stylings of the Queen Singer of Cabarets, Asha Bhosle. Smitha matches steps 

with the classically trained dancer-actor Kamal Haasan, dressed in ethnic 

tribal attire, with the woman being referenced as mahua, an intoxicating 

drink made by tribal communities. The song signs off with a setting sun that 

has the silhouettes of its dancers strike poses à la the imagery of erotic art of 

the temples. Gulzar’s lyrics for this song have many connotations, especially 

with the reference to mahua, which is known for its intoxicating properties.

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Bollywood FAQ 

Picturized on Kamal Haasan and Silk Smitha dancing in ethnic tribal attire, 

Asha Bhosle renders the song with a controlled voice to express the repressed 

longing of Silk Smitha’s character for her husband’s subordinate. 

64. “Naino mein sapna” (Song: “Dreams in My Eyes”; 

Himmatwala / The Braveheart, 1983) 

Director: K. Raghavendra Rao; Music: Bappi Lahiri; Lyrics: Indeevar 

The sea, the sand, the greens, and the rows of painted mud pots and hand 

brushes—this riot of colors is an understatement for the sheer amount of 

Technicolor brightness that assails one’s senses. A chubby and cute Sridevi, 

twirling around in traditional dancing-girl outfits that earned her the “thunder 

thighs” epithet, doing aerobic-like dance steps with a much older (but still fit) 

Jeetendra who, among his many costume changes, dons his trademark white 

pants and white shoes. The song and its sequences have been parodied ad 

nauseum for being a trendsetting representative of the best and the worst of 

the 1980s. The song and the film Himmatwala’s cult success triggered a series 

of similar dance numbers, but none has been able to match, much less surpass, 

the original’s iconicity or the melody of this Bappi Lahiri–composed song, 

sung by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar, still singing as the heroine’s 

voice four decades after her debut. 

65. “Aye dil-e-nadaan” (Song: “O restless heart”; Razia 

Sultan / Empress Razia, 1983) 

Director: Kamal Amrohi; Music: Khayaam; Lyrics: Jan Nissar Akhtar 

Lyricist Jan Nissar Akhtar wrote two hundred couplets to capture the thoughts 

of the restless soul of an empress falling in love. Director Kamal Amrohi 

eventually chose four of these couplets, and music composer Khayyam 

fused Turkish, Arabic, and Indian music influences to recreate the sounds of 

the Delhi Sultanate in eleventh century CE The premise has the caravan of 

Princess Razia Sultan coming to India from Turkey through a long and tortuous 

route, traversing many countries. The tune and the orchestration reflect 

the musical influences of all the regions through which she has passed, while 

the lyrics convey her dilemma of choosing between love and duty. The song’s 

first-time use of complete silence between its lines, followed by heartbeats as 

a music note, was Amrohi’s idea. Though Razia Sultan was released in 1983, 

the song had been composed almost a decade earlier, in 1974. Just the buzz 

surrounding its making led to many music projects for Khayyam between the 

time of the film’s production and release.


357 

66. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (Let it Go, Friends! 1983) 

Director: Kundan Shah; Cast: Ravi Vaswani, Naseeruddin Shah, 

Om Puri 

That a rib-tickling satire could be made from shady business dealings, an 

opportunistic media, institutional corruption, and unaccounted-for murders 

is a testament to writer-director Kundan Shah, the genius behind this inspired 

piece of lunacy. The film features a who’s who from the parallel and middlecinema 

movements of the early 1980s. Vinod Chopra (Naseeruddin Shah) and 

Sudhir Mishra (Ravi Vaswani) are professional photographers who receive an 

assignment that leads them to discover that one of Mumbai’s biggest builders, 

Tarneja (Pankaj Kapur), is trying to bribe Municipal Commissioner D’Mello 

(Satish Shah) to give him a hotly contested bridge contract. Meanwhile, 

D’Mello is also negotiating with Tarneja’s rival, industrialist Ahuja (Om Puri), 

for a better deal. In the middle of this mess, Vinod and Sudhir suddenly learn 

that D’Mello has been murdered. As they grapple with the confusion of whom 

to trust and how to expose the real culprit, the film speeds through a frenzy 

of comical scenes as the pair runs around, trying to hide D’Mello’s body. This 

lunatic chase sequence climaxes at what is perhaps the best parody of the epic 

Mahabharata and its iconic event of Queen Draupadi’s disrobing. The somber 

event is turned on its head, with the two heroes and the villains inserting 

themselves into the proceedings, with the corpse dressed as Draupadi. 

67. Mirch Masala (Spices, 1985) 

Director: Ketan Mehta; Cast: Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri 

A lecherous tax collector in British India, Subedar (Naseeruddin Shah), commands 

a beautiful village woman, Sonbai (Smita Patil), whose husband is 

away, to sleep with him. She slaps him and flees, finding refuge in a spice factory, 

where women grind chillies to fine powder. On one side of the factory are 

a few women, led by the village headman’s wife and a teacher protesting the 

village-approved rape of a helpless woman, and on the other are the cowardly 

headman (Suresh Oberoi) and some village men, led by the Subedar, trying to 

persuade Sonbai to submit for the “larger village good.” Between them is an 

old factory guard (Om Puri), who refuses to open the establishment’s doors. 

When it is eventually broken, in a spectacularly climactic surprise, the women 

in the factory get together to mount a sudden attack on the Subedar with fistfuls 

of mirch masala (fresh-ground red chilli powder) thrown at his face. As 

he shrieks in pain, the film ends mysteriously, with Sonbai holding a sickle 

over the Subedar. Though a period-rural-drama, its concerns still resonate in 

certain Badlands where men in power, like the Subedar, continue to exercise 

brutal authority over spineless, sexist men in patriarchal societies, who can 

only assert their manhood over subjugated women. Featuring one of art-house

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cinema icon Smita Patil’s finest performances, the film evoacatively incorporates 

themes of the rugged tyranny of the dry Saurashtra landscape into a 

methodically building, intense drama of sex and violence. 

68. Mard (The Man, 1985) 

Director: Manmohan Desai; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Amrita Singh, 

Nirupa Roy, Prem Chopra, Dara Singh 

One of Manmohan Desai’s last successful masala blockbusters, this onscreen 

adventure parodies the extreme nature of the British Rule—e.g., there is a 

“Windsor Club” for British elites only, with the signboard warning, “Dogs and 

Indians Not Allowed”; a neo-medieval concentration camp, run by a sadistic 

white man, where Indian slaves construct a railway, and when they get too 

weak are bled to death to provide transfusions for British troops in Burma; a 

leather-wearing English heroine with a fetish for whips; and ruthless generals 

and greedy businessman named after infamous British India officials like 

Dwyer, Simon, and Harry. Of course, they are vague allusions to their real 

historic counterparts. The virile hero, on whom the word mard was tattooed 

when he was still a baby, eventually conquers the villainous trio, overcoming 

an array of obstacles in the process. These range from Roman gladiators, 

Mexican bandits, masked schemers, to tanks, planes, impalements, a bottomless 

quicksand pit, and a fistfight with his estranged father. Bollywood’s 

original he-man, Dara Singh, an intelligent Labrador called Moti (pearl), and 

a loyal stud horse, Badal (cloud), remain the most dependable aides of the 

“superhero-like” Mard, played by Amitabh Bachchan. Offering a compelling 

cocktail of stock characters from multiple Western and Indian genres—like 

dacoit films, costume-dramas, B-movies, jungle-adventures, westerns, familydrama, 

exploitation, even devotional films—Mard is a little subgenre gem 

that’s so bad, it’s good! 

69. “Main teri dushman” (Song: “I am your enemy, and 

you are mine”; Nagina/Snake Woman, 1986) 

Director: Harmesh Malhotra; Music: Laxmikant Pyarelal; Lyrics: 

Anand Bakshi 

A cult hit in the shapeshifting snake-woman genre of horror fantasies, the song 

depicts the ultimate confrontation in such narratives—between a powerful 

snake charmer (Bhairon Nath) and a good-hearted snake woman, Rajni (played 

by the very expressive dancer-actress Sridevi). Amrish Puri, as the magicianvillain, 

tries every trick in the book to make the snake woman reveal her real 

self to her family. But she resists to high-voltage impact as she single-handedly 

battles her nine opponents through a dance of fury.


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70. Mr. India (1986) 

Director: Shekhar Kapur; Cast: Anil Kapoor, Sridevi 

Bollywood’s most popular science-fiction film to date, it tells the madcap story 

of a scatterbrained reporter in love with a vigilante who runs an orphanage 

and can turn himself invisible at will. The film gave Hindi cinema one of its 

most loved and oft-quoted villain characters, Mogambo, a brilliantly insane 

general who is determined to conquer India. Played by Amrish Puri, fresh 

from his role as a human-sacrificing priest in Steven Spielberg’s internationally 

popular Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Inspired by a forgotten 

1957 film, Mr. X, this all-time favorite children’s film by BAFTA-nominated 

director Shekhar Kapur established Sridevi as the biggest female star of the 

1980s. Sridevi is best known for her two dance songs—a crazy cabaret called 

“Hawa Hawaii,” and one of Hindi cinema’s finest erotic songs, “Kaate nahi kat 

te” (“Time doesn’t pass”), in which the actress romanced an invisible “Mr. India” 

in the rain. The film was almost a celluloid CV for the acting capabilities of the 

super-talented Sridevi, as she excelled in drama, dance, sensuality, and 

comedy (the latter in a fantastic imitation of Charlie Chaplin). No wonder 

critics and those in the movie trade cheekily nicknamed the film “Miss India,” 

in acknowledgement of its real star. 

Sridevi mimics Charlie Chaplin in Mr India. 


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71. Ijaazat (Permission, 1987) 

Director: Gulzar; Cast: Rekha, Naseeruddin Shah, Anuradha Patel 

Since the movies started talking, love triangles have fueled many a drama in 

the romantic genre. Yet poet-director Gulzar’s Ijaazat stands out as an experience 

apart, heretofore unseen in Hindi cinema, the crowning achievement in 

his oeuvre for its freshness, unusual casting, and candidly alternate perspective. 

Conveying big messages through small stories in Gulzar’s signature style, 

the film is a lasting ode to love, almost as fresh as the dew drops in its opening 

track—”Chotisi kahani se” (“From a small tale”). 

