A few weeks on a crowded Astana bus during rush-hour, a woman in her mid-to-late 40s began engaging me in conversation. It was one of those days when I wasn't feeling particularly loquacious, but her friendly demeanor and chattiness – and the fact that the bus was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic – eventually broke through my normally misanthropic exterior. The conversation took a generally predictable turn when she asked where I was from, and I had to respond with “I’m an American, but I was born in India…”
That sentence rarely remains finished. “Oh, I knew you must be Indian! I love Indian movies…” In the ten minutes that followed, during which we barely made it past two stops, she had gone through the list of her favorite movies – usual suspects “Gospodin 420” (Shree 420), “Seeta i Geeta” (Seeta aur Geeta), and the untranslateable “Disco Dancer” featured prominently. She then proceeded to extoll the virtues of Raj Kapoor, a renowned Bollywood actor often compared to Charlie Chaplain whose popularity in the former USSR apparently has not waned. When Kapoor visited Moscow with his co-star (and lover) Nargis after the success of their movie “Awaara,” they were overwhelmed by fans shouting the lyrics of songs from the movie, despite not understanding the words.
Raj Kapoor and Nargis in "Awaara" (translation: The Vagabond/Tramp). |
The Soviet love affair with Bollywood began after World War II in the post-Indian Independence period, but grew exponentially in the post-Stalinist era after the first Indian film festival was held in the USSR in 1954. Hollywood was banned, of course, but Bollywood was produced in India, a "non-aligned" country in the Cold War emerging from the shackles of colonialism and led by a Prime Minister with Socialist sympathies. True, importing Hindi movies satisfied the concerns of Soviet officials because these movies rarely ventured into dangerous political territory -- in fact, many early Bollywood films embraced socialist realism -- but that alone cannot explain the popularity of such films among the viewing public. The brief and academically non-rigorous search I did on this topic revealed a number of largely unsatisfying reasons for the popularity of these movies: the "escapism" provided by the melodrama, the fairytale-like plots, and the sympathetic portrayals of the working class were a few recurring themes. I found one recent academic work that tackles the topic head-on -- Indian Films in Soviet Cinemas: The Culture of Movie-going after Stalin by Sudha Rajagopalan -- and I am eager to read this book to see if it will provide a more comprehensive perspective.
However, Rajagopalan's book ends at 1991, which means it does not look at the last 20 years and the role that these movies -- and more contemporary Bollywood movies -- continue to play for both the generation of people who grew up in the Soviet Union and a new generation of moviegoers who have grown up exclusively in the post-Soviet era. Are these movies merely another relic of Soviet nostalgia, or will Kazakhstanis and Russians fifty years from now talk about Shah Rukh Khan they way their parents and grandparents talk about Raj Kapoor?
I, myself, am not a huge fan of Indian movies the way that many foreigners I meet probably wish I would be. In fact, I prefer the classic films of the 1950s and 60s to their flashier contemporary cousins in the same way I love the films produced in the Golden Age of Hollywood. So, when the woman on the bus, whose name I never sought to find out, started singing one of my favorite Raj Kapoor tunes (Dost Dost Na Raha from "Sangam"), I couldn't help but join along. Although she didn't understand the lyrics of the song, the one word she understood was "dost" -- a word that happens to be shared both in Hindi and Kazakh ("dos" or "дос"), meaning "friend." How fitting, I thought.
Bonus: The following song from "Shree 420" (or "Gospodin 420") was a huge hit in the Soviet Union, perhaps because the chorus of the song refers to Raj Kapoor's character wearing "a red Russian hat" (along with English pants and Japanese shoes... but, of course, his heart is Indian).