E-Paper
TONY's take on Bollywood
"It's kitschy, it's in-your face but its doing fine and it is us," says Farah Khan, clearly enjoying the spotlight on Bollywood.
What is it about us that generating this world wide interest. Are they sheer numbers - after all, according to the latest sensex - one out every four persons is an Indian. Is that which is causing the pressure or is it because Bollywood has finally become the buzzword? We caught up with TONY to get a perspective. Excerpts from an interview with Tanuja Desai Hidier, author of Born Confused and the consultant editor on the supplement:
What prompted TONY's interest towards bringing out a special supplement on Bollywood?
Actually, my first meeting about the issue was with the editor in chief in the fall of 2002, just after my novel Born Confused - which is set largely in the context of the South Asian New York scene - came out in the States. I was asked to show them that there was enough going on in the NYC desi scene to fill an issue" and there was enough to fill years worth of issues, in fact!
Down the road, we decided to launch the issue the last week of March, as that was the moment Bombay Dreams began previews in the Apple, providing a great hook to lead into a whole exploration of SANY. Bollywood is perhaps South Asia's most fabulously glitzy export, and is now influencing trends worldwide from fashion to hip-hop, and even theme trips (Bollywood Ibiza in the UK, for example).
With film productions such as Mira Nair's forthcoming Vanity Fair (a Thackeray adaptation complete with dance numbers choreographed by Farah Khan and starring the Hollywood star Reese Witherspoon) and Gurinder Chadha's Bride & Prejudice, a Bollywood musical adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, news that models Sophie Dahl and Elizabeth Hurley will be hitting the Bollyscreen, as well as a whole host of East-West coproductions in progress, it really seems that the Bolly phenomenon is growing more and more global in reach and appeal.
And the arrival of the South Asian musical on Broadway really heralds the beginning of a whole new cultural phase and so was well worth highlighting. But the TONY issue is not only about Bollywood. The supplement was put together to celebrate all of the extraordinary achievements of the South Asian New York community over recent years, in myriad arenas.
Of course, the visuals and design were a vital part of expressing the story and culture as well. Who would want to miss out on the opportunity to let the pages sparkle with Bollywood and shine with the people who made the issue possible in the first place? It was really remarkable to see the final product, this mainstream USA magazine, with page after page of brown faces. There was never anything like that around when I was growing up.
Indian heroes and heroines abounded in my home and life, but none were reflected on magazine pages, the movie screens, on TV, in books, in toy stores, and so on. In fact, I believe this issue of TONY was the first instance of a mainstream publication dedicating so much of its space to, well, people who look like us!
It was just such an amazing feeling to turn the pages and see all of these people from the community, people who were there with me in the 90s when the desi scene really began to come of age and gain critical mass in NYC," who were in fact a vital part of the reason for that.
We knew we were on to something even then 'there was a sense of something buzzy, something underground rising during those years, and having shared that, having been there and being there now is a very special thing. And today, years down the road, to see that buzz come above ground is a beautiful feeling.'
Did the supplement take into consideration only the desi (read NRI) musicians, writers and artists who are spicing up New York's art and culture scenario or did it touch base with industry folks in India as well? The issue was put together primarily to celebrate South Asian New York, its remarkable momentum and creativity, and what brings us together as a culture in our own right. It is no longer simply a derivative of the UK diasporic arts scene, SANY has got something unique going on these days.
South Asians are now more than ever part of the Apple and are adding a decidedly desi flavour to its core. Some of this is due to sheer numbers. South Asians number two million in the US, and the community is rapidly growing (for example, the Bangladeshi population in Queens rose by 400 per cent in the last decade!).
This is slowly but surely putting into question the distinction between outside/inside the culture at large. And the growing appeal and use of the term South Asian bringing people of Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian, Maldivian,
Nepalese, Pakistan, Sri Lankan, and sometimes Afghani origin together, at least nominally, and in New York in more than a name-only way in the cultural scene.
All that said, India itself was of course a strong root and presence in the issue, not particularly because of interviews with industry folk in India, but simply because, for many South Asian New Yorkers, that's where it all began, culturally speaking (most South Asians in New York and the US in general are of Indian origin).
Today, with technology and travel, the boundaries between East and West have grown even more difficult to distinguish; crosspollination is catapulting cultural development to another level as both East and West turn to each other for resources (e.g., outsourcing, joint film and business productions, etc.) and inspiration (the global appeal of Bollywood).
Take bhangra - The ancient Punjabi music for celebrating the harvest. The way we hear it today in clubs and on soundtracks was a mix made by our desi brothers and sisters in the UK, who took the tradition and added in hip-hop, dancehall, reggae, disco, then exported it out for the rest of the world to throw it down to.
So that means one day you get Panjabi MC's Beware of the Boys playing in a Swiss club; he catches Jay's ears, and that very bhangra track blows up into a big hit, intact, not in cut-and-paste format" with a Brooklyn shout-out leading the way into the dhol-driven dance frenzy. This song, in fact, became the US' very first cross-over bhangra Billboard chartmaker. Talk about cross-fertilization that's India via the UK via New York City. So really, there's no way to talk about any diasporic community without taking into account its diasporic sibling communities and motherland as well as its current cultural context. Its all one big family.
As a consultant editor, what are the aspects you chose to highlight?
The lead story is about Bombay Dreams, and the issue covers (amongst many other things) Bollywood inspired club nights, such as DJ Rekha's Bollywood Disco, new filmic takes on Bollywood, such as the above-mentioned Bride & Prejudice, the Cinema India! Festival (which will run the gamut from Bollywood to art-house films and documentaries coming out of the Subcontinent), and a sort of Bollywood 101 section: a list of films to introduce the newcomer to the genre.
It must be kept in mind when considering the TONY issue that Bollywood is by no means the household name in the USA that it is in India and South Asia(yet!), so some of these pieces served as an introduction to the form and the culture connected to it.