The film concerns a man who loves his wife dearly, but cannot stop caring 

for his vulnerable first love. Two strangers, Mahinder (Naseeruddin Shah) and 

Sudha (Rekha), now middle-aged, meet on a rainy night in the waiting hall of a 

small-town railway station. They were man and wife not long ago, separated by 

a misunderstanding, and meeting again after a five-year absence. Seamlessly 

fleeting between the past and the present, Ijaazat is constructed as a series 

of flashbacks that lend its seemingly predictable plot an almost thriller-like 

suspense. The film’s highlight, another Bollywood rarity, are its un-rhyming 

songs. For instance, constructed as a letter in verse, the song “Mera kuch 

samaan” (“Some of my belongings are still with you”) is a collage of thoughts— 

spontaneous and unstructured— that need not necessarily rhyme. Yet music 

director R. D. Burman makes a lilting, lingering composition, one that serves 

as a timeless testament to his genius. Singer Asha Bhosle deservedly received 

her second National Award for the song, and Gulzar, his first for Best Lyrics. 

72. “Jab koi baat bigad jaaye” (Song: “Whenever anything 

goes amiss”; Jurm / Crime, 1990) 

Director: Mahesh Bhatt; Music: R. D. Burman; Lyrics: Indeevar 

Another sunshine song, it was composed as an ode to faith, love, and friendship. 

It is a cover of the American folk song, “500 Miles Away from Home,” but 

sung with a sense of hope, not lamentation. The highlight from Mahesh Bhatt’s 

co-drama Jurm (Crime, 1990) begins with its lead star, Vinod Khanna, breaking 

into a spontaneous ball dance with his friend and fellow cop, Shafi Inamdar. 

The cheerful whistle interlude and the song’s comforting lyrics, sung by the 

1990s’ singing sensation Kumar Sanu, makes for a soothing melody that has 

even been used as therapy when treating patients suffering from depression. 

73. “Dil hai chota sa” (Song: “A little wish of my little 

heart”; Roja / The Rose, 1992) 

Director: Mani Ratnam; Music: A. R. Rahman; Lyrics: P. K. Mishra


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If a song can be said to be the story of its character, then this is one. The vocals 

(by Minmini) are as fresh as the film’s debuting girl-woman (Madhoo), and 

the visuals (by cinematographer Rajeev Menon), through multiple cuts of long 

and close shots, reveal a rising sun, misty mountains, fulsome paddy fields, 

coconut trees, a stream, a solitary boatman rowing across a gorge, dancing 

ladies both young and old, and the mundane activities of a village morning. Its 

synchronized bars are structured like a lullaby with straight, uncomplicated 

notes. Underplayed, folksy yet celestial, the sounds of flute, guitar, sarangi 

on a keyboard—all are wedded to electronically generated rhythms and a 

tangential chorus. The ending of the song seems almost abrupt, with the closeup 

of the joyous expression on the heroine’s face, as droplets from a waterfall 

bounce off her head. 

Indian film music encountered its biggest composition revolution by a 

man born and still working in Madras, one thousand miles south of Mumbai. 

Writer-auteur Mani Ratnam yanked A. R. Rahman away from writing jingles 

to compose his first full-length score. Roja, the tale of a woman whose husband 

is kidnapped by terrorists in Kashmir, is a grim political-parable, yet Rahman 

weaves in some lilting romantic melodies and ballads of longing and love for 

one’s country, thus heightening the story’s overall dramatic impact. This was 

an astonishing debut achievement, with an assortment of global and local 

influences—Broadway, reggae, jungle rhythms, variations on the scores of 

Italian westerns, classic Carnatic traditions—alchemized to create music that 

is totally Tamil, totally Rahman, like all of his subsequent scores. 

74. Khuda Gawah (God is Witness, 1992) 

Director: Mukul Anand; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi, Danny, 

Kiran Kumar 

Khuda Gawah is a lavish action film with a memorable, romantic track celebrating 

the fearless Afghan spirit and pride of its protagonist, Baadshah Khan 

(Amitabh Bachchan), who is living up to a promise, at all costs. Shot in India, 

Nepal, Bhutan, and war-torn Afghanistan, the film’s highlight is its opening 

Buzkashi (a traditional Central-Asian team sport played on horseback) scene 

shot on authentic, rugged Afghan locations to some adrenaline-infused, stylish 

choreography, as Khan falls in love with his gutsy female rival, Benazir 

(Sridevi). 

75. “Choli ke peeche kya hai” (Song: “What is Beneath 

the Blouse”; Khalnayak / The Villain, 1993) 

Director: Subhash Ghai; Music: Laxmikant and Pyarelal; Lyrics: Anand 

Bakshi

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The longest item song that also became the most controversial for its provocative 

lyrics, erotic choreography, and imaginative juxtaposition of the sensual 

with the playful, is sung as a question-and-answer riddle. Madhuri Dixit, who 

plays a police officer in the film, dons the garb of a folk dancer to lure a terrorist 

(Sanjay Dutt) on the run. “Choli ke peeche” brought a new risqué element to 

Bollywood dance, and Saroj Khan’s choreography was provocative, becoming 

a benchmark for subsequent numbers. The subtlety of the quick-silver expressions 

and gestures is beautifully captured by way of quick cutting, but it also 

(unwittingly) set a trend for sleazy lyrics and sleazier filmmaking by far less 

talented choreographers and directors. 

76. “Pehla nasha, pehla khumar” (Song: “First love, first 

infatuation”; Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar /The Winner Takes 

All, 1992) 

Director: Mansoor Khan; Music: Jatin Pandit and Lalit; Lyrics: Majrooh 

Sultanpuri 

Inspired by the lead trio of Betty-Archie-Veronica from the Archie comics and 

set in a scenic hill town, this sports romcom’s timeless moment is the song 

that beautifully captures the follies and glories of the teenage years. Pehla 

nasha, choreographed by Farah Khan before she became Bolllywood’s most 

successful female director, is only the fourth film song in Indian cinema to be 

picturized in slow-motion. Playback singer Udit Narayan’s youthful voice and 

Sadhana Sargam’s lilting vocals lend a parallel melodic meaning to the spoken 

and unspoken articulations of first love. The stars, Aamir Khan and Ayesha 

Julka, are also cute and appealing. While the influence of old Hollywood college 

musicals is about pretty movement, the leggy and lissom Pooja Bedi does 

a memorable tribute to Marilyn Monroe’s flying skirt moment from The Seven 

Year Itch (1955), albeit in red instead of white. 

77. Madam X (1994) 

Director: Deepak Shivdasani; Cast: Rekha, Mohsin Khan 

Madam X (Rekha) is introduced through a four-minute-long song sequence 

featuring ten elaborate costume changes, shot in fifteen different locations, 

picturized through ninety-eight cuts. The film revolves around a fictitious, 

greedy, ruthless, Mumbai-based lady don, whose guard against state prosecution 

is a high-ranking public servant, a mysterious character called “X.” 

An honest police officer, Vijay (Pakistan cricketer Mohsin Khan), captures 

Madam X and sends her lookalike, a smart street performer named Shalu 

(Rekha), to reveal her secret wealth and hideouts to the police. In a protracted 

combat sequence, with catfight between the fake and the real Madam X’s, good


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triumphs over evil. Madam X dies with triumphant arrogance, declaring, “I am 

that death heralding express, which the world calls Madam X.” 

Fashionista-star Rekha lends a stylish audacity to her interpretation of 

evil in a never-seen-character bordering on the bizarre—she has a witch-like 

cackle, goes horseback riding on tropical beaches in a fur coat, smokes cigarettes, 

and wears boots brought on a tray by a silent, bearded aide. But what 

has lent iconicity to this stylish B-movie, at least in retrospect, are Rekha’s 

self-designed fashions that would put even Lady Gaga to shame for their blindingly 

blingy outfits, ranging from mink coats, spiked gloves, capes, and long 

boots, with matching over-the-top headgear in blue, red, black, and any color 

that is loud and shocking! This is a rare look at a rare character that only the 

versatile Greta Garbo of Bollywood, Rekha, could pull off. You may laugh at 

her, but you will never forget—Madam X! 

78. Hum Aapke Hain Kaun! (Who Am I to You? 1994) 

Director: Sooraj Barjatya; Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, Renuka 

Shahane, Mohnish Behl 

A young-love story unfolding between two weddings and a funeral, this fourteen-song 

musical marathon brings to mind a great Indian wedding family 

video, complete with all the attendant rituals. But it is much more than that. 

It has one of the finest screenplays in Bollywood history, which paid off at 

the box office as the first Indian film to make one billion-plus rupees upon its 

initial release. The film’s record-breaking box-office take brought an end to the 

“angry young man” series of action films, making room for the sweet and clean 

romances that would bring families back to the movie theateres in droves. 

Riding on the super success, especially of its “Didi tera dewar deewana” song 

(“O sister, your brother-in-law is crazy”; Music: Raam Laxman; Lyrics: Dev 

Kohli), which remained on the music countdown charts for over a year, the 

film’s lead actress, Madhuri Dixit, consolidated her position as the biggest 

dancing star of the 1990s. Songstress Lata Mangeshkar, who sang eleven of 

the film’s songs, including the “Didi tera” chartbuster, reaffirmed her drawing 

power to the young and in love, five decades after making her debut! 

79. Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The Big-Hearted Will 

Take Away the Bride, 1995) 

Director: Aditya Chopra; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Amrish Puri, 

Farida Jalal, Anupam Kher 

It is Bollywood’s best-known, most referenced contemporary classic that’s still 

being watched in a Mumbai theater (Maratha Mandir) two decades after its 

release. The first Hindi film to depict the lives of second-generation Indians 

born and settled in foreign countries (in this case, the U.K.), it established

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Shah Rukh Khan as Bollywood’s “King of Romance” and one-half of the screen 

pairing, with Kajol; their immense popularity lasted through the nineties and 

beyond. It made Switzerland a romantically important holiday destination for 

Indians, and marked Yash Raj as the most influential privately owned studio. 

What could have been yet another predictable tale of lovers battling parental 

opposition was instead given a fresh take, with the hero actually winning the 

approval of the opposing elders. 

The film, with its celebrity cameos, hummable songs, and prank-filled 

European road trip that ends in love, were made that much better with Anand 

Bakshi’s scene-enhancing lyrics and debut director Aditya Chopra’s casual, 

commonplace dialogue. Consider the following line: Bade bade shehron mein 

aisi choti choti baatein hoti hain . . . Señorita. (“Occasional little mess-ups 

happen in big cities . . . Señorita!”). That line entered the lexicon, making this 

a truly defining, culture-affirming movie. It was also critically acclaimed, 

earning the most Filmfare Awards nominations (fourteen) and the biggest win 

(ten trophies), including the top four honors—Best Film, Best Director, Best 

Actor, and Best Actress! The film’s unmatched success set the formula for the 

NRI movie, most of which had Shah Rukh Khan playing variations of his Raj 

character, with characters sharing the same name or that of his other onscreen 

alter ego, Rahul. 

