Bollywood impact

In the West, Bollywood has now become a proper proper noun.

Bloomsbury, one of the UK’s most respected publishers, has commissioned a young researcher called Jessica Hines to do a biography of Amitabh Bachchan.

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In their recently released book Cinema India (Oxford University Press; Rs 650), Rachel Dwyer, an academic at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies, and Divya Patel have examined the impact of visuals in Bollywood.

The book trade is buzzing with Bollywood; it is introducing aspects of India’s most pervasive – and persuasive – pop culture into the corridors of mainstream academia.

The attention and the respectability that Bollywood had begun to garner in the West when Lagaan had had a crack at the Oscars last year has turned into a huge groundswell of popular support for and interest in the cinema that has sustained and defined India for so many years. (I know you — all of you Ray and Gopalakrishnan and Ghatak fans — don’t think Bollywood defines Indian cinema but it does to the masses within and outside the country. I’m a huge Ray fan — I could quote the screenplay from Kanchenjungha if you would let me — but my likes or dislikes don’t have much to do with what is.)

And all that is merely the tip of the iceberg.