It is difficult, however, for outside tourists to appreciate the hold and importance of cinema in Indian culture (and the economy). 2013 was the official hundredth anniversary of Indian cinema. From its first showing of the Lumiére Brothers’ world tour of cinema demonstrations in Bombay in 1896 to showing its first Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra in 1913, Indian cinema today is the biggest film industry in the world. Nowhere else does cinema impact on people’s lives to the extent it does in India. And Indian cinema is a growing popularity – from Hong Kong through to the Middle East and parts of Africa. It’s mainly Europe and the Americas that have not witnessed (yet, perhaps) the explosive growth within ‘mainstream’ cinema seen elsewhere.
My local cinema in Leeds, UK shows Indian films every Sunday and some multiplexes have a regular ‘Bollywood’ choice. The National Media Museum in Bradford, ten miles from Leeds, celebrated the anniversary of Indian cinema with a series of films (including Mother India, Silsila and Mughal-E-Azam) and a display of rare and some hand-painted Indian film posters. As I wandered around the exhibition I kept thinking of Helle whom I had interviewed back in Goa in 2013. It was an extraordinary discussion and, in a way, epitomised the surprises, knowledge, expertise and quirkiness of the small group of people from one small homestay in India that I interviewed.
Helle is from Denmark. She was in the room next to mine. I used to see her quite often sitting in her balcony overlooking the garden. I had never met her before although she had been coming to India for around eighteen years and often stayed at this same village homestay. Helle was an elderly woman and deeply suntanned. She described herself as a yoga teacher. We greeted each other frequently but never really chatted. She always seemed so busy running around, chain-smoking, grumbling about this and that, and always out somewhere. I eventually plucked up enough courage to get talking to her and asked her for an interview.
Helle talked very quickly in her particular form of ‘Danish English’. I didn’t always manage to understand everything she said and I was a little hesitant (and afraid) to stop her when she was in full flight. After explaining what I was after in the interview, Helle responded immediately, “You will not get a good love story (of India) from my side – far from it.”
She talks very passionately, waves her hands around a lot and gets angry quickly. “I am a film director. I make movies in Denmark and have made two documentaries here in India. Back in the 1990s I went to see a film (in India) because I am a film person. And these Indian films, everyone knows they are real bad – all that singing and dancing. So I went to the cinema. I thought, ‘What is this?’ It was really good – good mainstream cinema. I didn’t understand what they said but it was good. I then went three times to the cinema. Then I bought a film magazine. I completely went mad. This is completely fantastic. Films are god in this country – films and cricket. In the West we are so ignorant. We don’t have a clue. They must make a lot of good films here and crap too, just like we do.” Helle watched these first films while in Bombay trying to sort out her visa. “I know Bombay. I have spent more than two and half years in Bombay, not all at one go. Bombay is hard I can tell you. I have never, never liked Bombay. But the colour and music of the films, I love it but hate all the rest. The money, money aspect of things – I don’t like that but I love the films they do. The way they go about their films… They just do things that we don’t have the nerve to do. That’s why I have been to India so many times.”
I wanted to get Helle talking about her India films and, after a number of miserable failed attempts, got her back to the mid-nineties where she had just seen her first Indian films. “So after all my hassles getting the visa in Bombay, I came down to Goa. Then I went to Margao [Goa’s second city and not far from where Helle was staying]. I asked around, ‘Where can I find films?’ I was near the market and someone told me to go up to the second floor of this dirty, old building. Along the corridor was a small film shop in a dirty little cubby hole, a couple of metres wide. There was this man and after a while he realised I was serious and gave me ten films to watch. These are good he said and told me something about the directors. So I was here (in this homestay where the interview was taking place) for a couple of months just watching films. Went back and got some other films. That’s how it all started.