80. “Sandeshe aate hain” (Song: “The messages keep 

coming”; Border, 1997) 

Director: J. P. Dutta; Music: Anu Malik; Lyrics: Javed Akhtar 

A rare moment of love and hope, evoking the warmth of home and memories 

for soldiers away on duty, is the heart-touching song which became a nation’s 

anthem. It also played a major role in the box-office success of the epic war 

film by J. P. Dutta, based on the Battle of Longewala (December 4–7, 1971) in 

the Thar desert in the third Indo-Pakistan war. Brotherhood, camaraderie, 

concern, and the joyous bonding shared by the men in uniform are evocatively 

articulated in the heartfelt vocals of Sonu Nigam and Roop Kumar Rathod, 

essayed by a band of handsome actors, both veteran and fresh. Javed Akhtar 

deservedly swept all the major lyrics awards for the year, for his simple and 

relatable choice of words. 

81. Satya (Truth, 1998) 

Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Cast: J. D. Chakravarthy, Manoj Bajpai, 

Saurabh Shukla 

A well-researched neo-noir on Mumbai’s Mafia scene of the 1980s, this is the 

first in a trilogy of films by modern Indian auteur of stylish realism, Ram 

Gopal Varma. A migrant named Satya (Chakravarthy) comes to Mumbai,


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befriends a local goon by the name of Bhiku (Bajpai), and steadily rises in 

the Mumbai underworld for his strategic no-nonsense approach. But once 

his emotion and ambition get the better of him, he commits a crime beyond 

redemption, murdering the city’s influential police commissioner. Hounded 

by a justice-seeking police force, he tumbles from his newfound position. The 

film’s grim locations, unflattering camerawork, brooding score, recognizsable 

characters, and strict adherence to realism make this film a compelling viewing 

experience. 

82. “Chal chaiya chaiya” (Song: “Those walking in the 

shade of love”; Dil Se . . . / From the Heart, 1998) 

Director: Mani Ratnam; Music: A. R. Rahman; Lyrics: Gulzar 

A rare celluloid spectacle featuring energetic choreography on a moving train 

traversing a lush, hilly landscape of verdant shades and tunnels, set to Gulzar’s 

foot-tapping traveler’s song, which made it to the Top-10 list in a 2002 BBC 

World Service poll of all-time popular songs. It has enjoyed multiple, international 

reprises since, most famously in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical 

Bombay Dreams (2004). Choreographed by Farah Khan atop a real train over 

a five-day period, the film uses no camera tricks, rear-screen projection, or 

post-production special effects. Its overwhelming success made model-turneddancer 

Malaika Arora Bollywood’s most-in-demand item song performer of 

the new millennium; it also remains a spectacular highlight in the careers of 

actor Shah Rukh Khan and lead singers Sukhwinder Singh and Sapna Awasthi. 

83. Hey Ram (2000) 

Director: Kamal Haasan; Cast: Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani 

Mukherji, Saurabh Shukla 

In one of the film’s most pertinent scenes, the character of Gandhi admonishes 

a photographer, “Don’t shoot me from behind! Shoot my ugly face from the 

front if you have to.” Unlike Richard Attenborough’s epic 1982 film, Gandhi, 

Hey Ram delves into the turbulence of the Mahatma’s mind and that of his followers 

in the last days of his life. A fact-meets-fiction cocktail set in the context 

of India’s violent partition, Hey Ram depicts the evolution of an educated, 

middle-class archaeologist into an assassin hired by Gandhi’s right-leaning 

opponents. Shot across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent, 

from the ancient excavation sites of Mohen-jo-daro in Sindh (modern-day 

Pakistan) to Calcutta, then Chennai, Maharashtra, and Delhi, this is a truly 

pan-Indian film, encompassing seven of India’s major languages. It offers 

powerful dialogue, honest performances, and a thought-provoking message. 

And, like other masterpieces of cinema, to use an industry cliché, failed at the 

box-office for being ahead of its time.

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84. Lagaan (Land Tax, 2001) 

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker; Cast: Aamir Khan, Pual Backthorne, 

Rachel Shelly 

The third Indian film to be nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture 

Arts and Sciences, Lagaan, set in the pre-independence era, is a fictional story 

of Indian resilience. A rain-deprived group of poor villagers, led by Bhuvan 

(Aamir Khan), oppose the increase in tax by a cruel British officer, Captain 

Russell (Paul Blackthorne). The captain then makes a preposterous wager— 

that the villagers, who can barely distinguish a bat from wood, will defeat 

him and his fellow British players in a game of cricket. Coached by Russell’s 

sister, Elizabeth (Rachel Shelly), who secretly loves Bhuvan, the villagers win 

the game in a nail-biting climax. The sequence crackles with the infectious 

energy of the underdogs overcoming their oppressors. And, in a satisfying 

denouement, a downpour saturates the village, making the win all the sweeter. 

Winning a host of Filmfare, national, and international awards, Lagaan ushered 

in Bollywood’s time of acclaim in the new millennium. 

85. Dil Chahta Hai (The Heart Desires, 2001) 

Director: Farhan Akhtar; Cast: Aamir Khan, Akshaye Khanna, Saif Ali 

Khan, Preity Zinta 

New-age cinema arrives, rekindling memories of the 1970s’ fresh style of 

middle-cinema storytelling through conventional dialogue and relatable 

experiences. Farhan Akhtar’s youth comedy on buddy bonding remains as 

fresh as ever, due to its authentic take on the longings and lifestyles of an 

urban trio (Aamir Khan, Akshaye Khanna, and Saif Ali Khan) hailing from 

the middle- and upper-middle class. The close friends share in the good times 

and enjoy a good-natured laugh at one another’s goof-ups; it’s only when they 

start tearing into one another’s complex female equations that the story takes 

a delicate turn. 

Aamir delivers another understated performance, holding his own with 

two more seemingly fleshed out, attractively different love stories featuring 

Saif and Akshaye. The film was critically acclaimed, winning the year’s 

National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. It was also a commercial 

success, though it performed better in the urban areas. 

86. Devdas (2002) 

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai, 

Maduri Dixit 

The twenty-first century update of Saratchandra’s much-adapted novella 

about a doomed lover was a triumph for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s grandiose


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vision. It also presented a challenge for Bollywood’s then-reigning superstar, 

Shah Rukh Khan, who was following in the footsteps of Dilip Kumar, the star 

of a 1950s version of the story. A potent mix of pain and arrogance, Khan’s 

volatile Dev gave the nineteenth century hero a layered, post-modern take. 

But it was left to the ladies in his life—the proud, breathtakingly beautiful 

Parvati (Aishwarya) and the mature and graceful Chandramukhi (Madhuri 

Dixit)—to give the film its most memorable and mesmerizing song-and-dance 

moments, unfolding amid some magnificent sets. For instance, the hall where 

Chandramukhi dances had a six-foot-tall chandelier and sixty carved domes 

with five thousand bulbs that were lit with the help of seven hundred light 

men. Parvati’s glass room was fitted with 122,000 pieces of stained glass to 

reflect her pristine beauty. And when the two come together in a celebratory 

dance before Goddess Durga, the stylish spectacle of rhythm and rhapsody 

rises to the level of operatic grandeur. Dola re (The Throb) became known as the 

gold standard for subsequent period films. 

87. Koi . . . Mil Gaya (I Found Someone, 2003) 

Director: Rakesh Roshan; Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta 

This ET-meets-handicapped boy” sci-fi story gave rising star Hrithik Roshan 

one of his toughest roles, that of a developmentally delayed adult. It is one 

thing to act like a kid, but it is another to act with kids and not seem out of 

place. Rohit’s stilted body language and awkward voice make for a unique 

character who strikes up a convincing friendship with a cuddly extra-terrestrial 

nicknamed Jadoo (Magic). Jadoo leaves, but not before imbuing Rohit with 

special powers. These powers are eventually transferred to his son, Krrish, to 

start India’s first indigenous superhero series, with Krissh (2006) and Krrish 3 

(2013), featuring a masked flying superman in a dark blue cape, who sings and 

dances like a dream! 

88. “Har ghadi badal rahi hai” (Song: “Life is changing 

in every moment”; Kal ho Naa Ho / If Tomorrow Doesn’t 

Come, 2003) 

Director: Nikkhil Advani; Music: Shankar-Ehsan-Loy; Lyrics: Javed 

Akhtar 

The tune of the title song of Kal Ho Naa Ho, which singer Sonu Nigam counts 

among his most satisfying songs, was composed by Loy Mendonsa while he 

and the film’s director, Nikhil Advani, were seated in a bakery in Pune. Advani 

wanted a song thematically like Celine Dion’s 1997 Titanic chartbuster, “My 

heart will go on.” Upon hearing it, Mendonsa came up with a tune that co-composers 

Shankar Mahadevan and Ehsaan Noorani later developed into one of 

the most popular melodies of the new millennium. Its New York skyline, which

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juxtaposed the picturization to Shah Rukh Khan’s signature arms-akimbo 

pose, served as an updated twenty-first century tribute to the “laughing-in-theface-of-death” 

hero Rajesh Khanna in the 1971 classic Anand. 

89. Black Friday (2004) 

Director: Anurag Kashyap; Cast: Pavan Malhotra, Kay Kay Menon 

In the league of globally acclaimed docudramas like Munich and The Battle 

of Algiers, Black Friday is an adaptation of crime journalist S. Hussain Zaidi’s 

non-fiction book of the same name. It details the planning and aftermath of 

twelve synchronized serial bombings that occurred across Bombay on March 

12, 1993, killing nearly 250 and injuring more than fourteen hundred civilians. 

A rigorously made, naturalistic docudrama about a relentless and complex 

police investigation, Anurag Kashyap’s disturbing yet compelling film was 

appreciated for its objectivity. Shot without permission in numerous real-life 

settings, the reactions of innocent bystanders to the recreated blast scenes 

were eerily authentic. Although completed in 2004, the film was released three 

years later, in February 2007. Permission for its release was granted by the 

Supreme Court of India, following a lower court’s verdict on the 1993 Bombay 

blast case trials. 

