Imagine Bollywood Without Bhaiyyas & Biharis !
He was trembling, no shivering– no, no quivering– no,no shaking !..“Moss, I am leaving ! Moley toh, idhar bahut risk ho gaya hai!! Mete, ye shahar ab rehne kay liye theek nahin!!!”
I was wondering at his nervousness but wondered more about the gibberish he was mumbling..And then he expressed his real fears..He was earlier scared by Raj Thackeray’s tirade against North Indians especially UPites and Biharis..But now he was completely terrorized after Uddhav Thackeray joined in the turf war by blasting anything and everything pronounced with letter B ! Then it dawned upon me what he meant actually ( Boss, I am leaving! Boley toh, idhar bahut risk ho gaya hai!! Bete, ye shehar ab rehne kay liye theek nahin !!!) .
Though he was from Punjab he was paranoid..He had this nagging feeling that the virus could spread..I tried to allay his apprehensions but he was unmoved.
Like a subprime crisis in US Of A that had global ramifications he could sense the crisis snowballing ..To fortify his theory he mentioned about recent violence in Johannesburg where xenophobia claimed numerous lives especially of migrant Zimbabweians..(An Indian also had been burnt alive)..And then Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton are leaving no stone unturned in fuelling these anxious times..They are stooping low to appeal to the color of the skin in certain states to garner Democratic Presidential nomination ..Whole thing seems to be boiling over and down to fear of strangers, tribalism and birds-of-feather-flock- together mentality..
And he could see far reaching ramifications for the Hindi Film Industry..Though the industry itself is seeped into family bondings, clans and camps still the onslaught from political forces could prove dangerous to say the least..Anything involving letter B stands to lose its stature and stronghold.. Of course AB’s clan stands to lose the most..With B changed to M I don’t know what it would amount to..It would be better for him to revert to his original surname Srivastva!
Though he was a bit player in the big scheme, I could see a grain of truth in his rants..And it set me thinking how could Hindi Film Industry survive without these so called Bhaiyyas and Biharis(no offence meant) and other North Indians!..
Imagine Hindi Film Industry without their commanding presence in the field of acting.. Its not to demean the contribution of talent from other states…Bengalis, South Indians, Maharashtrians have contributed immensely to the evolution and evolvement of Hindi Films..But come to think of Hindi Film Industry without North Indians like Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar(all hailing from Punjab or Peshawar in pre-partition India) or Raj Kumar, Dharmendra, Jeetendra (Ravi Kapoor), Rajesh Khanna & Vinod Khanna..Then there is Shatrughan Sinha , Amitabh Bachchan and SRK..The list is long..Infact not a very long time ago it was a convention in the Hindi Film Industry that heroes will be Punjabis or North Indians and Heroines will be from Bengal or South..Now things are more cosmopolitan but young men from down South still face resistance in the Hindi filmdom..
Imagine Hindi film industry’s songs without these North Indians especially the Bhaiyyas from UP regardless of their religion.. I think in their absence the biggest loser will be the lyrics —the soul of emotions!..Most of the stalwart poets and lyricists hailed from UP– from Kaifi Azmi, Shakeel Badayuni, Jaan-Nisar Akhtar (Javed Akhtar’s father)..Raja Mehndi Ali Khan, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Anjaan(Sameer’s father), Gopal Das ‘Neeraj’, Gauhar Kanpuri , Shahryaar to Nida Fazli, to name the few.. Other stalwart North Indians being Sahir Ludhianvi, Anand Bakshi & Gulzar..And then the whole lineage of Ghalib, Zauk, Iqbal, Majaz, Josh Malihabadi. Akbar Allahabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri et al who are pillars of poetry and philosophical deliberations of existential riddles beautifully expressed in Urdu and Persian verses..And if Pant, Nirala, Dinkar and even Dr Bachchan is taken into account for their poetry in mellifluous pure Hindi, the list is pretty long including some present practioners of Hindi and Urdu verse who are good and contemporary to say the least.
The reason for most of the songwriters being from North India is plain and simple..Its a language thing..They have command over Hindi and Urdu language..That being their mother tongue…And in Hindi Films songs are meant to be in Hindi or Hindustani..I am not referring to present crop of songwriters who write in Hinglish or remixes in the name of fusion..Fusion! My foot?
And now coming to the parochial politics being unleashed by Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray..Imagine what would be the fate of such gems of songs that provided glimpses of the cultural,social, economic and epicurean mores of erstwhile Bombay..Sample these:
Aiey dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara hatke, zara bachke ye hai bombay meri jaan..
Yeh hai bambai nagariya tu dekh babua..soney chaandi ki nagriya tu dekh babua..
Bambai shehar haadson ka shehar hai, yahan roz-roz hota hai koi na koi haadsa..
Bambai se aaya mera dost, dost ko salaam karo..
Main bambai ka babu, naam mera mastaana..
And if you notice in most of these songs, its not anglicized Bombay but use of colloquial Bambai that brings out the nuances of the name..
So if Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray’s line of reasoning is extended to its logical conclusion no UPiites and Biharis will be allowed in Hindi Film Industry..I realized that uptill now he had not called Hindi Film Industry, Bollywood!..When I confronted him with this insight he nodded in affirmative that yes for him Bollywood was taboo( remember anything to do with alphabet B)..When I told him to relax and not become so uptight he relented and stated : Henceforth If these UPiites and Biharis want to enter Bollywood they will have to come via Bhatinda (literally—as Punjab is not on their radar yet! Small mercies).
John Lennon wrote way back in 1971 “ Imagine there’s no countries / it isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill and die for / No religion too / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace..Imagine”..
And a parody started forming in my mind as i started humming : Imagine Bollywood without our UP and Bihari brethren!
Immediately I was cut short..One of Thackeray’s loyalist retorted ( I don’t know which Thackeray he represented): Yes it can be imagined..Bollywood without them can be imagined because Bollywood’s overhaul is overdue.. In near future it is going to be Mauliwood ! ..His pronouncement hit me with a force of ironsmith’s hammer..For a moment I was speechless..And then a ray of light illuminated my secular, nationalist cobwebs..And for once I think I am going to be in agreement with their nomenclature though not the reasoning..You may ask why?
You see Mauliwood sounds appropriate for a place where everything is mauled especially the ideas, stories, creativity and content ! Imagine…!
Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Nida Fazli, Raj Kapoor, Sahir Ludhianvi, Shahryaar, SRK
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Your intentions are in right place, but could you please avoid ‘Bhaiyya’ word? Do you know that this terms has been coined as a derogatory term for people hailing from UP?
However, nice article!
You can’t write an honest article on this topic without being fearless and you keep defending yourself every second line.
And I don’t agree with the comment above .The word “Bhaiyya” is not used here with the intention of pointing out anyone rather in the context of recent events . So the use of the word is validated.
Like an article on “African-Americans and oppression of the Blacks” will be incomplete without a reference to the derogatory terms used against them.
and this article carrying ‘Sarkar’ ad. was tht part of agreement to let it publish????
@mitul – have you heard of Google adsense???
take it easy boss……..no offense was meant…..it only seemed ironic……..
G adsense!! sorry ….now i know…
Imagine if all the Jews left Hollywood … YIKES !
But we could do without Judd Apatow and gang …
that was a good read. god know how wud hav raj thackeray reacted wen he read it.
FYI – Thackeray family hails from Madhya pradesh and not maharashtra ..