Mera Bharat in Hollywood

SOCIETY

I must confess to remaining fairly unaffected by any great stirrings of "patriotism" "" or, at least, by what passes for the honourable emotion most of the time. I would frankly smirk if anyone thought to dress up in the Tricolour, in the manner of one of our enterprising designers many moons ago (she got slapped with a court notice for showing disrespect though, of course, she hadn't intended it; merely copied what Americans do all the time!).

I would also tend to dismiss court battles, the likes of which an industrialist-MP fought to hoist the flag atop his home and factory, as clearly a waste on mere symbolism. And I certainly think it very false and annoying indeed when Bollywood films try to make us party to their jingoistic rhetoric by playing the national anthem sombrely, expecting us all to stand attention at the end of three hours of, say, unintended comedy by Sunny Deol!

This week calls for a different emotion: you may be excused if, like Kajol or Rani Mukherjee in Yash Raj or Dharma flicks, you break into Jan Gan Man or other songs upholding our "Indianness" (think "Om Jai Jagdish hare" in films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Mohabbatein), while visiting foreign lands.

For some time now, we have been aware of the power, potential and clout of Indian money. Never mind Ranbaxy and inflation, with Indian businesses now regularly buying up steel companies and vineyards abroad with equal ease, middle-class India, inundated with news of such "achievement" (by brethren undoubtedly much richer) is left feeling quite smug in an inverted-Colonial fashion.

And now, such feelings will only be abetted, I am sure, by news of our "conquests" in Hollywood "" truly the last frontier breached for an Oscar-deprived race!

Steven Spielberg has been showing signs of breaking away from Paramount for some time now. But to everyone in India who has grown up watching his films at single-screen theatres "specialising in English films" (predating the multiplexes), it seems incredible that it is apna Reliance that will be pouring in the money ($500-600 million in cash) in return for an undisclosed equity stake in Spielberg's DreamWorks studio.

What does such an alliance signal? In a not so distant future, does it, for instance, pave way for "Bollywood", that pale imitator, to "rule" Hollywood? Does it follow that we may soon see an increased number of Oscar wins (in the manner of our increased Miss Universe wins, dictated by market dynamics, after years of drought).

But more than that are we, the denizens of Lajpat Nagar and Lakhimpur Kheri, now in for a unique brand of entertainment: an Angelina Jolie item number, an SRK doing a Tom Cruise-style MI-3? Or, Sly doing god-knows-what, as filmmaker Sajid Nadiadwala threatens? But while we contemplate such possibilities (not all pleasant, I must admit), let's savour this India-aha moment.

(anoothi.vishal@bsmail.in)