Dancing to Bollywood's tune

Once upon a time, the hero and the heroine would run and dance around trees, crooning to glory.

Once upon a time, the cops would arrive at the scene of action after the hero had done all the action: duffing up flagitious plug-uglies.

Once upon a time, it was the moll who wore "revealing" clothes and the heroine suffered a violation of dignity.

Now the trollop has become de trop, as the heroine, basking in the glow of paparazzi-flash, has taken to multi-tasking, with way-out cool.

Ditto for the hero, who is now stand-up comedian, baddie, angry young man, goody-goody ...

Once upon a time, action scenes meant the hero chasing the ornery villain in a Cadillac or Impala - the vehicle neatly segueing into a back projection. Now digital technology makes bikers and car drivers adopt Matrix-style techniques.

Once upon a time, a song would feature scenic hillocks with buffed up bullocks and dolled up damsels.

Now film-makers fan out, among listening glaciers, picture-postcard pistes and exotic beaches of foreign shores, hoping that their movies will pan out.

Yes, they did try out foreign spots before, with movies such as An Evening in Paris, Love in Tokyo, Night in London ... However, such song picturisations were not that frequent.

Perhaps the only places left for song picturisations are the North Pole and the South Pole. Don't worry, some enterprising movie director will make the hero play an Amundsen or a Captain Scott, cavorting with the heroine in remote Antarctica maybe? Or somewhere north of Greenland? Ah, the Bollywood bug. In India, it bites people from all walks of life, even VIPs.

Soft corner

The public school or convent educated may wax eloquent on Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman or Orlando Bloom, but the fact remains that ultimately somewhere in a corner of their minds, there is a soft corner (perhaps) for the Hindi movie. They may extol the virtues of Hollywood to the skies, but will end up seeing a Shahrukh Khan starrer ultimately.

Talking of Shahrukh Khan, news trickled in the not-too-distant past that Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of India's Congress president Sonia Gandhi, spent a whole day watching superstar Shahrukh Khan shoot at Film City in India's financial capital-cum-Bollywood bastion Mumbai. She flew to Mumbai in a private plane to watch the Khan shoot for a film. Later, with hubby Robert in tow, she had dinner with Khan at his Bandra residence in the city.

What is Gandhi observing? Witness what Agatha Christie has to say, "Women are such wonderful observers - they see everything. They notice the little detail that escapes the mere man." Is she looking for electoral value? "This is so stupid," says Khan, when asked whether he was planning a stint in politics.

While Gandhi may stick to home and hearth, there are other celebrities who think they are not hidebound by vocation or convention: they want to indulge in the offbeat, their eyes lambent with celluloid visions.

Politicians are not lagging behind too: India's Minister for Railways, Laloo Prasad Yadav, had a cameo role in a film named after him, while Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat played a stellar role in a film called Amu. Cricketers too have had their fingers in the celluloid pie: Sunil Gavaskar, Ajay Jadeja, Sandeep Patil ...

Even the West was not behind: philosopher Bertrand Russell had a brief role in Aman (Peace). That was the year dot.

One of the conditions that adman Suhel Seth apparently laid down before film-maker Mahesh Bhatt before he agreed to act in Rog (Disease) was that there would be no dancing around trees.

Dancing around trees? Ahem. Once upon a time ...