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Sau saal pehle...

Ashok Banker on 100 years of Bollywood

It's been around for less than 0.02 per cent of the last 5 millennia; yet its impact has been immeasurable. From Kargil to Kanyakumari and Mandvi to Mizoram, no other form of popular culture is as influential and insidiously intertwined with our lives as Bollywood.

And while Bollywood itself may be confined to a few hundred square kilometres in a single Indian city, its audience is spread across the planet. Once a two-anna pastime with less than two pai in respectability, today's Hindi film industry measures its value in tens of millions of US dollars and its popularity in global terms.

Suddenly, 'the industry' is making cents, sorry, sense to a whole new generation of made-good NRIs. Technology has exploded the box-office, with satellite television pumping up the volume on music rights and repeat telecasts. The urbanisation of audiences is making a whole new breed of desi-pardesi makers proving that no matter how Westernised the elite get, phir bhi dil Hindustani.

Even that last bastion of anti-Bollywood resistance, the deep South, has found that a spoonful of Bollywood sweetens the filter coffee. The Japanese think Mithun is mast-mast, and who can deny that the B-movie king is also the most awarded actor with three Nationals under his black belt. To the Russians, Raj Kapoor is the Indian Elvis, and as far as they're concerned, he never left the building.

And with the smart suits getting savvy, entertainment industry stocks are thrilling the bourses as much as the box office. Not to mention the soaring success of multiplexes and mini-theatres, and the impending boom in exhibition venues, with Australia's Village Roadshow pumping Rs 500 crore to get the show on the road.

Legendary movie studios like Fox, Sony, Universal are waking up to the realisation that Hollywood is hunky, but Bollywood is dory too. And the climax of this epic masterpiece is yet to unfold: With new streaming-video technology and the thumping popularity of MP3 audio, the day isn't far when every Indian home will have Bollywood on tap, movies available anytime of the day or night via that ultimate exhibition medium of all: The Net.

But how did it all happen? When, how and why did Bollywood suddenly start up its rattling jalopy and overtake the bullock cart of Indian culture, vrooming to its current pre-eminence in less than a hundred short years?

Well, the truth is that Hindi cinema hit the ground running at the very outset. From the first film screening at Watson's Hotel, Bombay, by the French Lumiere cameraman Maurice Sestier on July 7, 1896, the fascination for the new medium was strongest in two centres -- Bombay and West Bengal.

Initially, West Bengal took the lead in the race for indigenous film-making, and after all, the finest dramatists, authors, theatrical producers, directors, impresarios, music composers, actors, set designers and other creative minds were all in the East.

But Bombay soon caught up. On April 2, 1913, Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra opened in Bombay and came to be hailed as the first major commercial and critical success. With that historical -- and historic -- film, Bollywood was born. Although it would be another three quarters of a century before the pidgin name became common usage.

By 1923, the new medium was considered profitable enough to attract a levy of 12 ½ per cent entertainment tax. And Bombay film-makers, shrewd from the start, began to find ways to subvert the system by dealing in cash.

Ironically, two of the Hindi film industry's biggest bugaboos -- black money and censorship -- had their origin in our rebellion against British imperialism. It was the British administration that first cracked down on black money. By 1951, the problem had become acute enough for a special panel, the S K Patil Enquiry Committee to file a lengthy report, singling out the flow of 'black market money' and the star system (the two were undoubtedly related) for especially harsh criticism.

With characteristic disdain, Bollywood ignored the report for the next 10 years! When it was finally dusted off again, it was hooted and derided. The British had left by then, but the rebelliousness they had fostered lingered on. Even the raising of entertainment tax to an exorbitant 49 per cent didn't dampen spirits. And the fact that the government chose to levy a special rate of 75 per cent in West Bengal should tell you something about the parallel earnings of our babu ancestors!

Censorship met with a similar response. Used as a tool by the British to suppress anti-British and pro-Independence sentiments and propaganda, it remained after 1947 as a legacy of Victorian self-righteousness. Today, after a spate of controversies under Censor Board chairperson Asha Parekh, the industry rightly feels regards the ominous White House at Walkeshwar is not just the address of the Censor Board, but of Queen Victoria's own descendants! As one wag remarked during the Shekhar Kapur-Elizabeth controversy, "How can Queen Victoria accept Queen Elizabeth's sex life?!"

The other thing that marked Bollywood from the very beginning was its penchant for simplicity. While the Bengali film auteurs wrestled with philosophical themes, adapted great literary works and aspired to mould the new medium into an art form for the 20th century, Bombay's craftsmen aimed straight for the box office.

It was here that stunt films were born in India and formalised into a lucrative genre. From Nadia's Hunterwali to Ajay Devgan's motorcycle daredevilry was not such a long journey after all. In those early, halcyon days of films, stars performed their own stunts. Jairaj, a robust 96 even today -- he's the oldest living Indian actor -- sports a variety of broken bones and cracked joints, all the legacy of those DIY (Do It Yourself) days.

Keep It Simple, Stupid!