The Rise of Bollywood

[nmm]

I got this from a friend. What do you think? Is Mumbai supplanting Los Angeles as the Master of the Worlds Cultural Export? What would this do for India (a self proclaimed emerging power)? Do you understand it? Do you care to understand it?

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Bollywood craze grips even distant Peru

Malaysia Sun

Sunday 4th February, 2007

(IANS)

The tourist guidebooks to Peru will tell you about the Incas, Machu Pichu, the Amazonian rainforests, the soft Alpaca wool and the beautiful textiles. They are ignoring Bollywood. I knew I could expect to hear the sound of Quena, an Andean flute playing the folk tune El Condor Pasa, wherever I went. The tune was popularized around the world by the Simon and Garfunkel song 'If I could'. But nothing in the world prepared me for the music I heard in a small Peruvian village called Ollantaytambo, in the Andean mountains. As I walked past straying Alpacas and old women in their traditional embroidered skirts, I encountered a piece of unmistakable India in Quetchua land.

I heard a familiar tune, and in a familiar language.

'Raat ka nasha abhi, Aankh se gaya nahin...'

How could this be? A Bollywood song from the movie 'Asoka', blaring loudly from the unlikeliest of Andean villages?

Mesmerized, I followed the sound's path down the longest Incan street in the village - a dirt track flanked by 14th-century stonewalls. After about a hundred yards, I came upon the house that was playing the music. I stood at the door not knowing what to do.

Then the song changed.

'Bole chudiyan, Bole kangna, Hai main ho gayi, Teri saajna...' I rang the bell a little nervously. My curiosity had led me here, but I did not know a word of Spanish or Quechua language. A young woman opened the door and looked at me puzzled.

'I am from India,' I said in English. And added: 'That music...from India.' The woman beamed and took me in her arms. It was one of the warmest hugs I have received. No words exchanged. She then took my hand and led me into her house through a courtyard full of guinea pigs ('the roasted guinea pig' is a Peruvian delicacy).

Inside her home, three little girls were twirling and swinging to the Kareena Kapoor song from 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham'. They didn't understand Hindi but they sure seemed to know what 'kangna' meant, because they would stroke their wrists when the line came up in the song. The girls were probably 7 or 8 years old.

I stared at them in total disbelief. It was surreal. When the woman introduced me to them as an Indian, they came and hugged me one by one.

I didn't need to say anything. At that moment, I was their Bollywood connection, and that was enough.

As the little girls resumed their 'thumkas', the woman proudly showed me all the DVDs she possessed. 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai', 'Pardes', 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam', 'Asoka', 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham' and more. Then she said two words that I understood. 'Indian Cinema' and 'Amor'. In the Peruvian capital Lima, almost anybody I spoke to said they loved Indian movies, the songs and the dances. They said the movies, dubbed in Spanish, were very popular. And Bollywood music was a common fare in discotheques on Friday nights.

But I discovered that Bollywood movies are not the only visible Indian export to Peru.

Rural areas are full of our colorful Bajaj auto rickshaws, snaking through noisy by-lanes. Who says Bollywood and Bajaj cannot do wonders? (Rama Lakshmi writes on India for the Washington Post. She was recently in Peru on a holiday.)

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Bollywood is seeking a global audience

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...0-36375,00.html

[Montrose1100]

The Bollywood Movies are a joke to me, but maybe mean more to the people of India.