26 July - 1 August 2001
Issue No.544
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 26 July - 1 August 2001 Issue No.544 |
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Plain talk
I was first introduced to Indian arts in the late 1940s in London. I had the opportunity to watch two young Indian artists who later became international stars, Ram Gopal and Ren Shauker. The exquisite dance movements of Ram Gopal took the Londoners, and myself, by storm. I had never before seen such hand and foot movement or eye language as demonstrated by Gopal. As for Revi Shauker, the way I remember him is sitting on the floor with his guitar in front of him, producing heavenly music. We, the audience, were enchanted.
The memory of those two artists has lived with me. When I later visited India and met Mulk Ray Anand, I had the opportunity to learn more about the noble art of classical Indian dance. Mulk had a dance studio where his wife, herself a classical dancer, held classes for the young. I had the pleasure of watching some of those classes.
Many years later I was introduced to yet another Indian artist. It was during one of the rounds of the Cairo International Film Festival that I met Amitabh Bachchan, the leading Indian film star. I was greatly impressed by his cultural background, his erudition and his suave bearing. This didn't come as a surprise, though. His father, Dr Bachchan, was the first to translate Shakespeare into Hindi verse. He dedicated his translation of Hamlet to his son Amitabh. Young people, mostly women, queued up for miles just to shake hands with him and ask for an autograph.
I was reminded of all this when I recently received a copy of Bhawana Somaaya's newly published book Amitabh Bachchan, the Legend. Somaaya is a renowned journalist with an impressive career. Having worked on a number of film magazines, she launched her own English language publication in 1989, and remains its editor.
The blurb on the book gives an apt summary of Amitabh: "Gifted with a tall, lanky frame and baritone voice, his histrionic talent and virtue of perseverance complemented the rest -- taking him to heights he dared to dream. He went on to become not only Indian cinema's biggest phenomenon, but also the actor of the millennium in a BBC Internet poll."
I do not intend this column to be a review of the book, there might be time for this later. What this column purports to be, instead, is an enquiry into the reasons behind the way Indian art, both classical and modern, has managed to become engrained in mainstream Western Culture. The same experience also applies to the African influence on Western music and dance. Revi Shauker, we know, influenced the music of the Beatles, and classical Indian dancing has inspired many performances of modern Western dance.
Recently, however, the Indian film industry seems to have been taking a Western turn itself. In an interesting article recently published in the Sunday Times, Stephen Armstrong writes about what he terms Bollywood's trek into the Western cultural mainstream. Now I frankly have no idea how the word Bollywood has come to refer to an Indian Hollywood, but nevertheless, I was greatly impressed by what I learnt. Indian films are so much in vogue in Europe that even Andrew Lloyd Webber is currently working with Meera Syal on a musical based on "Bollywood." The latest Indian hit in Europe is the film Lagaan, co-produced by no less than Sony and with a half British and half Indian cast. It is already one of the top 10 films in the UK this summer even though, as Armstrong says, "it's showing on a mere 30 screens worldwide." In fact, there are an impressive number of 800 films produced in India every year. Watch out Hollywood.
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