I then went back to Denmark. It must have been around 1997. I went to get some money, and research into the industry. It took me three years to get the money together, bits and pieces from all over. Also, it took me a long time to get into the film industry in Bombay. I kept going back and forward from Denmark and Bombay to watch, research and learn. I wanted to put this documentary together. I wanted to do it on my own just with a camera. These men wanted to do it with computers and all that stuff. They wouldn’t listen.” So what was this documentary that you made, I asked. “I met this man in Rajasthan. He just knows everybody. I have been with guides in Rajasthan and I’ve been there on my own. I shot the cow film myself. I didn’t search for money. I edited it myself. I met this cow and followed him around filming him and then he was joined by four other cows and I followed them around too. It was shown back in Denmark on television.”
And that was all I got from Helle about the ‘cow documentary’, which a year later I found out was released in 2006 and was called Nandini. It was filmed in Udaipur, Rajasthan and was an hour in length. On returning to England, I eventually found Helle’s website. “What do cows do all day?” reads the blurb. “Where do they go? What is it with Hinduism and cows? Nandini is about cows in the city. It follows one and then a few others from early morning to late evening… Nandini is a portrait of a society and culture which is different from ours and where humans and cows are living side by side… still.”
It’s a wonderful idea for a documentary and the sort of film that I would go to a cinema to watch or stay in to see on television. It sounds a very imaginative idea and also intriguing – how do you fill an hour on cows wandering round a city? “It’s full of music, colours and lively city life,” concludes the blurb. It must have been a good documentary as Helle mentioned that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) wanted to buy it but also to add English commentary. Typical Helle – she refused saying it would destroy the coherency of the film!
Nandini was released in 2006. What puzzled me when I listened to the interview some six months later was that Helle almost ignored telling me about her earlier Indian film called Larger Than Life, released in 2003. This was the film that took three years of fundraising back in Denmark which Helle referred to earlier in the discussion. Her website describes the film as “communicating what Indian cinema is all about… In Larger Than Life the director undertakes a journey into the spirit and soul of Indian cinema. Indian cinema is epic, grand scale, glamour, singing, dancing, drama. It’s fantasy and bone hard realism. It’s everything. The film goes to the core of India film culture, sensualism – how India film culture does not let anything go untold but without the sex scenes… The film is also… about letting one be inspired by what is different.” And that’s the sum total of what I can find out about Larger Than Life. I assume it was a studio production, made in Bombay and must have been shot in the early 2000s. Again, it sounds an exciting and innovative idea for a film targeted at a Western audience. I don’t know whether it ‘worked’, found a distributor or even was ever shown.
It was strange that Helle said so little about the film especially when you see the cast list. The two principal leads were Shah Rukh Khan and Manisha Koirala. Unfortunately, my ignorance of Indian cinema didn’t allow me to pick up on the names when Helle mentioned them and later in the interview told me a little more about Shah Rukh Khan. These are today mega powerful, rich, global stars especially Shah Rukh Khan, as their Wikipedia entries indicate. Back in England I had to do a number of double checks to make sure that I had the right people.
Shah Rukh Khan, also known simply as SRK, is today the second richest actor in the world with a net worth of around $600 million. Referr
ed to in the media as the ‘King of Bollywood’ or ‘King Khan’, he has appeared in over 80 Hindi films, won numerous national and international awards (including a Legion of Honour from France), is Chairman of the film production company Red Chillies Entertainment, has been honoured for his charitable work by UNESCO, been described by the Los Angeles Times as perhaps the world’s biggest movie star and, perhaps in his spare time, is co-owner of the Kolkata (Calcutta) Knight Riders – one of the cricket franchises in the Indian Cricket League (IPL). Phew! What the Wikipedia entry didn’t mention was that he had the lead role in Helle’s Larger Than Life film!
And what of Manisha Koirala? Born into a long-established political family from Nepal, Manisha is a well-known actress in both India and Nepal and has appeared in numerous Nepali, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. She has been awarded a number of national awards and is a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Described as a ‘social activist’ because of her work and activities promoting women’s rights, violence against women and trafficking of Nepali girls for prostitution, Manisha was announced as Woman of the Year by the magazine India Today in 2014.
