Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (2 page)

For my hero
,

Vipul,

and our two stars
,

Saahir and Siddharth

As in the production of a feature film, there are scores of people who comprise the opening and closing credits of this particular project. Over the numerous years it took for this book to evolve from my dissertation (as I had warned my informants in Bombay, the only thing that perhaps takes longer than making a Hindi film is writing an academic book), I have incurred a number of intellectual, social, and personal debts. It has been a long journey and I have many people to thank for their support, friendship, feedback, advice, wisdom, and insight. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Ken Wissoker of Duke University Press for the tremendous patience and understanding with which he awaited the completion of this manuscript. I thank him for not giving up on me and for his unceasing enthusiasm and excitement about my project over the last decade. My initial fieldwork in Bombay was supported by the American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellowship. Subsequent fieldwork in Bombay has been supported by research and travel funds made available by Haverford College, Connecticut College, and New York University. The Humanities Initiative at New York University awarded a Grant-in-Aid to support the production of the book and I thank Terry Harrison and Jane Tylus for their guidance in the application process.

Arjun Appadurai and the late Carol Breckenridge played a key role in transforming my personal passion for Hindi cinema into an academic pursuit. My interactions with Arjun and Carol, when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, where I also briefly worked as an editorial assistant at the journal
Public Culture
, opened up new horizons of possibility and avenues of inquiry regarding what constituted appropriate topics of study. If it were not for their interest and encouragement of my interest in Hindi cinema, I may have never embarked on this particular scholarly journey. Lila Abu-Lughod and Barry Dornfeld were instrumental in my decision to focus on producers and the production of Hindi cinema rather than audiences and their consumption practices, at a time when that was the prevailing trend. I thank Lila for her rightful skepticism of my initially proposed research about film audiences in Bombay, which made me reorient my project entirely, and for Barry’s insights on how to carry out fieldwork among film producers. Other individuals— from whom I learned a great deal and who were critical in shaping my intellectual outlook and the analytical framework I brought to my research—include Faye Ginsburg, Webb Keane, David Ludden, Owen Lynch, and Toby Miller. Even if not readily transparent, their insights about media, language, history, political economy, cultural policy, social relations, and everyday life have made their way into this book.

There are many people in Bombay I would like to thank for making my research and this book possible. For providing me with my initial home when I first began my fieldwork, I thank my great-uncle and great-aunt, Lakshmanrao and DurgaPappu; I thank Sandra and SaroshIrani, and Darshana, Ashwini, Alok, and PriyankaGupta for their hospitality during the later phases of my fieldwork. I am especially grateful to Avantika and Jinx Akerkar, TanujaChandra, Anupama Chopra, RanjanGarg, Sandra and SaroshIrani, Ajay and the late KiranKhanna, Sri PrakashMenon, Sylvia and ThelmaPedder, and SheenaSippy for introducing me to key people within the Hindi film industry, which set the ball rolling for my research. I thank Somi Roy for inviting me to participate in the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival (2009) and Myna Mukherjee for inviting me to be a part of the Engendered I-View Film Festival (2010) programming, which provided me with further opportunities to observe and interact with Hindi filmmakers in New York City.

With respect to members of the Hindi film industry, I would like to thank the following people for their assistance, generosity, hospitality, and kindness—for taking me into their homes and work spaces, for their patience and willingness to put up with my endless questioning, and for the enthusiasm with which they received my research project: TaranAdarsh, RaufAhmad, JavedAkhtar, the late MukulAnand, ShabanaAzmi, AmitabhBachchan, Raj Kumar Bajaj, RajjatBarjatya, RithaBhaduri, VashuBhagnani, AshishBhatnagar, Mahesh Bhatt, MukeshBhatt, PoojaBhatt, the late SachinBhaumick, KamnaChandra, Aditya Chopra, the late B. R. Chopra, Pamela Chopra, Vicky Chopra, Yash Chopra, LalaDamani, MadhuriDixit, Nester D’Souza, SanjayDutt, SubhashGhai, MeghnaGhai-Puri, RaviGupta, SutanuGupta, the late NazirHusain, Honey Irani, Rumi Jaffery, Ayesha Jhulka, Dinar Kadam, Rashesh Kanakia, the late Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Mansoor Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Shaukat Khan, Amit Khanna, Punkej Kharabanda, Manisha Koirala, Sameer Malhotra, John Matthew Mathan, R. Mohan, the late Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Firoz Nadiadwala, Komal Nahta, Pritish Nandy, Govind Nihalani, Omar Qureishi, Dinesh Raheja, Rajesh Roshan, Rakesh Roshan, Gyan Sahay, Bharat Shah, Sameer Sharma, Mustaq Sheikh, Manmohan Shetty, Rakesh Shreshta, Shravan Shroff, the late G. P. Sippy, Ramesh Sippy, Rohan Sippy, Sunhil Sippy, Bhawana Somaya, Chitra Subramaniam, Dalip Tahil, and Viveck Vaswani.

Certain individuals, with whom I have remained in contact for over a decade, deserve special mention and my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for their friendship and the innumerable ways they helped with my research, my stays in Bombay, and the writing of this book: VikramBhatt for the openness, trust, and warmth with which he included me in his filmmaking life; Anupama Chopra for being an incredible source of anecdotes, advice, and contacts; SanjayJha for his enthusiasm and tireless efforts to facilitate my research; AnjumRajabali for the most scintillating discussions about filmmaking, filled with wit and insight; Sharmishta Roy for making me feel a part of her family and opening my eyes to the visual, aesthetic, and material dimensions of filmmaking; and ShyamShroff for his ready willingness to help me in any way big or small, including most recently helping me obtain film stills and providing images of multiplexes for the book. This book would have been a pale shadow of itself if it were not for my interaction, conversations, and friendship with these individuals.

