Three weeks ago, Rachel Dwyer, reader inIndian Studies and Cinema, School of Oriental and African Studies, asked acasual question that had me reeling. "Mumbai does not speak Hindi, so why didBollywood begin here?"
And why not in Delhi? I added to myself. Cotton mills? Had to be in Mumbaibecause of the moist air. Cinema? Anywhere is good but surely a Hindi languagecinema should have been born in the heart of the Hindi belt?
No use saying Mumbai got a headstart because the Lumiere brothers came herefirst. No use saying it was all silent cinema in the beginning. No use sayingMumbai is an entrepreneurial space and Delhi a bureaucratic one. By the timelanguage began to become an important part of cinema, the model was successful,fortunes had been made and anyone cou-ld have jumped onto the bandwagon
.
Delhi didn’t.
That’s odd. As soon as Alam Ara was released in 1931, surely it shouldhave. It was the urban magnet closer to Lahore and Lucknow, from whence came thewriters of merit who made Hindi cinema’s dialogues into a series of firecrackers exploding into what we call ‘dialocks’; who turned its songs intorich, decadent romantic feasts of courtly disembodied yearning and unrequitedlove.
But then, perhaps Delhi’s insistence on Hindi as she should be spoke (and whowill establish that?) would never have managed the pan-national appeal of theMumbai product. Take Yahudi (1958), for instance. Sohrab Modi speakschaste Urdu in the rhetorical tones of the sophists we never had. Dilip Kumarspeaks Urdu too, but in the everyday speech patterns of a nawab down on hisluck. It works because Mumbai began as a polyglot, invented by Gujaratibusinessmen, including the Parsis and Muslim traders from all over the country.The resultant mess with its aapuns and tumkus made it into alanguage that the Rajasthani and the Gujarati and the Bihari could enjoy, evenif the austere linguistic Brahmins of the cow belt looked down their noses atthe rubble of language on display.
By the 1990s, there was such confidence that Mumbai no longer cared about Hindiper se. First came the tapori hero—pioneered by Amitabh Bachchan in AmarAkbar Anthony— and then came English. A Hindi film reviewer oncecomplained to me that it was difficult to interview anyone on a Hindi film setbecause all the important people seemed more comfortable in English than Hindi.
What next? The English film seems to have taken root in Mumbai too. Other thanAparna Sen’s three English language films (36 Chowringhee Lane, Mr& Mrs Iyer and 15 Park Avenue) almost all the others have beenmade here. Looks like Delhi, which gave us one of the best local colour films inIn Which Annie Gives it Those Ones, is set to lose again. Meanwhile, sendus your National School of Drama best, send us your Jamia Millia editors andwe’ll put them to use. They won’t recognise who they started out as, butthen the lure of Lokhandwala will beat bread and water in a barsati anyday.
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This article originally appeared in Delhi City Limits, April 30, 2006