90. “Dhoom again” (Song: “Blast again”; Dhoom 2 / 

Blast 2, 2006) 

Director: Sanjay Gadhvi; Music: Pritam; Lyrics: Asif Ali Beg 

This is the only song on this list to be led by a male dancer, Hrithik Roshan, 

who flaunts his chiseled Greek God’s six pack with stretches and snaps, displaying 

rubber-band-like flexibility. The ode to the body beautiful is further 

enhanced by Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Style-meets-sexiness in 

this infectious and addictive groove attraction due in large part to its talented, 

fit, energetic cast. 

91. Chak De! India (Hit It! India, 2007) 

Director: Shimit Amin; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Vidya Malawade, Shilpa 

Shukla 

This is Bollywood’s first sports film to be inspired by real-life characters and 

events, specifically the Indian women’s national field hockey team’s win at 

the 2002 Commonwealth Games. One of the storylines depicts the comeback 

journey of a disgraced hockey captain named Kabir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan). 

Balancing the power of silent angst with some applause-worthy dialogue and 

goosebump-giving sporting action, choreographed by Robert Miller, the film 

did more for the fortunes of India’s sidelined national game than a million


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celebrity messages put together. Chak De! India is purposeful cinema, showing 

tangible social impact at its creative best. 

92. Taare Zameen Par (Stars on Earth, 2007) 

Director: Aamir Khan; Cast: Darsheel Safary, Tisca Chopra, Aamir 

Khan 

Ishan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary) is an eight-year-old boy with dyslexia. His 

world is filled with color, fish, dogs, kites, undone homework, pathetic grades, 

and a lack of neatness. Ignorant of his malady, the parents pack him off to 

boarding school, where he finds a friend and inspirational guide in his drawing 

teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir Khan). Once afflicted with the 

same condition, Nikumbh sets out to help Ishaan, investing time, patience, and 

care in his student. This film is an indictment of the ignorance and apathy of 

schools and teachers towards slow learners; it also critiques parents who have 

deluded themselves into believing that grades alone matter, irrespective of 

the shortcomings of the learning process. Aamir Kahn won all the major Best 

Director awards for the year, along with a National Film Award for Best Film 

on Family Welfare, acknowledging its social significance. Different, delightful, 

thoughtful, and gripping, Taare Zameen Par is a little gem. 

93. Jodhaa Akbar (Jodhaa and Akbar, 2008) 

Director: Ashutosh Gowariker; Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai 

Bachchan, Sonu Sood 

Academy Award–nominated Ashutosh Gowariker lent a contemporary freshness 

to Bollywood’s first post-2000 big-budget historical film on the love 

story of Muslim Emperor Akbar (Hrithik) and his Hindu queen, Jodhaa Bai 

(Aishwarya). The film’s gradually building romantic track, involving a compassionate 

prince and a hot-headed princess as two strangers who fall in love 

after marriage, is subtle and believable. And for action aficianados, there are 

the hand-to-hand combat scenes. The stabilization of the twenty-eight-yearold 

emperor’s empiric moment occurs with a grandiose Cleopatra-like entry 

into Rome, which is recreated in Medieval Indian Agra for Queen Jodhaa and 

featuring hundreds of dancers and extras in various costumes in the “Azeem 

O Shaan Shahenshah” (“The most glorious emperor”) song. The film’s musical 

highlight, however, remains an elaborate Sufi dance sequence, “Khwaja mere 

khwaja” (“My dear lord”), sung by A. R. Rahman, and rapturishly performed 

by Hrithik Roshan.

370 

Bollywood FAQ 

94. 3 Idiots (2009) 

Director: Rajkumar Hirani; Cast: Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman 

Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Boman Irani 

Praising its “emotional undertones,” Steven Spielberg, after his third viewing 

of the film, listed 3 Idiots as one among five films that he connects with; the 

others being The Godfather (1972), ET (1982), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and 

Jaws (1975). 

Entertaining and enlightening, 3 Idiots is an emotional and endearing 

story told in the form of a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a man named 

Rancho (Aamir Khan), who comes from nowhere and who just wants to learn. 

Two of Rancho’s fellow college mates, Farhan Qureshi (Madhavan) and Raju 

Rastogi (Sharman Joshi), leave on a road trip to reunite with him. En route, 

they encounter another fellow student, Chatur Ramalingam (Omi Vaidya), 

now a successful businessman, who reminds them of a bet made ten long years 

earlier. The trio, while recollecting hilarious antics, including their run-ins 

with the dean of their engineering college, race to locate Rancho. They check 

his last-known address, only to discover an unusual secret that he had successfully 

kept from them. 

The combined cinematic genius of producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra and 

director Rajkumar Hirani resulted in a film that became a vehicle for educational 

reform in India. It was hugely popular in China and parts of Eastern 

Asia for its stance on exchanging a marks- and money-based education system 

with one that nurtures individual aptitude and personal fulfillment. 

95. My Name is Khan (2010) 

Director: Karan Johar; Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol 

One of Shah Rukh Khan’s finest acting roles, that of the autistic adult Rizwan 

Khan, presents a convincing case for the misunderstood Muslim in the 

post–9/11 world. Rizwan goes on an inspiring and arduous journey to meet 

the president of the United States to convey a simple message of trust and 

reconciliation—“My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!” Watch Rizwan 

blush when his lady love, Mandira (Kajol), accepts his marriage proposal, and 

you realize why Shah Rukh is still Bollywood’s King of Romance! 

96. The Dirty Picture (2011) 

Director: Milan Luthria; Cast: Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Tusshar 

Kapoor 

Vidya Balan attained coquettish glory gyrating to music composer Bappi 

Lahiri’s chartbuster Ooh la la. The film’s director, Milan Luthria, riding the


371 

crest of acclaim generated 

by Once Upon a 

Time in Mumbai (2010), 

further consolidated 

his reputation as a storyteller 

in the biopic 

genre. In this boisterously 

haunting tribute 

to a major sex symbol 

and sought-after erotic 

dancer-actress sensation 

of the 1980s, Silk Smitha 

(1960–1996), Balan gave 

her all to the complex 

portrayal of a heartthrob 

in destruction mode, 

only to emerge as the 

most boombat (daring) 

actress of her generation. 

97. Zindagi Na 

Milegi Dobara 

(You Only Live 

Once, 2011) 

Director: Zoya Akhtar; 

Cast: Hrithik Roshan, 

Farhan Akhtar, Abhay 

Deol, Katrina Kaif 

Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in My Name is Khan. 

 


The best buddy-bonding 

film from Bollywood since Dil Chahta Hai, it was made, ironically, by a female 

director, Zoya Akhtar. As unforeseen opportunities knock during a Spanish 

holiday, the three friends—Arjun Saluja (Hrithik Rosham), Kabir Dewan 

(Abhay Deol), and Imran Qureshi (Farhan Akhtar)—are wide open to them— 

deep-sea diving, jumping from a plane, or simply getting chased by angry 

bulls—to make for a truly uncommon adventure treat! However, the film goes 

much beyond its road-trip premise, to explore identity and existence issues, 

asking some fundamental questions like—What exactly do we want from life?, 

Why do we do what we do in life?, and Are we happy doing what we are doing 

in life? The film’s title insists that you only live once, and altough the future is 

important, it should not be prioritized to the detriment of the present.

372 

Bollywood FAQ 

98. Barfi! (2012) 

Director: Anurag Basu; Cast: Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Ileana 

D’cruz 

Set in 1970s Darjeeling, the film revolves around the love-and-life adventures 

of a happy-go-lucky, charming Nepali boy, Barfi (Ranbir Kapoor), who also 

happens to be deaf and dumb. Barfi falls in love with a “normal” girl, Shruti 

(Ileana D’cruz) who, influenced by her mother’s lessons on practicality, regrets 

her impulsive decision to marry for security over love. Barfi finds trust, love, 

and desire in the uncomplicated company of Jhilmil (Priyanka Chopra), the 

autistic daughter of his father’s ex-boss, whom he had kidnapped to raise 

money for his father’s treatment. 

Most movies tug at the heart, some stimulate the mind, but a rare few touch 

the soul. Barfi! is Bollywood’s answer to Hollywood’s Forrest Gump (1994) and 

Italy’s holocaust-themed Life is Beautiful (1997). Radiating positive feelings, 

humility, and gratitude, Barfi! reminds you to say, “Thank you” to your loved 

ones and inspires you to be happy with the gifts of life. 

99. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) 

Director: Anurag Kashyap; Cast: Manoj Bajpai, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, 

Huma Qureshi 

Auteur Anurag Kashyap lives up to his reputation of being the enfant terrible of 

new-millennium independent cinema with a gangland double-drama (running 

a whopping 319 minutes) that, despite using every tested formula in the 

genre and inspirations from The Godfather to his mentor-director Ram Gopal 

Varma, still manages to tell a fresh story. While its exposé of the coal mafia in 

the north Indian state of Bihar adds to this three-generation crime saga’s curiosity 

factor, what makes this violent double-epic a satisfying experience is its 

colorful supporting cast of some uncanny characters with whacko names 

(Perpendicular, Definite, etc.) and wackier attributes. The film also has some 

haunting lyrics, like Piyush Mishra’s “Ik bagal mein chand hoga” (“On one side 

be the moon, and lullabies on the other . . .”). 

100. Bombay Talkies (2013) 

Directors: Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Bannerjee, Anurag 

Kashyap; Cast: Rani Mukherji, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Saqib Saleem, 

Amitabh Bachchan 

Four leading twenty-first century directors join forces to tell four short stories 

as a unique tribute to a century of Indian cinema. Exploring themes of 

identity, desire, dreams, and adulation, it features the first gay kiss in a mainstream 

Hindi film featuring leading Bollywood actors. The combined package,


373 

especially its closing narrative celebrating the still-extant fan following for 

India’s greatest living superstar, septuagenarian Amitabh Bachchan, will leave 

no cineaste dry-eyed. The film ends with a tribute song featuring every major 

Bollywood star of the day raising a glass to their own Apna Bombay Talkies. 

101. Baahubali 1 and 2 (2015, 2017) 

Director: S.S. Rajamouli; Cast: Prabhas, Rana Dagubatti, Ramya 

Krishna, Anushka Shetty 

A queen walks barefoot with a pot of fire on her head to complete an ancient 

ritual. Her subjects, in awe of her quiet dignity, scatter petals on her path, 

moved as they are by the sight of her bleeding feet. A reigned elephant suddenly 

goes wild and charges menacingly towards her. A brave and handsome 

prince steps in to tame 

the pachyderm as the 

ritual is completed and 

the effigy of a demon is 

burned, symbolically 

reaffirming the power of 

good over evil. Victory 

chants from a sea of 

humanity complete this 

tale of adventure. Faith 

and family, commoners 

and royalty, mothers 

and sons, traditions 

and nations are connected 

and celebrated, 

in a uniting, mutually 

sustaining bond of 

affection. Minutes into 

the film, in just one 

sequence, the narration 

enacts and evokes 

a gamut of human 

emotions like courage, 

compassion, fear, anger, 

love, awe, joy, and calm. 