Not a bad cast list for your first Indian film!
Towards the end of the interview, Helle said a little more about getting entry into Bollywood. “My way of India is through films,” she said. “Through the films I got to know the people and parts of the country. I can handle Mumbai. I can handle that fucking city. I know it very well. But working as a white woman is a problem. When you are inside, it’s not a problem anymore; it’s over but it can’t really, really ever be over because of the whole attitude to women. I got into the studio in Mumbai because of an Indian woman. She phoned up and made the introductions to the studio saying I was a Danish director who wanted to come over to the studios. We were stopped at the gate in the rickshaw. ‘Can’t go in.’ Once we were in it was a very nice place. Filming and people were busy in the courtyard. The Indian woman introduced me and then left. They sat there looking at me. ‘So you have come to put us down.’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘No, sir, I have not. Why on earth would I want to do that!’ I told them I was trying to do this documentary. Then I got angry when they said, ‘Yeh, yeh, yeh.’ I said, ‘Do you want me to leave?’ This man said, ‘Sit down over there.’ So I hung around there until they had finished. Then at eleven at night I said that I had to catch the train to Churchgate from Bandra back to Colaba where I was staying. ‘Can I come back tomorrow?’ Yes, they said. I went back the next day. Rukh Khan was there. He was the one I wanted. At first I couldn’t get close to him. He was always completely surrounded. Next day I went back. This man said, ‘Have you recovered from my outburst the other day?’ That was quite nice. I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘OK.’ Anyway, they were now shooting a scene where Shah Rukh Khan was involved. A double was involved in the scene. I watched and then suddenly, Khan was alone, sat in a chair. I went up to him and said, ‘Hello. My name is Helle Ryslinge.’ And that’s how I met him. It was around 1988.”
An amazing story and very typically Helle. Gatecrashing Bollywood studios, no bureaucracy or long drawn-out formalities, confronting the gendered and patronising attitudes and eventually getting her man! “With Bollywood, everything is money, money, money. Money is first and last. Except Shah Khan. He is a big, big star. He did all those things for me and never wanted money.”
The imperial game
The Indian film industry obviously has reflected and engaged with the wider societal context within which it is situated. Given the difficulties which we from the West have in understanding India, it is not surprising that we have difficulties in relating to its cinema. Helle seemed to grasp this point. Its mainstream ‘language’ – songs, dance, fights – are rooted in a different aesthetic tradition from ours. Its legitimacy and appeal is not based very deliberatively in claims of ‘authenticity’. Instead they have their own heroes and villains and it is this ‘unreality’ that allows the millions of viewers to enjoy, understand and relate the stories to their own very different situations or ‘realities’. Historically, a central preoccupation of Indian cinema has been the Indian state, both in pre- and post-independent cinema. As Sunera Thobani mentioned, “Popular Indian cinema has been a rich site for the study of the processes that help constitute particular forms of nationality, including common language, culture and identity.” In short, cinema has been a central pillar in the politics of ‘national belonging’ and of raising or omitting issues such as class, caste, gender and communal violence.
Given the mass basis of film audiences in India and this link between cinema and politics, it is surprising that greater attention is not given to Indian cinema in mainstream commentary in the West. One of the other great institutional spectacles of India – cricket – generates more column inches in the press but within a largely depoliticised context unless the discussion is focused on money and finances. Cricket like Indian cinema can be seen as an example of ‘affirmative action’ – largely based on ability that ignores caste, class and religion. Muslims can also be selected to play in the national team. And similar to Indian cinema, cricket has this connection to ‘identity politics’, to what it means to be an Indian. The wild jubilant celebrations throughout the country when India won the World Cup in April 1983 testified to the deep embeddedness of this sport within Indian political culture. Bollywood too recognised the distinctiveness of cricket and India. While there have been numerous films about cricket, it is the film Lagaan that has been the most commercially successful. Released in 2002 the film is set in India during the time of the British Raj and focusses on a group of poor villagers who beat their British rulers at cricket. As a number of commentators have pointed out, cricket in India only makes sense when situated within this wider historical and socio-political context.
