Emotion Pictures: Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self PDF
Preview Emotion Pictures: Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self
- emotion pictures Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self Narendra Panjwani RAINBOW PUBLISHERS * PUBLISHERS * ~ndra Panjwani on pictures: Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self jition 2006 us reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or .itted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Rainbow lers, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate raphics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above be sent to Rainbow Publishers, at the address below.. You must not circulate this book in any )inding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. For my parents Devi & Laxman Panjwani, .w Publishers Parish ram Apartments e Road,Ahmedabad 380015 With love and a huge debt of gratitude . •u th Extension, Part-I 'elhi 11 0049 [email protected] mational Distributors SIA In memory of Ashok Chandwani, BLiOPHILE SOUTH A 27 Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi 110017 INDIA 3' 91-11-26864124, 55284748 Fax: 91-11-~69614.62 lails : [email protected] I [email protected] my Hoshangabad schoolmate, who went away much too early. 'w.biblioasia.com 1-86962-72-7 (Hb) ed by Indrani De Parker tions by Pradipto Ray )esign by Indrani De Parker ,'cd & Printed at Frontline Imaging Pvt Ltd., Dkhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi 110020 ed by Vasanthi Raman for Rainbow Publishers Ltd. s 1200 us $ 40 Book writing is often an act of carving out a small individual space within the peer group of which one is a part. This individual space is one's personal identity, which has the habit, occasionally, of going into a crisis. That was the frame of mind in which Emotion Pictures ... began, while I sat facing a blank computer screen far away from my home in Bombay way back in May 1995. I was determined that morning not to get up until some words came out, from inside, from 'the depths of the soul' a.s they say. After two hours or so, they began coming, slowly, in garbled form. By sunset, the verbal chaos on my computer screen had begun to take the shape of some questions, which boiled down five days later to one big question - about adolescence, movies, and the person one had become. But books evolve, as do their writers. This book has now become much more than a personal statement. While discussing our underground relationship with Hindi ftlms with a wide range of friends in Hoshangabad, the small town where I grew up, and later with students and fans of Hindi cinema in Bombay, Bhopal, Indore, Delhi, Pune, North Carolina, Berkeley, etc., it became dear that I was on to a widely shared passion - for those 'trashy' films and all that they had meant to us, especially their songs. Nostalgia was a part of it; but was by no means the whole story. These ftlms have also been a formative, lasting influence on our personalities and values, in strange little ways which people are now beginning to discover - each in their different ways. Emotion Pictures ... is a product of such discoveries. It is also a sociological exploration of the experience of popular Hindi cinema - for the generation who grew up watching ftlms in the period 1951-81, before Television arrived on a mass scale in India. This book has been eight years in the making, mainly because it had to be written outside work hours, which have grown longer with each passing year. It is time now to acknowledge the institutions and people who have made the writing of tIlis book a pleasure by providing a special environment in which the author got a chance to grow - as a student of cinema. The first of these enablers are the staff of the National Humanities Center, North Carolina, USA, who invited and hosted me for a 9-month period in 1997-98, thanks to a post-doctoral fellowship grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.T he grant meant that I had 9 months in which to read, write and discuss the first draft of this book in a series of seminars with other fellows at the Center. For a journalist working with the Times of India newspaper in Bombay, that was a lot of time, and a really special opportunity. I am grateful also to the Times of India's management, who were generous enough to give me this 9-month leave of absence, and accept me back into the fold on my return. I wish also to thank professors Lydia Liu,Anton Kaes, and Robert Goldman for inviting me to teach a full course on Indian Cinema in the Fall 1999-2000 semester at the University of California, Berkeley.Teaching this course provided me a 'captive' and very bright young audience on which to test my book's hypotheses. I learnt a lot from them. The high point of my stay in Berkeley was the home of professors Larry & Cornelia Levine. As historian extraordinaire of American popular culture, Larry was really hard to please when it came to his subject area. The few times I managed to get his nod of approval, were especially gratifying. The staff of the South Asia Center at DC Berkeley was very helpful, as were the faculty at the university's department of South Asian Studies. Among them I especially benefited from discussions with professors Vasudha Dalmia and Bob Goldman. To all of them my sincere thanks. The Center is a great 'home' for visiting scholars. Returning home, special thanks are due to my colleagues Jerry Pinto and Hutokshi Doctor at the Sunday Times magazine, in the years when the book was just an idea buzzing in my head. They encouraged me as only fellow journalists can. Hutokshi went on, subsequently, to be this book's editor, and improved the manuscript in dozens of little ways. I also owe a special debt to Professor Sriram Tamrakar, mm columnist with the Nai Duniya newspaper in Indore, who encouraged this book's writing in many ways, including providing rare photographs and for stimulating discussions on the history and experience of Hindi cinema - .in the world of little India, the India of small towns like Indore, Hoshangabad, Itarsi, etc. Talking of close friends who adopted this book as their own project, almost, it is a pleasure to thank Laurie Patton & Shalom Goldman in Emory, Atlanta, Veronica Magar in Chapel Hill, Bina Agarwal, Medha & Vijay Lele in Plme, for some valuable, searching inputs on the various drafts this book has gone through, as well as Indra Munshi, Zarine & Darryl D'Monte in Bombay.A heart-felt thank you Dithhi Bhattacharya and Sanjeevini Badigar, who compiled the index.Thanks are also due to the book's deSigner, Indrani De Parker for the imaginative way in which she married picture and text on each page thereby making the book attractively readable. A very special word of thanks is also due to Vasanthi Raman and Smitu Kothari, members of the board of directors of Rainbow Publishers, who have taken a really keen, personal interest in the book and helped improve its form and content in dozens of ways ... My sisters Renu, Shobha, and my brother Sanjay have contributed to improving this book in more ways than they realize. Finally, Mariam my wife and our daughter Tara, have lived with this book and kept me focused through its numerous ups and downs. Without them, and without the stimulation, love and the hard questions thrown at its drafts over the years by Mariam, this book would not have been half as good as it is. So if it stands up to some intellectual scrutiny, I have to thank her, my soul mate for it. Its lin1itations and mistakes, however, are my own responsibility. Narendra Panjwani Mumbai, January 2006
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