That’s the dramatic 

power of the opening 

scene of Baahubali 2: 

The Conclusion, perfectly 

Actor Prabhas essays the title role of a fictional superhero in 

Bahubali—The Beginning. 


374 

Bollywood FAQ 

taking over from a cliffhanger ending in Baahubali: The Beginning to another 

action-extravaganza with ample drama unseen, re-imagining the mythical 

heroes of the Mahabharata in a fantasy costume-drama set in ancient India. 

Unfolding amid gigantic sets, twists-and-turns, grandiose battles with 

huge VFX armies, superhuman heroes and heroines, the Baahubali films have 

been rightly called Bollywood’s Lord of the Rings, with a mysterious “middleearth” 

being exchanged for an ornamental Mahishmati. Its leading characters—like 

the heroic Amarendra Baahubali (Prabhas), his loyal lieutenant 

Katappa, Queen Mother Shivagami (Ramya), Princess Devasena (Anushka), 

and the villainous King Bhallaldeva (Rana)—have emerged as iconic characters, 

inspiring many books and animation series.

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Chopra, Anupama. 2007. King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive 

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Kabir, Nasreen Munni. 2001. Bollywood: The Indian Cinema Story. London: 

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(7–13 February 2016).

Index 

24 

3 Idiots 

1942—A Love Story 

Aadmi 

Aag 

Aaja Nachle 

Aaj Ka MLA Ram Avatar 

Aakhree Raasta 

Aakhri Khat 

Aandhi 

Aansoo Ban Gaye Phool 

Aastha 

Aan 

Aap Ki Sewa Mein 

Aar Paar 

Aashirwad 

Aavishkaar 

Aurat 

Abbas, Khwaja Ahmad 

Abdullah 

Abhijeet 

Abhimaan 

Achanak 

Achhut Kanya 

Action Replayy 

A Demolition 

Adl-e-Jahangir 

Adi Manav 

Advani, Nikkhil 

Agashe, Mohan 

Agkadyanchi Mouj 

Agneepath 

Agni Varsha 

Ahmad, Rafiq 

Ahuja, Prem 

Ajit 

Akbar, Khatija 

Akhtar, Gauri Shankarlal 

Akhtar, Farhan 

Akhtar, Jaan Nissar 

Akhtar, Javed 

Akhtar, Zoya 

A Kid Like Jake 

Aks 

Alam Ara 

Albela 

Allen, George 

Allen, Woody 

Ali, Imtiaz 

Ali, Lucky 

Ali, Muzaffar 

Ali, Nafisa 

Ali, Naushad 

Ali, Rubina 

Alvi, Abrar 

Aman, Zeenat 

Amar Akbar Anthony 

Amarjeet 

Amar Prem 

Amar Saigal 

Ambani, Anil Dhirubhai 

Amin, Shimit 

Amrapurkar, Sadashiv 

Amrapali 

Amrit Manthan 

Amrohi, Kamal 

Anamika 

Anand 

Anand, Chetan 

Anand, Dev 

Anand, J. C. 

Anand, Uma 

Anand, Vijay 

Anarkali 

Anari 

Andaz 

Anderson 

Andha Kanoon 

An Evening in Paris 

Angoor 

Anjaam 

Anjaan 

Ankur

380 Index 

Anmol Ghadi 

Anwar 

Anwar, Rafiq 

A Panorama of Indian Scenes and 

Processions 

Aparajito 

A Passage to India 

Appaiah, Biddu 

Apte, Shanta 

Arabian Nights 

Arden, Elizabeth 

Aradhana 

Ardh Satya 

Argo 

Arjun 

Arnold, Edwin 

Arora, Malaika 

Arora, Prakash 

Arora, Vijay 

Around the World 

Around the World in Eighty Days 

Arrival of a Train 

Arth 

Aryan 

Assayas, Olivier 

Ashiqui 

Ashiqui 2 

Asif, K. 

Aslam, Atif 

Astaire, Fred 

Athaiya, Bhanu 

A Tiger Walks 

A Throw of Dice / Prapancha Pash 

A Train Arriving at Churchgate Station 

Atre, P. K. 

Attenborough, Richard 

Aurat 

Avtaar 

Awara 

Awasthi, Sapna 

Awwal Number 

Aye Dil Hai Mushqil 

Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam 

Azaad 

Aziz, Talat 

Aziz, Mohammed 

Azmi, Kaifi 

Azmi, Shabana 

Baadshah 

Baarish 

Baazi 

Baazigar 

Babbar Subhash 

Babi, Parveen 

Babita 

Baby 

Bachchan, Amitabh 

Bachchan, Abhishek 

Bachchan, Shweta 

Bachchan, Teji 

Badayuni, Shakeel 

Bade Mian Chote Mian 

Bahar 

Bahubali—The Beginning 

Bahubali 2—The Conclusion 

Baiju Bawra 

Bairaag 

Bajrangi Bhaijaan 

Bajpai, Manoj 

Bakshi, Anand 

Balan, Vidya 

Balasuramaniam, S. P. 

Balidaan 

Bali, Geeta 

Bali, Vyjayanthimala 

Bali, Yogeeta 

Bambaiwali 

Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai 

Banderas, Antonio 

Bandini 

Banks, Tyra 

Bannerjee, Dibakar 

Bannerjee, Jyotish 

Banu, Naseem 

Banu, Saira 

Barfi! 

Barjatya, Sooraj 

Bandit Queen 

Bannerjee, Victor 

Bapu 

Barsaat 

Barsaat Ki Raat 

Barua, P. C. 

Basant 

Basu, Anurag 

Bawarchi 

Baywatch

Index 

381 

Bazin, André 

Bbuddah . . .Hoga Terra Baap 

B. DeMille, Cecil 

Bedi, Kabir 

Bedi, Protima 

Bedi, Rajinder Singh 

Beeper 

Beg, Asif Ali 

Behl, Mohnish 

Bend It Like Beckham 

Benegal, Shyam 

Benjamin, Herman 

Benson, George 

Beta 

Betaab, Narayan Prasad 

Bhaduri, Jaya 

Bhagavad Gita 

Bhaag Milkha Bhaag 

Bhagwan Dada 

Bhagya Chakra 

Bhakta Prahlad 

Bhakt Vidur 

Bhansali, Sanjay Leela 

Bharadwaj, Vishal 

Bharata 

Bharat Ek Khoj 

Bhattacharya, Aditya 

Bhatt, Mahesh 

Bhatt, Mukesh 

Bhatt, Vijay 

Bhatwadekar, Harishchandra Sakharam 

Bhavnani, Mohan 

Bhoot 

Bhopali, Gopal Singh 

Bhosle, Asha 

Bhumika 

Bhushan, Bharat 

Bhuvan Shome 

Bicycle Thieves 

Bilet Pherat 

Bilwamangal 

Bindu 

Biraj Bahu 

Biswas, Anil 

Biswas, Seema 

Bitter Moon 

Black 

Black Friday 

Black Narcissus 

Blackthorne, Paul 

Blind Ambition 

Blue 

Bluffmaster 

Bobby 

Bokhari, Asad 

Bombay 

Bombay Dreams 

Bombay Raat Ki Bahon Mein 

Bombay To Goa 

Bond, Ruskin 

Boot Polish 

Boral, R. C. / Raichand 

Border 

Bose, Debaki 

Bose, Modhu 

Bose, Mukul 

Bose, Nitin 

Boyle, Danny 

Brahma (Lord) 

Brahmachari 

Brando, Marlon 

Bride and Prejudice 

Brolin, Josh 

Bronte, Emily 

Buck, Pearl S. 

Buddha 

Bulbul-e-Parastaan 

Buniyaad 

Burke, James 

Burman, R. D. 

Burman, S. D. 

Caine, Michael 

Cameron, James 

Capra, Frank 

Caravan 

Carnival Queen 

Casino Royale 

Castro, Fidel 

Chaalbaaz 

Chabria, Priya Surukkai 

Chaddha, Gurindher 

Chak De! India 

Chakra 

Chakravarthy, Amiya 

Chakravarthy, J. D. 

Chakraborty, Mithun 

Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi

382 Index 

Chalte Chalte 

Chaman 

Chameli 

Chanakya, Tapi 

Chanchal, Narendra 

Chandavarakar, Leena 

Chander, Krishna 

Chandidas 

Chandni 

Chandni Chowk 

Chandralekha 

Chandramukhi 

Chan, Jackie 

Chaplin, Charlie 

Charlie Wilson’s War 

Char Shahar Ek Kahani 

Chatterjee, Basu 

Chattopadhyay / Chatterjee, 

Bankimchandra 

Chatterjee, Moushumi 

Chattopadhyay, Indumati Devi 

Chattopadhyay, Saratchandra 

Chaudhvin Ka Chand 

Chauhan, Sunidhi 

Chaurasia, Hari Prasad 

Chawla, Juhi 

Chennai Express 

Chetna 

Cheulkar, David Abraham 

Chhaya, Laxmi 

Chibber, Gauri 

Chitchor 

Chinagate 

Chitralekha 

Chhota Chetan 

China Town 

Chitre, Nanabhai Govind 

Chokher Bali 

Chopra, Aditya 

Chopra, Anupama 

Chopra, Baldev Raj / B. R. 

Chopra, Prem 

Chopra, Priyanka 

Chopra, Tisca 

Chopra, Vidhu Vinod 

Chopra, Yash 

Chori Chori 

Chote Nawab 

Chaudhuri, Leela Devi 

Choudhary, Manmathnath 

Choudhary, Sukumari Devi 

Chowdhury, Salil 

Christ, Jesus 

Chugtai, Ismat 

Chupke Chupke 

CID 

Cinema Girl 

Circus Queen 

Citizen Kane 

City of Joy 

Clift, Montgomery 

Cobra Woman 

Company 

Conduct Unbecoming 

Coolie 

Coolie No. 1 

Cooper, Bradley 

Cooper, Marilyn 

Cooper, Patience 

Corliss, Richard 

Cort, David 

Cousins, Mark 

Cruise, Tom 

Daag 

Daayra 

Dabangg 

Dabke, Dattatraya Damodar 

Daddy 

Daera 

Dagubatti, Rana 

Damini 

Damle, Vishnupant 

Dance Dance 

Dancing Maharajah 

Dangal 

Danielewski, Tad 

Daniel, J. C. 

