Emotion Pictures: Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self

294 Pages·2006·0.58 MB·English

by  Narendra Panjwani

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emotion pictures
Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self
Narendra Panjwani
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~ndra Panjwani
on pictures: Cinematic Journeys into the Indian Self
jition 2006
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For my parents Devi & Laxman Panjwani,
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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