अम्मा! पकोड़ा!

Amma! Pakoda!

Mummy! Fried fritters! 

These are the iconic words of a rotund boy on a bus who craves the fried fritters that another rider is eating. The film is Bombay to Goa (1972), and the salivating boy, his fritter-munching fellow-traveller and many other colourful characters are (you guessed it) on a bus going from Bombay to Goa.  The boy is oddly dressed for a Bollywood flick: he wears a sacred thread across his bare chest, which marks him as a Brahmin; he has three lines of ash smeared across his forehead, which marks him as coming from a devout Shiva-worshipping family; and he wears a white sarong and sports a peculiar Hindi accent, both of which mark him out as a South Indian -- often generically called a 'Madrasi' after the South Indian city of Madras (now Chennai).  There's another thing that marks him as a South Indian -- he's a buffoon.
The character of the Madrasi buffoon is quite popular in Bollywood cinema.  The buffoon in the film Bombay to Goa is quite a caricature, but considering that this bus-trip film is brimming over with ethnic stereotypes, his buffoonery is only marginally more noticeable than the antics of the film's other characters.

The film best known for it's Madrasi Buffoon is Padosan (1968).  This film features the memorable character of Master Pillai, a teacher of South Indian classical music and dance (played by Mahmood, who seems to be the master of South Indian buffoonery). Master Pillai is in love with his student, Bindu (played by Saira Banu), who is a sassy, sophisticated (North Indian) city girl.  Bhola, a North Indian country hick of a neighbour, is also in love with Bindu.  Wanting to get back at Bhola for his audacity, Bindu uses Master Pillai as her battering ram.  The two men face-off in a song that has now become an all-time Bollywood classic ik chatur naar [The clever woman] (rendered to perfection by Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar).  In the end, Bhola is victorious in this battle of songs, leaving Bindu infuriated and Master Pillai humiliated.
It's easy to dismiss the character of the Madrasi Buffoon as merely a gross ethnic stereotype, which it is.  But there is also a certain poignancy that goes with this stock character.  He is, by necessity or by contrivance, an outcast in the North Indian milieu that is the Bollywood film.  He (it's usually a man) is swarthy, ungainly or crude, and his spoken Hindi (not his native tongue) leaves much to be desired.  He is clearly a foil for the urbane, refined, and fair-skinned hero (the bias against dark skin in Indian cinema may have to be another posting).  His naiveté is disarming, his crude attempts at romance are endearing, and the discerning eye may catch glimpses of a deeper, more complex personality under the veneer of buffoonery; but he never truly gets past his Otherness.
Over the past two decades South Indians in North Indian-dominated Bollywood have responded in a very striking, yet subtle way to this ethnic caricature in Bollywood cinema; not by fighting it, but by getting the caricature right.  That is, these caricatures are not what North Indians imagine South Indians to be; instead, they are aspects of South Indian life and culture that we, as South Indians, enjoy mocking ourselves.  The earliest form of this I could dig up was this scene by Sridevi (a true Madrasi herself) in the film Roop ki Rani Choron ka Raja (1993), in which she embodies all the melodrama and histrionics that is so characteristic of classic South Indian cinema.  Another star of this 'meta' genre is Channel [V]'s Lola Kutty.  A Malayalee off-screen as well as on, Lola is the unlikely host of a Bollywood talk show.  Decked out in fine South Indian silks, sporting the characteristic garland of jasmine in her hair, and armed with a swarthy, mustachioed sidekick in a sarong, Lola accosts her Bollywood guests with clever banter in Hindi and English that is unabashedly dripping with a Malayalee accent.  In my view, the recent film Quick Gun Murugun (2009) is a masterful sendup in this genre: as a kitschy sambhar-Western, it spoofs South Indian Cinema, but also shows Bollywood how it's really done.

Tadka Dal
When confronted with the curly-haired, knee-baring, sarong-wearing, coconut-eating, swarthy folk of southern India, the North Indian is left baffled.  Unable to reconcile the fact that the 'Madrasi' too is a fellow-Indian, the North Indian settles on the notion that he must be a joke.

