Art & Entertainment

Fafda Power Goes Filmi

All of a sudden, the cameras of Bollywood cannot seem to get enough of Gujarat

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Fafda Power Goes Filmi
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Some weeks back, Salman Khan doled out photo-ops of him flying kites and smiling with Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. And before the release of his new film Jai Ho, he was also hardselling Daisy Shah, its Gujarati heroine, and hyping Photocopy, a peppy garba song from the film. Was the film a veiled ad for Gujarat tourism? Salman typically left everyone baffled, declaring that, though he flew kites with Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, his vote was for Priya Dutt. But there’s enough of Gujarat in the film, a Gujarat of fun and jokes—stuff like the line “Aa chhoro gaando thai gayo (This boy has gone mad)” sliding into a sort of bilingual joke on the G-word.

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Whether real or make-believe, Gujarat is the flavour of the season in Bollywood right now. In fact, some may say there’s too much of Gujarat happening on screen. But no two images have been alike. A few months ago, Sanjay Leela Bhansali presented an entirely different picture in Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ramleela. “It wasn’t a Gujarat I’m familiar with,” says adman-columnist Santosh Desai, who is from the state. “It seemed more like a distant corner of a fantasy Gujarat.” Bhansali gave us a new seductive, enticing, frenzied and violent Gujarat, one of unbridled sexual assertion, aggression and machismo, the most telling visual being Ranveer Singh’s oiled and severely muscled body juxtaposed against mur­als of Ram in the Tatad tatad song.

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Then there was Abhishek Kapoor’s Kai Po Che, about negotiating close friendships in the times of divisive politics. Punit D. Malhotra’s Gori Tere Pyaar Main was sanctimonious ‘NGO cinema’, about building a bridge in a Gujarat village. Oh My God, an Akshay Kumar-Paresh Rawal starrer, was based on the Gujarati play Kanji Virudh Kanji, dealing with blind faith and superstition. And Rahul Dholakia—whose Parzania, on the post-Godhra riots, ran into trouble in the state—is setting his next release Raees again in Gujarat. It’s on prohibition and has Shahrukh Khan playing bootlegger to Farhan Akhtar’s cop.

One of the earliest films with Gujarat as the backdrop was Saraswatichandra, based on the Gujarati novel by Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi. All along, however, Gujaratis have marked a token presence in Bollywood films: for instance, the comedic Parsi couple seen frequently through the 1970s and 1980s. They’ve appeared as also-there characters in films like Baghban and Chalte Chalte.

Gujarat itself has largely been about colour and grandeur, in dances such as those of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam or Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ramleela. “When Bombay cinema makes reference to Gujarat, it is more often as a spectacular backdrop,” says Farhana Ibrahim, a scholar researching Gujarat. “This spectacularisation of Gujarat through textiles and tradition leads to the effacement of the political, perpetuating the silencing of uncomfortable political questions.”

Bombay cinema has always stereotyped communities—Punjabis, Bengalis, ‘Madra­sis’—far too casually. In this schema, Gujaratis have been presented as meek at heart but loud and showy. “It’s been all about weird accents and ‘snakes in the hole’ jokes,” says Dholakia. Dr Atul Tolia, secretary to the board the Canada India Foundation, says, “Vau­devillian comics, gullible Gujju boys and girls have been the staple of Indian cinema.” Layered representations occur only in parallel cinema—Shyam Bene­gal’s Manthan or Ketan Mehta’s Mirch Masala, Sardar and Bhavni Bhavai.

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So where does the Gujarat in recent Hindi cinema come from? Ravikant, a film historian at Delhi’s Centre for Study of Developing Societies points to TV, which brought Gujarat to us thr­ough saas-bahu serials, comedies like Sarabhai vs Sarabhai and Khichdi, as also through the tourism ads featuring its brand ambassador Amitabh Bach­chan. The long- running comedy Taarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chashma, on SAB TV, has led to people discovering fafda-jalebi as a ‘naashta’. “Hindi filmmakers,” says trade analyst Amod Mehra, “have merely incorporated the successful TV formula.”

The more visible characters in Hindi cinema have always been Punjabis and Bengalis, perhaps because the two communities dominated the industry for long. As Bollywood turned cosmopolitan, representations have become either pan-Indian, or region-specific, if the story demands. Above all, the changes have to do with business. Which explains the Gujarat angle. Says Dholakia, “Gujarat is a big market. All shows in multiplexes are full on the weekends.” Increasingly, the Gujarati  diaspora has become as important as the Punjabi. Mehra points out that Goliyon Ki... did better in America than any Shahrukh film because of the sheer force of the Gujarati NRI audience.

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Adman-columnist Desai says, “Gujarati NRIs are identified with larger aspirations, consumption, affluence—people moving ahead without leaving their values behind. They are the new Punjabis, without the muscles.” In fact, after Kal Ho Naa Ho, which showed Gujaratis and Punjabis facing off, the two communities began to be seen as two sides of the same coin.

All that may be true, but the fact is  films have steered clear of life and politics in Gujarat. Says Dholakia, “Even Kai Po Che played safe.” Farhana points to the avoidance of any mention of the anti-Muslim riots. “Given that our political life is haunted by the events of 2002, there is a remarkable silence around it in popular cinema,” she says. “Kai Po Che and Firaaq (and earlier, Parzania) are exceptions. Again, they were small-budget, multiplex films with a niche audience, not blockbuster releases.” In fact, Firaaq and Parzania did not get proper releases in the state.

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“Sadly, we see the politics of the lar­ger-than-life Narendrabhai and Dhirubhai rather than that of Moh­andas,” says Tolia. He’d like to see more of Gujarat politics of the kind seen in Firaaq, or Godmother (on gangster grandma San­tokben). Jai ho to that.

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Chaalo Picture...

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Jai Ho Fun and jokes on the peculiarities of the Gujarati languageKai Po Che How a riot affects close friendshipsGori Tere Pyaar Mein Activism, Bollywood style, in rural Gujarat

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Raees SRK’s a bootlegger and Akhtar a cop in film on prohibition in GujaratWill he? Talk is that Paresh Rawal will play Modi in a biopic
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