Moving from the process of research to the task of crafting and writing, I have benefited tremendously from several friends and colleagues, near and far. Brian Larkin, Sri Rupa Roy, and Christine Walley deserve special thanks as they have been enthusiastic and supportive of this project since its inception as a dissertation, and I have always been able to rely on them for close and insightful readings of its various iterations. Richard Allen, JanakiBakhle, Ira Bhaskar, DipeshChakrabarty, Lawrence Cohen, Maris Gillette, LalithaGopalan, Preminda Jacob, KajriJain, Carla Jones, PriyaJoshi, SmitaLahiri, Mark Liechty, RochonaMajumdar, PurnimaMankekar, RanjaniMazumdar, William Mazzarella, Gary McDonogh, ShaliniShankar, Aradhana Sharma, Debra Spitulnik, and Patricia Spyer have all been important interlocutors from whom it has been a pleasure to learn, and with whom to share and discuss my work, formally at conferences and seminars as well as through informal conversations and exchanges. Members of the two writing groups, which have engaged the most closely with this book—Ayala Fader, Lotti Silber, and Karen Strassler; Sonia Das, Haidy Geismar, Anne Rademacher, and Noelle Stout—not only provided valuable feedback on drafts of chapters, which helped me hone my arguments and clarify my focus, but also created a terrific sense of community and solidarity that helped alleviate the isolation that accompanies intensive writing.

The Department of Anthropology at New York University offers a very collegial and nurturing environment for junior faculty. For someone juggling the demands of teaching, scholarship, and parenting young children, I am very grateful for the way the department protects its junior members from undue administrative work. Through the process of writing this book, my colleagues Bruce Grant, Aisha Khan, David Ludden (in History), Emily Martin, Sally Merry, Fred Myers, RaynaRapp, and Susan Rogers have been wonderfully supportive and generous in numerous ways—from loaning me books to offering suggestions for further reading, discussing the classics of anthropology, answering my queries about theory, or hearing me think out loud. Two colleagues have had the most sustained involvement with this manuscript: Bambi Schieffelin and Faye Ginsburg, whose office doors and welcoming natures were always open to my requests for advice and feedback. For all queries related to language, I could rely on Bambi to hear me out, offer necessary suggestions, and point me in the right direction. Faye has been an invaluable mentor. From reading drafts of chapters to alleviating some of my teaching burdens to boosting my morale, her guidance, support, good wishes, and immense positive energy have been indispensable in enabling me to finish this book.

I would also like to thank the following individuals, who offered very concrete and specific forms of assistance in the writing of this book: the three anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press, who provided close readings, detailed feedback, and invaluable suggestions about the manuscript; AliyaCurmally and PriyadarshiniShankar, who helped transcribe the bulk of my interviews; PankajRishi Kumar, who took wonderful photographs of key single-screen theaters in Bombay on my request; Neepa Majumdar, who so graciously shared relevant chapters of her inpress manuscript; AnuragBhargava, for introducing me to the Red Herring reports and always answering my varied questions about finance, stock markets, and corporate dealings; Debraj Ray, for his advice about exchange rates, ppp income, and how to determine the number of cinema halls in India; Omkar Goswami and Vivek Srivastava, for calculating the Purchasing Power Parity rate between the U.S. dollar and the Indian rupee; Jehil Thakkar of kpmg, for sending me the 2009 ficci/kpmg Report; Kulmeet Makkar of the Film and Television Producers Guild of India, for his help in obtaining film stills; Rohit Sobti and Poonam Surjani of Yash Raj Films, Rajjat Barjatya and P. S. Ramanathan of Rajshri Productions, and Apoorva Mehta and Garima Vohra of Dharma Productions, for their prompt response to my request for film stills; Jennie Tichenor, for her constant administrative support and skillful navigation of nyu bureaucracy, which made it possible for me to employ a research assistant in 2009 while working on the manuscript; Ishita Srivastava, my fabulous research assistant for whom no task was impossible—from trying to track down obscure references to indexing numerous issues of
Film Information
; David Privler and Kathleen Keane, for helping with the crucial tasks of printing, scanning, and mailing the manuscript; Leigh Barnwell at Duke, for her assistance with all of the details in preparing the final, formatted version of the manuscript; and Elaine Kozma for her assistance in preparing the final bibliography.

My entire family—parents, grandparents, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws—has been a bedrock of support and encouragement throughout the long process of writing this book. My earliest memories of the cinema, in fact my early socialization as an avid Hindi film-viewer, are a result of my childhood spent with my maternal grandparents, Subbarao and Venkatalakshmi Pappu, who were keen film-goers. While they witnessed the completion of my dissertation, I wish they were still here to witness its transformation into a book. I regard its publication as a sign of their blessings.

My most sustained period of writing coincided with the birth of my second son, Siddharth, and I could not have finished this book without the nurturing and affectionate childcare provided by Meghan Harrington and NasimYaqoob. My older son, Saahir, who has possessed a maturity well beyond his years from the time he could talk, nourishes my soul with the sweetness and purity of his love. His concern for my progress, and selfless emotional investment in the book’s completion, are humbling reminders of the world beyond my desk and computer. Siddharth, too young to understand why his Amma spent seven days a week at the office, but old enough to protest it, made coming home from long days of writing joyous with his hugs, smiles, and laughter. Since mere words cannot describe my husband, VipulAgrawal’s indispensable role in this endeavor, and there are not enough words in Telugu, Hindi, and English combined to convey my love and appreciation for him, I take recourse to our other common language, that of Hindi cinema—
baadal bijli, chandan
paani, jaisa apna pyaar, lena hoga janam humein kayi kayi baar; itna madhir,
itna madhur, tera mera pyaar, lena hoga janam humein kayi kayi baar. . . .