Old Bombay's Bollywood

A Blog begun years ago as a stroll on the Funny Side of Serious Street, highlighting India's problems. Revived by adding memories of old Bombay, including excerpts from Dreams of One Country.

Old Bombay’s Bollywood

In my childhood and early youth we lived on Dadar Main Road, a street with three film studios. There were other studios like Famous at Mahalaxmi; but our Dadar street was the home of Bollywood those days. Later as an adult, by coincidence, we lived in Juhu surrounded by the homes of 'stars.’

On Dadar Main Road crowds gathered at the gates of the studios – Ranjit, Shree Sound and Ranjit Movietone - to mob the big name stars (but not the hardly known producers, financiers and directors) arriving in cars. Other denizens of the film world - among them stardom hopefuls, technicians and ‘extras’ who crowded the chorus lines of the innumerable song-and-dance numbers or ‘fight’ and crowd scenes so essential in every formula film - walked in through the gates. Even as a kid I had no interest in Hindi movies. I enjoyed Tarzans with Johnny Weissmuller, pirate movies with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Errol Flynn adventures, Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis or Bud Abbot-Lou Costello comedies etc. My favourite Hollywood actress was Ava Gardner - whom I had every intention of romancing and marrying when I grew up. (I believed Ava had the most beautiful face in the world…till I met my wife-to-be in college. And, I was certain, here at last was someone who - with gentleness added on - could feature by feature give Ava a run for her money.) Those days Aurora at King’s Circle was my favourite theatre. My friend Atma and I would reach hours ahead of the show to line up between railings for the 5-anna or lowest stall tickets. Then the ‘ruffian’ boys would arrive and they would walk on our shoulders and even heads to go ahead of us in the queue. At times we wouldn’t get tickets though we went so early. We solved that problem by befriending a theatre usher called Bhaskar - who got us tickets, if we were walked-over.

When we moved to a Juhu flat we were surrounded by the homes of top stars (some of whom still get top billing today), as well as a whole host of Bollywood hopefuls, almost all of them poorly educated, most of them arriving from north India with dreams of making it big in the world of Hindi films. Most of them – both men and women - drifted away painfully into the nefarious underworld of Bollywood. Some became hangers-on or ‘chamchas’ of Bollywood personalities by specializing in saying: ‘Wah-wah! Kya kamaal kiya aapne!’ Some succeeded, further digging Bollywood into the hole of producing movies that often blissfully ignore reality. The curious thing about the ‘hopefuls’ was that if they got a chance to break into Bollywood they could no longer greet old neighbours. One such ‘hopeful’ was a next door neighbour. He was married to the sister of a top male star. As soon as he got the chance to assist a producer he stopped wishing us. And he would look right through us, as though his mind was preoccupied with ‘genius’ ideas for a Hindi film.

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Tail Lights:

1. India Illuminiscopic:
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2. Why never give up?
If your objective is good and fair, there's no point ever in giving up. Think. Plan. Keep trying, using fresh ideas or modifications. Look at history and remember how often success after success led to the greatest defeat. And, yes, how failure after failure has led to the greatest success! So never give up!

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