Darr 

Darshan, Dharmesh 

Das, Nandita 

Dasgupta, Harisadhan 

Dasgupta, Sonali 

Dastak 

Dastagir, Sabu / Selar Shaik Sabu / Sabu 

Francis 

Davejekar, Datta 

Date, Keshavrao

Index 

383 

David, Joseph 

Dayavan 

Day of the Falcon 

D’cruz, Ileana 

Deedar 

Deewana 

Deewar 

Dehlavi, Mumtaz Jehan Begum 

Deol, Abhay 

Deol, Dharmendra 

Deol, Sunny 

Dengzongpa, Danny 

Depp, Johnny 

Desai, Manmohan 

Desert Dancer 

De Sica, Vittorio 

Desmond, Norma 

Desperate Endeavors 

Devdas 

Devgn, Ajay 

Devika Rani 

Dey, K. C. 

Dey, Manna 

Dhaibar, K. R. 

Dhaniram ‘Prem’ 

Dhanrajgir, Zubeida Begum 

Dhawan, Anil 

Dhawan, David 

Dhawan, Varun 

Dhobi Ghat 

Dhool Ka Phool 

Dhoom 2 

Dhoom 3 

Dhoop Chaon 

Do Aankhen Barah Haath 

Do Aur Do Paanch 

Denti 

Dhruv 

Diamond Queen 

DiCaprio, Leonardo 

Diesel, Vin 

Dietrich, Marlene 

Dil Chahta Hai 

Dil Diya Dard Liya 

Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin 

Dil Se… 

Dilwale 

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge 

Disco Dancer 

Divine Intervention 

Dixit, Madhuri 

Do aur Do Paanch 

Do Bigha Zameen 

Do Dhari Talwar 

Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche 

Don 

Dostoevsky, Fyodor 

Dosti 

Dr. Kotnis ki Amar Kahani 

Duniya 

Duniya Na Mane 

Dunno Y . . . Na Jaane Kyun 

Durbar, Ismail 

Durga 

Dushman 

Dutt, Geeta 

Dutt, Guru 

Dutt, Sanjay 

Dutt, Sunil 

Dutta, J. P. 

Dwivedi, Ramachandra Narayanji / 

Pradeep 

Dwyer, Rachel 

Earth 

East is East 

Einstein, Albert 

Ek Duje Ke Liye 

Ek Ruka Hua Faisla 

Elephant Boy 

Ellen DeGeneres 

Enthiran 

Entry of Cinematographe 

ET 

Evans, Mary Ann / Fearless Nadia 

Fairbanks, Douglas 

Fanaa 

Far Cry 4 

Fatehlal, S. 

Fatma Begum 

Farz 

Fazli, Nida 

Fellini, Federico 

Ferrari, Angelo 

Fire 

Fiza

384 Index 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott 

Flaherty, Robert 

Ford, Harrison 

Forrest Gump 

Forster, E. M. 

Gadhvi, Sanjay 

Gaja Gamini 

Galileo 

Gambler 

Gandhi 

Gandhi, Indira 

Gandhi, Mahatma / Mohandas 

Karamchand / M. K. 

Gandhi, Sanjay 

Gangavataran 

Gangs of Wasseypur 

Gangster 

Ganguly, Dhirendranath 

Ganguly, Priyanath 

Garam Hava 

Garbo, Greta 

Garcia, Andy 

Garewal, Simi 

George V 

Ghaffarian, Afshin 

Ghai, Subhash 

Ghajini 

Ghoshal, Shreya 

Ghosh, Parul 

Ghosh, Rituparno 

Ghost World 

Gidwani, Moti. B. 

Gokhale, Kamlabai 

Gokhale, Vikram 

Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela 

Gol Maal 

Gopalan, Lalitha 

Gope 

Gorky, Maxim 

Goswami, Mohan Sundar Dev 

Govinda 

Gowariker, Ashutosh 

Griffiths, Rachel Anne 

Grover, Gulshan 

Guddi 

Guha, Anita 

Guha Thakurta, Ruma 

Guide 

Guinness, Alec. 

Gulaal 

Gulzar 

Gumnaam 

Gunga Jumna 

Gupt Gyan 

Guru 

Guzaarish 

Gyan Bahadur, Narsingir Dhanrajgir 

Happy New Year 

Haasan, Kamal 

Haathi Mere Saathi 

Haider 

Haider, Ghulam 

Halaku 

Hamari Baat 

Hanks, Tom 

Hanuman 

Hansraj, Jugal 

Hanste Aansu 

Haqeeqat 

Hardy, Thomas 

Hare Rama Hare Krishna 

Harimati 

Harris, Jordan S. 

Harrison, Rex 

Harishchandra Taramati 

Hassan, Najmul 

Hassan, Nazia 

Hema Malini 

Henna 

Heer Ranjha 

Helen 

Hepburn, Audrey 

Hepburn, Katharine 

Hepworth, Cecil 

Hey Ram 

Highway 

Himmatwala 

Himmatwali 

Hira, Nari 

Hirani, Rajkumar 

Hisss 

Hitch 

Hitchcock, Alfred 

Hitler, Adolf 

Hopkins, Anthony 

How Films are Made

Index 

385 

Howrah Bridge 

Hum Aapke Hain Koun . . . ! 

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam 

Hum Dono 

Hum Ek Hain 

Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke 

Humjoli 

Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin 

Hunterwali 

Hunt, J. L. Freer 

Humayun 

Hunterwali Ki Beti 

Hurricane Hansa 

Husain, M. F. 

Hussain, Nassir 

Hussain, Tahir 

Husn Ka Daku 

Ijaazat 

Ibrahim, Dawood 

Ilaiyaraaja 

Iman, Akhtar-ul 

Indeevar 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 

Indira B. A. 

Indrasabha 

Ingeet 

Inquilab 

Insaaf Ka Tarazu 

Irani, Ardheshir 

Irani, Aruna 

Irani, Boman 

Iruvar 

Ishara, B. R. 

Ishqiya 

Isn’t It Romantic? 

Issar, Puneet 

Ittefaq 

Ivory, James 

Iyer, Kalpana 

Izzat 

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro 

Jaan, Gohar 

Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai 

Jab Jab Phool Khile 

Jab Tak Hai Jaan 

Jab We Met 

Jackson, O’Shea 

Jaddanbai 

Jagga Jasoos 

Jagriti 

Jagte Raho 

Jaidev 

Jaikishan 

Jai Santoshi Maa 

Jalal, Farida 

Jamalo 

Janmabhoomi 

Janwar 

Jai Gangaajal 

Jawani Ki Hawa 

Jaws 

Jaywant, Nalini 

Jeans 

Jeet 

Jeevan 

Jeevan Naiya 

Jeevan Prabhat 

Jewel Thief 

Jhangiani, Preiti 

Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje 

Jhansi Ki Rani 

Jha, Subhash K. 

Jaipuri, Hasrat 

Jai Santoshi Maa 

Jalabadi, Qamar 

Jane Eyre 

Jebreal, Rula 

Jeetendra 

Jeevan 

Jhumroo 

Jiban Maran 

Jinnah, Mohammad Ali 

Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai 

Jism 

Jism 2 

Jodhaa Akbar 

Jodi No. 1 

Johar, Karan 

Johar, Yash 

Johnson 

Johny Mera Naam 

Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar 

Jolly LLB 

Jolly LLB 2 

Joshi, Sharman

386 Index 

Judwaa 

Jugnu 

Julie 

Julka, Ayesha 

Junglee 

Jungle Princess 

Junoon 

Jurassic Park 

Jurassic World 

Jurm 

Jwala 

Jwar Bhata 

Kaagaz Ke Phool 

Kaala Pathar 

Kaam Shastra 

Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham 

Kabhie Kabhie 

Kabuliwala 

Kaho Naa . . . Pyar Hai 

Kaif, Katrina 

Kakkaji Kahin 

Kajol 

Kala Bazar 

Kala Pani 

Kalidas 

Kalidasa 

Kalinga 

Kal Ho Naa Ho 

Kaliya Mardan 

Kalpana 

Kalyanji 

Kalyug 

Kamat, Durgabai 

Kanan Devi 

Kandukondain Kandukondain 

Kangan 

Kanoon 

Kapadia, Dimple 

Kapalkundala 

Kapur, Pankaj 

Kapur, Shekhar 

Kapoor, Anil 

Kapoor, Kareena 

Kapoor, Karishma 

Kapoor, Prithviraj 

Kapoor, Raj 

Kapoor, Ranbir Raj 

Kapoor, Rajiv 

Kapoor, Randhir 

Kapoor, Rishi 

Kapoor, Shakti 

Kapoor, Shammi 

Kapoor, Shashi 

Kapoor, Sonam 

Kapoor, Subhash 

Kapoor, Tusshar 

Karanjia, B. K. 

Kardar, Abdul Rashid / A. R. 

Karma 

Karz 

Karnataki, Ameerbai 

Kartik, Kalpana 

Kashmiri, Aga Hashr 

Kashmir Ki Kali 

Kashyap, Anurag 

Kashyap, J. S. 

Katha 

Kaul, Arun 

Kaushal, Kamini 

Kaushal, Kanan 

Keechak Vadha 

Keechak Vadham 

Kelly, Gene 

Kendal, Jennifer 

Khakhee 

Khambatta, Persis 

Khal Nayak 

Khamoshi: The Musical 

Khan, Aamir 

Khan, Amjad 

Khan, Ataullah 

Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali 

Khandaan 

Khan, Farah 

Khan, Feroz 

Khan, Irrfan 

Khan, Kabir 

Khan, Mansoor 

Khan, Mazhar 

Khan, Mehboob 

Khan, Mohammad Yusuf 

Khan, Mohsin 

Khan, Nadeem 

Khan, Nazir Ahmed 

Khan, Raja Mehdi Ali 

Khan, Rahat Fateh Ali 

Khan, Saif Ali

Index 

387 

Khan, Salim 

Khan, Salman 

Khan, Sanjay 

Khan, Saroj 

Khan, Shah Nawaz 

Khan, Shah Rukh 

Khan, Taj Mohammed 

Khan, Ustad Amir 

Khan, Ustad Jhande 

Khan, Wazir Mohammed 

Khanna, Akshaye 

Khanna, Rajesh 

Khanna, Vinod 

Khayyaam 

Khazanchi 

Kharbanda, Kulbhushan 

Kher, Anupam 

Khiladi 

Khoon Bhari Maang 

Khosla, Raj 

Khote, Durga 

Khuda Gawah 

Khurshid 

Khushboo 

Khusro, Amir 

Khwahish 

Kill Dil 

Kingdom, Dorothy 

Kingsley, Ben 

Kipling, Rudyard 

Kirtikar, Ramrao 

Kisan Kanya 

Kismet 

Kissa Kursi Ka 

Kitaab 

Kites 

Kohinoor 

Kohli, Dev 

Koi… Mil Gaya 

Koirala, Manisha 

Kolhapure, Padmini 

Kora Kagaz 

Korda, Alexander 

Koshish 

Kranti 

Krishna (Lord) 

Krishan, Rajinder 

Krishnamurthy, V. K. 

