Long Live Hindi Cinema
In the 80’s this was how a regular Hindi film played itself out.
Hero has a family…mother, father, sister.
They live in Virpur, Shantinagar, Rampur etc.
They are under the omnipotent feudal lord.
They common villagers till the land, somehow scrape lunch and dinner and constantly have to protect their ‘izzat’, ‘jaan’ and ‘zameen’; that is self-respect, life and land, in that order. Self-respect is a tame word, in plain words they had to constantly be aware lest somebody owning allegiance to the feudal overlord rapes them.
Eventually they were raped. The Hero, till the rape, an innocent man with ideals, goes mad with rage. His father by now had also been bumped off, the cattle killed and the land confiscated.
The Hero, using all his skills of detection, finally manages to locate the culprit…the Villain of the piece is having a ball.
He is surrounded by girls on all sides who are dancing.
There is song, dance and wine all around.
And the Villain is in very august company…he is with the Police Commissioner.
This cliché was forgotten by me. I thought I had moved on. Assumed that times have changed. That these scenarios happen only in the Bandlands of UP and Bihar and now that I am in Mumbai, memory was no longer servile to itself.
But all that changed after the MNS supporters attacked north Indians. As the city was burning, well, at least, simmering, and there was fear all around, Raj Thackeray was seen chilling with the Police Commissioner, at his daughter’s wedding.
Long live Hindi cinema.