I like cricket. I realise that it is an acquired taste for many, mysterious beyond comprehension to others and like watching paint dry for others, but I like cricket. I am a member of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club and, only a few days ago, was looking at a photograph exhibition at the Club of some of the famous overseas players who have played for Yorkshire. And there was a picture of a young, chubby-faced Sachin Tendulkar. As most people know Tendulkar was, before he retired, probably the most famous sportsman in the world and in India has a godlike presence. No other batsman in the world has scored so many Test Match centuries and runs. His twenty-four-year cricket career seemed to epitomise the resurging, confident new India. The boy from Mumbai made good and yet has always seemed to retain a modesty and decency that is in contrast to the brash, corrupt, money spinning, administratively incompetent regimes that direct cricket in India and internationally today.
Anyway, there I was in September 2015 looking at this photograph of Sachin Tendulkar in the display stand at Headingley, Yorkshire. It wasn’t that picture of him dressed in a Yorkshire Cricket Club cagoule, bat in one hand, a pint of beer in the other and wearing a flat cloth cap, but it should have been – a most unlikely alliance. “One of the greatest four and half months I have spent in my life,” was how Sachin described his summer of 1992 as Yorkshire’s first overseas player and first non-white player. I guess this quote can be interpreted in different ways, as Yorkshire would not have been the most hospitable club to play for, nor did West Yorkshire have too many similarities to Bombay but I’m sure he made these comments in a complimentary manner. Many Yorkshire members today can still recount stories of the ‘Little Master’s’ time with the club as a nineteen year old. He not only rewrote the history books of the cricket club but also was the first batsman to reach a thousand runs in that season. He changed Yorkshire cricket forever but he very nearly didn’t come. The Australian cricketer Craig McDermott was the Club’s first choice as their overseas player for that year but was injured just before the start of the season. Yorkshire was in South Africa playing a number of warm-up games when news of McDermott’s withdrawal was announced. Against the background of the referendum in South Africa to determine whether power-sharing would replace the
apartheid system, Yorkshire Committee members were in a panic – who was available at this late stage to be their first overseas player. The phone lines between Headingley, Leeds and South Africa must have been steaming. Eventually with the help of Solly Adam, a captain of a local Yorkshire Bradford League club and with wonderful contacts in Indian cricket, Tendulkar was identified and via conversations with Tendulkar’s mentor, the wonderful Sunil Gavaskar, was persuaded to sign on the dotted line. The young Tendulkar had become an honorary Tyke.
As mentioned earlier I have spent many hours sitting in the shade at the Oval Maidan in Bombay watching the various games of cricket going on around me. When Susan and I visited Calcutta, we made a pilgrimage to Eden Gardens (home incidentally of the Kolkata Knight Riders co-owned by Shah Rukh Khan, as mentioned above). I have childhood television memories of seeing a packed Eden Gardens with the cameras largely focussed on the hundreds of ‘spectators’ precariously perching from the branches of the surrounding trees, cheering their idols on. Built by the British in 1864 alongside Fort William and beside the wonderful Hooghly River, Eden Gardens is one of the iconic cricket grounds in world cricket. Unfortunately, there was no match in progress the day we visited so we missed the famous vociferous crowds. Most of the trees seemed to have disappeared, and the new floodlighting introduced in the 2011 stadium renovation for the Cricket World Cup appeared as giant engineering sculptures astride the stadium. The new roofing and seating arrangements has transformed the stadium, as well as reducing the numbers from around 100,000 to 60,000.
Banyan Tree Adventures Page 24