Krrish 

Krissh 3 

Kuch Kuch Hota Hai 

Kumar, Akshay 

Kumar, Amit 

Kumar, Ashok 

Kumar, Dilip 

Kumar, Gulshan 

Kumar, Hemant 

Kumar, Indra 

Kumar, Kishore 

Kumar, Manoj 

Kumar, Pradeep 

Kumar, Raaj 

Kumar, Rajendra 

Kumar, Ratan 

Kumar, Sanjeev 

Kumar Sanu 

Kumar, Shabbir 

Kumar, Sumit 

Kumari, Meena 

Kulkarni, Sitarambapu 

Kurosawa, Akira 

Kurtzman, Robert 

Kuselan 

Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels 

Lady Gaga 

Lady Robin Hood 

Lagaan 

Lage Raho Munnabhai 

Lagoo, Shriram 

Lahiri, Bappi 

Lakhnavi, Arzoo 

Lala, Karim 

Lalit 

Lahu Ke Do Rang 

Lamhe 

Lang, Fritz 

Lanka Dahan 

Lateef Fatima 

Latt Saheb 

Laxmikant 

Lawrence of Arabia 

Lean, David 

Leaving the Factory 

Lee, Ang 

Legrand, Camille 

Leone, Sunny 

Letterman, David

388 Index 

Liguoro, Eugenio de 

Liguoro, Rina De 

Life is Beautiful 

Life of Pi 

Limelight 

LOC: Kargil 

Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of 

Superman 

London, Jerry 

Lord of War 

Love at Times Square 

Love in Tokyo 

Love Story 

Lower Depths 

Loy 

Ludhianvi, Sahir 

Luhrmann, Baz 

Lumière, Auguste 

Lumière, Louis Jean 

Lunch Box 

Lust, Caution 

Luthria, Milan 

Lynch, Jennifer 

Maachis 

MacLaine, Shirley 

Madam Bovary 

Madamoiselle Blanche 

Madam X 

Madan, J. F. 

Madan, J. J. 

Madhavan, R. 

Madhoo 

Madhubala 

Madhumati 

Madhuri 

Mahaan 

Mahabalipuram 

Mahabharat 

Mahabharata 

Mahal 

Mahaprabhu, Chaitanya 

Mahendra, Balu 

Mahendru, Anju 

Mahipal 

Mai 

Main Azad Hoon 

Maine Pyar Kiya 

Main Hoon Naa 

Main Khiladi tu Anari 

Main Tulsi Tere Aangan Ki 

Malawade, Vidya 

Malik, Anu 

Mallick, Pankaj 

Malhotra, Harmesh 

Malhotra, Manish 

Malhotra, Pawan 

Mandakini 

Mandi 

Mangal Pandey: The Rising 

Mangeshkar, Lata 

Mannini, Georgio 

Manoos 

Mann 

Manto, Saadat Hassan 

Manthan 

Manzil 

Maqbool 

Mard 

Martin, Steve 

Mashaal 

Masoom 

Mastaan, Haji 

Mast Qalandar 

Master Dinkar 

Master Vithal 

Mathan, John Matthew 

Matondkar, Urmila 

Maugham, W. Somerset 

Mausam 

Mayabazaar 

Maya Memsaab 

Mayo, Katherine 

Meera 

Meerabai 

Megaforce 

Meghadutam 

Mehboob 

Meher, Sadhu 

Mehmood, Talat 

Mehra, Prakash 

Mehtaab 

Mehta, Deepa 

Mehta, Neela 

Mela 

Méliès, Georges 

Mendonca, Clare 

Menon, Kay Kay

Index 

389 

Menon, Rajeev 

Mera Naam Joker 

Merchant, Jal 

Mera Saaya 

Mere Jeevan Saathi 

Mere Mehboob 

Miles, Sylvia 

Mili 

Miller, Robert 

Minmini 

Minocher-Homji, Khorshed 

Minogue, Kylie 

Minu Mumtaz 

Miracle in Milan 

Mirch Masala 

Miral 

Mir, Ezra 

Mirren, Helen 

Mir, Raza 

Mirza Ghalib 

Mirza, Vajahat 

Mishra, Leela 

Mishra, Piyush 

Mishra, P.K. 

Miss 1956 

Miss Frontier Mail 

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 

Mistry, Babubhai 

Mistry, Phiroz Shah 

Modi, Sohrab 

Mohabbat Ke Aansoo 

Mohabattein 

Mohammad, Ghulam 

Mohan, Chandra 

Mohini Bhasmasur 

Mohra 

Molina, Alfred 

Monroe, Marilyn 

Montez, Maria 

Mori, Barbara 

Mother India 

Mother Teresa 

Motilal 

M. Pancholi, Dalsukh 

Mr. and Mrs. ’55 

Mr. & Mrs. Smith 

Mr India 

Mrityudand 

Mubarak Begum 

Mudaliar, R. Nataraja 

Mudaliar, Vardarajan 

Mughal-e-Azam 

Mujhe Jeene Do 

Mukesh 

Mukesh, Nitin 

Mukherjee, Deb 

Mukherjee, Dwijen 

Mukherjee, Gyan 

Mukherjee, Hrishikesh 

Mukherjee, Sashadhar 

Mukherjee, Subodh 

Mukherji, Rani 

Mumbai Meri Jaan 

Mumtaz 

Muni, Paul 

Munim, Tina 

Munshi Premchand 

Mujhe Jeene Do 

Muqabla 

Muqaddar ka Sikandar 

Murali, Jagat 

Murder 

Murugadoss, A. R. 

Muthu 

My Cousin Vinny 

My Dear Kuttichathan 

Myers, Ruby 

My Name is Khan 

Napoleon 

Naaz 

Nadeem 

Nagar, Amritlal 

Nag, Ananth 

Nagin 

Nagina 

Nigahen 

Nahata, Amrit 

Naidu, Leela 

Nair, Mira 

Nakshab 

Nala Damayanti 

Namak Halaal 

Nanook of the North 

Nanavati, K. M. 

Nanda 

Nanha Farishta 

Narayan, Udit

390 Index 

Nargis 

Narayan, R. K. 

Nath, Prem 

Natir Puja 

Naseeb 

Naseeb Ka Devi 

Nasir, Al 

Naujawan 

Navjeevan 

Nawathe, Raja 

Naya Daur 

Naya Din Nai Raat 

Nayak, Pransukh 

Nayi Duniya 

Nayyar, O. P. 

Nazir 

Neame, Ronald 

Neecha Nagar 

Neel Kamal 

Nehru, Jawaharlal 

New York, I Love You 

Nicholson, Jack 

Nigam, Sonu 

Nighthawks 

Night in London 

Nights of Cabiria 

Nihalani, Govind 

Nikaah 

Nikitin, Afanasy 

Nimoy, Leonard 

Nirdosh 

Nirmala 

Nishabd 

Nishant 

Nishipadma 

Noorani, Ehsaan 

Noor Jehan 

Nutan 

Obama, Barack 

Oberoi, Suresh 

Oberoi, Vivek 

Octopussy 

Olivier, Laurence 

Om Shanti Om 

Once Upon a Time in Mumbai 

Open City 

Osten, Franz 

Paa 

Pachhi 

Padmaavat 

Padmini 

Padukone, Deepika 

Pahadi Kanya 

Painter, Baburao 

Palekar, Amol 

Palkon Ki Chhaon Mein 

Paluskar, D. V. 

Pandey, Nirmal 

Pandit Bhushan 

Pandit Indra 

Pandit, Jatin 

Pandit Phani 

Pandit Shiv Kumar 

Pandit Sudarshan 

Pakeezah 

Parakh 

Paranjpye, Sai 

Pardes 

Pardesi 

Parekh, Asha 

Parichay 

Parineeta 

Patankar, S. N. 

Patanga 

Pataudi, Mansoor Ali Khan 

Patel, Anuradha 

Patel, Vithalbhai 

Pather Panchali 

Pati Bhakti 

Patil, S. K. 

Patil, Smita 

Paudwal, Anuradha 

Pawar, Lalita 

Paying Guest 

Peck, Gregory 

Pehle Paap 

Peepli Live 

Phalke, Bhalchandra D. 

Phalke, Dajishastri 

Phalke, Dhundiraj Govind / Dadasaheb 

Phalke, Mandakini 

Phalke, Saraswatibai 

Phalke Summanwar, Sharayu 

Pheray 

Phoenix the Warrior 

Phool Bane Angarey

Index 

391 

Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan 

Phule, Nilu 

Piku 

Pink 

Pinto, Freida Selina 

Pinto, Jerry 

Pitt, Brad 

Poitier, Sidney 

Polanski, Roman 

Politics of Love 

Pookutty, Resul 

Poona Races 

Pope Francis 

Prabhas 

Prakash, Khemchand 

Prasanth 

Prem Geet 

Prem Nagar 

Prem Rog 

President 

Presley, Elvis 

Prince 

Prince Charles 

Prisoners of the Sun 

Pritam 

Professor 

Provoked 

Pyaasa 

Pundalik 

Punnoose, Jijo 

Puri, Amrish 

Puri, Om 

Pukar 

Purab aur Paschim 

Puran Bhagat 

Purana Mandir 

Pushpak / Pushpaka Vimana 

Pyarelal 

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak 

Qila 

Quantico 

Quantum of Solace 

Queen 

Qurbani 

Qureshi, Huma 

Raam Laxman 

Raaz 

Raavan 

Raavanan 

Raees 

Rafi, Mohammad 

Rafi, Yasmin Khalid 

Ragini 

Ragini MMS 2 

Rahman, A. R. 

