About Bollywood

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Bollywood -  A Way of Living

You might be wondering why I called the title as “Bollywood – the life” well it’s because it sure is life for millions and billions of people in India! First of all, what Bollywood is exactly? Bollywood is often used to refer to the entire Indian film cinema but it is only part of the Indian film industry. Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in the world, producing more than 1,000 movies a year, with ticket sales of 3.6 billion. Bollywood got its name from ‘Bombay’ also known as ‘Mumbai’ and from ‘Hollywood’. You can say that it is a portmanteau of these two names. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a real physical place.

But why I call Bollywood as life then? It is because 1000’s of people from all cities and villages across India come to Mumbai everyday with dreams in their eyes to become a Bollywood star. People of India are crazy about films, songs, actors and actresses (popularly known as Hero and Heroines in India). They just love their stars and want to copy every little thing what their stars do from hair styles to clothes, the way they talk, the way they laugh etc. Bollywood is the language of Hindi, Urdu and English. It is the thing that connects all parts and people of India speaking different languages and different cultures. The use of the words of Urdu poetry is quite common. Some old Bollywood films like Mughal-e-Azam are entirely in Urdu. But due to the increasing usage of English all over the world, there has been a growing usage of English in the Indian cinema.

In the late 1950, Bollywood launched its first film color, but most films continued to be black and white until the mid-sixties. At this time, musicals and romantic melodramas were prodigal price of the staple in the movies. The successful actors included Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor and actresses like Nargis, Meena Kumari, Nutan and Madhubala. In the late sixties and early 70, romantic movies and action movies starred actors like Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra. The mid-seventies, made the sweet romantic way to the sandy movies, violent about gangsters and bandits. Amitabh Bachchan, the star known for her roles in the “angry young man”, he mounted the crest of this trend with the actors as Mithun Chakraborty and Anil Kapoor, which lasted at the beginning of 90. The actresses from this era included Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan and Rekha.

There are numerous stars in Bollywood for whom acting happened to be just a matter of luck and they are superstars now. Take example of the today’s superstar Shah Rukh Khan, popularly known as SRK. He was a theater artist and his dream was only to work in TV serials. After initial struggle he got a small role in his first TV serial ‘Circus’ which was tremendously loved by the audience. Since then there’s no stopping to him and today he is the most loved actor of Indian cinema. Some of them found their way from rags to riches and still many stories continue to happen so.

People of India laugh Bollywood, cry Bollywood, eat Bollywood and do Bollywood. They just want to be like Bollywood. Hence I say Bollywood- the life!