Rai, Aishwarya 

Rai, Bina 

Rai, Himanshu 

Rai, Rajiv 

Raiders of the Sacred Stone 

Rail ka Dibba 

Raincoat 

Raj, Ashok 

Raj, Jagdish 

Raja Harishchandra 

Raja Hindustani 

Raja, Zahur 

Rajadhyaksha, Ashish 

Rajamouli, S. S. 

Rajan, Chota 

Rajendranath 

Rajinikanth 

Rajkumari 

Raj Nartaki 

Rajnigandha 

Rajvansh, Priya 

Ramachandra / Rama (King / Lord) 

Ramachandra, C. 

Ramachandran, Maruthur Gopala 

Ram aur Shyam 

Ramayana 

Ram Lakhan 

Ram Rajya 

Ramsay Brothers 

Ram Teri Ganga Maili 

Ram Vanwas 

Ramya 

Rangacharya, Adya 

Rang De Basanti 

Rangeela 

Rangoonwalla, Firoze 

Ra.One 

Rao, Kiran 

Rao, K. Raghavendra 

Rao, Singeetam Srinivasa 

Rao, S. Rajeshwar

392 Index 

Rashoman 

Rathod, Kajibhai 

Rathod, Roop Kumar 

Ratnam, Mani 

Ratner, Brett 

Rattan 

Rawail, H. S. 

Ray, Satyajit 

Razia Sultan 

Reddy H. M. 

Rehman 

Rehman, Waheeda 

Rekha 

Reno, John 

Renoir, Jean 

Reshammiya, Himesh 

Reshma Aur Shera 

Return to Eden 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes 

Rizvi, Anusha 

Rizvi, Ehsan 

Rizvi, Shaukat Hassan 

Roberts, Julia 

Robot 

Robin Hood 

Rock On!! 

Rockstar 

Roerich, Nicholas 

Roerich, Svetoslav 

Rogers, Ginger 

Rohatgi, Payal 

Roja 

Roshan, Hrithik 

Roshan, Rajesh 

Roshan, Rakesh 

Rossellini, Gil 

Rossellini, Raffaella 

Rossellini, Roberto 

Roti Kapda aur Makaan 

Roy, Bimal 

Roy, Charu 

Roy, Nirupa 

Roy, Rahul 

Rushdie, Salman 

Rush Hour 3 

Russell, David O. 

Ryabinkina, Kseniya 

Saagar 

Saajan 

Saahi, Deepa 

Saaransh 

Saat Hindustani 

Saat Khoon Maaf 

Saath Saath 

Saawariya 

Sachaa Jhutha 

Sadak 

Sadhana 

Sadma 

Safar 

Safary, Darsheel 

Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam 

Sahni, Balraj 

Saigal Kashmiri / Saigal, Kundan Lal 

Sailaab 

Sairandhri 

Salaam Bombay! 

Salaam Namaste 

Salem, Abu 

Saleem, Saqib 

Salunkhe, Anna 

Samanta, Shakti 

Samarth, Shobhana 

Sameer 

Sampoorna Ramayan 

Samvedna 

Sanam Bewafa 

Sandhya 

Sangam 

Sanju 

Sant Tukaram 

Sanyal, Pahari 

Saraswati Devi / Khorshed 

Minocher-Homji 

Sarfarosh 

Sargam, Sadhana 

Sarkar 

Sarkar Raj 

Sarkar, Suprova 

Sarris, Andrew 

Sarwar, Lala Ghulam 

Sathyu, M. S. 

Satte Pe Satta 

Satya 

Satyakam 

Satyam Shivam Sundaram 

Satyavan Savitri

Index 

393 

Saudagar 

Savkari Pash 

Saving Private Ryan 

Savitri 

Saxon, John 

Sayani 

Scenes from the Flower of Persia 

Schnabel, Julian 

Schwartz, Susan 

Seeta 

Seeta aur Geeta 

Seeta Devi / Renee Smith 

Seemab, Mukand Lal 

Segal, Eric 

Sehgal, Zohra 

Seinfeld, Jerry 

Sen, Asit 

Sen, Hiralal 

Sen, Mrinal 

Sen, Suchitra 

Setu Bandhan 

Sestier, Marius 

Seth, Sushma 

Shaan 

Shabistan 

Shahane, Renuka 

Shah, Anandji Virji 

Shah, Chandulal 

Shahjehan 

Shaheed 

Shah, Kundan 

Shah, Naseeruddin 

Shah, Satish 

Shah, Vipul 

Shahenshah 

Shakeel, Chota 

Shakti 

Shakuntala 

Shailendra. 

Shalimar 

Shamshad Begum 

Shams, Munshi 

Shankar (director) – pg. 87, 186, 269, 270 

Shankar-Ehsan-Loy – 

Shankar, Amala 

Shankar-Jaikishan 

Shankar, Ravi 

Shankar, Uday 

Shantaram, V. 

Shanti, Mumtaz 

Sharaabi 

Shararat 

Sharif, Omar 

Sharma, Kidar Nath 

Sharma, Pandit Mukhram ‘Ashant’ 

Sharma, Shiv Kumar 

Sharma, Vijay 

Shatner, William 

Shastri, Lal Bahadur 

Shatranj Ke Khiladi 

Sheikh, Farooque 

Shelly, Rachel 

Sherawat, Mallika 

Shivdasani, Deepak 

Shiva (Lord) 

Shiva 

Shivaji 

Shiva Ka Insaaf 

Shyamachi Aai 

Sherdil Aurat 

Shiraz 

Shirodkar, Namrata 

Sholay 

Shorey, Meena 

Shorey, Roop K. 

Shorty, Lord 

Shravan 

Shrivastav, Harivansh Rai 

Shroff, Boman 

Shroff, Jackie 

Shree 420 

Shrivastava, Aadesh 

Shrivastava, Sambhal Lal ‘Anuj’ 

Shukla, Saurabh 

Shukla, Shilpa 

Siddiqui, Nawazuddin 

Sikandar 

Sikand, Krishan Pran / Pran 

Silk Smitha 

Silsila 

Silver Linings Playbook 

Singh, Amrita 

Singh, Chitra 

Singh, Dara 

Singh, Jagjit 

Singh, Honey 

Singh, Neetu 

Singh, Ranveer

394 Index 

Singh, Suchet 

Singh, Sukhwinder 

Singin’ in the Rain 

Sinha, Mala 

Sinha, Shatrughan 

Sinha, Tapan 

Sinha, Vidya 

Sippy, Ramesh 

Sircar, Birendra Nath 

Sita Bibaha 

Slumdog Millionaire 

Smith, Will 

Socrates 

Sood, Sonu 

Sparsh 

Spielberg, Steven 

Sridevi 

Stallone, Sylvester 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture 

Sternberg, Josef von 

Stephens, Toby 

Stree Purush 

Streep, Meryl 

Street Singer 

Strizhenov, Oleg 

Stevenson 

Stunt Queen 

Sujata 

Sulochana 

Sunset Boulevard 

Swades 

Swarn Lata 

Sultan, Rehana 

Sultana, Ishrat 

Sultana, Nigar 

Sultanpuri, Majrooh 

Suraiya 

Susman 

Swayze, Patrick 

Taal 

Taare Zameen Par 

Tagore, Rabindranath 

Tagore, Sharmila 

Taj Mahal 

Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story 

Talash-e-Haq 

Tales of The Kama Sutra 2: Monsoon 

Tamanna 

Tandon, Lekh 

Tandon, Raveena 

Tansen 

Tanuja 

Tara, B. M. 

Tarantino, Quentin 

Tarzan 

Taylor, Elizabeth 

Tendulkar, Vijay 

Teesri Manzil 

Tembe, Govindrao 

Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman 

Faithfully Presented 

Tezaab 

Tiger Zinda Hai 

Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 

Titanic 

Thakur, Dinesh 

The Amazing Spider-Man 

The Birds 

The Dirty Picture 

The End of the River 

The Exorcist 

The Fall of Berlin 

The Gambler 

The Godfather 

The Great Gatsby 

The Growth of the Pea Plant 

The Hundred-Foot Journey 

The Jungle Book 

The Last Lear 

The Last Legion 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 

The Life of Christ 

The Light of Asia / Prem Sanyas 

The Mill 

The Mistress of Spices 

The Myth 

The Namesake 

The Perils of Pauline 

The Pink Panther 2 

The River 

The Sea Bath 

The Seven Year Itch 

The Song of Scorpions 

The Thief of Bagdad 

The Unforgettables 

The Warrior 

The Wilby Conspiracy

Index 

395 

The Wrestlers 

Thirumugam, M. A. 

Thomas, Rosie 

Tigress 

Tohfa 

Toofani Tirandaz 

Toomai of the Elephants 

Torney, Ramchandra Gopal 

Trishna 

Trishul 

Troy 

Tukaram 

Tulsi, Inderjeet Singh 

Tum Bin 

Typist Girl 

Udhas, Pankaj 

Umrao Jaan 

Upkar 

Uski Roti 

Usne Kaha Tha 

Utsav 

Vaazhkai 

Vajpayee, Atal Behari 

Varma, Ram Gopal 

Vasan, S. S. 

Vaswani, Ravi 

Veer Abhimanyu 

Veer Bala 

Veeru Dada 

Verma, Bhagwati Charan 

Verne, Jules 

Victoria No. 203 

Vidhaata 

Vigathakumaran 

Vishal-Shekhar 

Vishnu (Lord) 

Vyas, Bharat 

Vyas, Pandit Naratom 

Wadia, Homi 

Wadia, J. B. H. / Jamshed 

Wadia, Riyad 

Wadkar, Suresh 

Wafa (Trust): A Deadly Love Story 

Wali, Wali Mohammad 

Walker, Johnny 

Waqt 

Water 

Warrior of the Lost World 

Watts, Naomi 

Webber, Andrew Lloyd 

Welles, Orson 

Wenner, Dorothee 

West is West 

White, Brian 

White Nights 

White Savage 

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 

Wildcat of Bombay 

Willemen, Paul 

Winfrey, Oprah 

Winslet, Kate 

Wise, Robert 

Winterbottom, Michael 

Woh Kaun Thi? 

Wolf 

Wolfsheim, Meyer 

Wuthering Heights 

xXx: Return of Xander Cage 

Yaadein 

Yaadon Ki Baraat 

Yagnik, Alka 

Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke 

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger 

Yukiwarisoo 

Yuvraaj 

Zakhm 

Zakhmee Aurat 

Zanjeer 

Zarina 

Zedong, Mao 

Ziddi 

Zindagi 

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara 

Zinta, Preity

BollywoodFAQ_galley

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