Source
Volumes may be written on the great North Indian/South Indian divide.  There are clear cultural differences across the diverse peoples that inhabit the Indian subcontinent, but none is rendered so stark as that between the North and the South.  Some trace the mutual distrust and shock at the other's ways as far back as the 25th century BCE when the Aryan peoples of the steppes began their migration to the Subcontinent, which was already inhabited by Dravidian groups.  I have heard it said that in the great Indian epic Ramayana, the kingdom of monkey-men that prince Ram comes upon on his way south to Lanka was in fact his encounter with South Indians!  The tension between North and South is perhaps as racial as it is cultural, but in India these conversations (and caricatures) are rarely framed in terms of race.  
The political structures of the sub-continent and the shifting centres of power over the past 300 years or more have also affected the North/South dynamic: many of the vast dynasties of medieval India were centered in the North Indian plains; the British too focused much of their early attentions on East and North India; perhaps consequently,  (re)constructions of Indian histories in the colonial era were weighted towards the North; and the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan also shifted much of national and international political attention to North India.  

गब्बर से कह देना कि रामगढ़वालों ने पागल कुत्तों के सामने रोटी डालना बंद कर दिया है...

Gabbar se keh dena ki Ramgadh-vaalon ne paagal kutton ke saamne roti daalna band kar diya hai...


Tell Gabbar that the people of Ramgadh have stopped throwing scraps to mad dogs...


These were the loaded words of Thakur Baldev Singh in the cult classic Sholay ("Flames"; 1975).  He is a former cop and landowner [thakur/zamindar] of the village of Ramgadh, which is currently being raided and terrorized by the psychopathic bandit [daku] Gabbar Singh.  The same bandit who had years ago gunned down the Thakur's entire family and also hacked off his arms.  This irreconcilable enmity between the noble landlord and the evil bandit, and the triumph of the former over the latter is one of the core relationships in this film. The relationship between landlords and bandits in general is also a cornerstone of many classic films and these characters have also led storied lives throughout the history of Indian cinema. 
The film Sholay, made in the style of a Spaghetti  Western, is of course the gold standard when it comes to movies about landlords and bandits and has given us some of the most memorable characters and much-quoted lines from Bollywood.  But it's interesting to note that it's one of the only movies I can think of where the bandit is unabashedly and irredeemably evil.  Gabbar Singh is a maniacal, capricious villain who has no back-story of childhood oppression to justify his current state of affairs.   In this famous scene from the film, for instance, Gabbar plays a game of Russian Roulette with three of his minions who have failed to carry his orders through. He's a mad meanie, and that's about it. It's also one of the few movies that has a good landlord. Indian movie-goers prefer their zamindars and thakurs nasty and hard-boiled.
 One of the oldest movies to feature a bandit as a lead character is Hunterwali ("The Lady with the Whip"; 1935) where Australian-born Mary Evans (better known as Fearless Nadia) plays a dethroned Princess Madhuri who moonlights as a hot-pants-wearing, whip-wielding masked bandit. Alas, it's really hard to find these really old prints, but the DVD stores in Old Delhi are a good place to look.  Mother India (1957) is another movie with a bandit that comes to mind. This Oscar-nominated film  features Birju (played by Sunil Dutt) as a young man, embittered by the exploitation meted out to his community of landless farmers by the wily village moneylender.  He eventually takes to banditry, which leads to the classic climax of this much-lauded film. Take this poignant scene, for instance, where Birju confronts the exploitative moneylender, refusing to pay the exorbitant interest of 3/4 of their harvest.  The moneylender hands Birju the village accounts as proof of his supposed debt, but neither Birju nor anyone else in the village is literate. They can make little sense of these accounts, let alone establishing their solvency.  Mother India is also one of those films where both bandit and landed gentry are vile, with innocent rural folk caught in the fray.
Many bandit movies were made in the late 1970s and through the 1980s.  While some were set in the scrubby badlands of central India, many of these bandits and landlords were transplanted to urban settings with the advent of gangster movies. Here o mafia dons, good cops and bad cops, wielding automatic weapons and cigars replaced the horse-riding highwaymen and imperious landlords. Deewar ("The Wall"; 1975) and Nastik ("Athiest", 1983) are two older gangster films that come to mind. After almost a decade of feel-good movies in the 1990s, Satya ("The Truth"; 1998) brought the gangster flick back with a stark and blood-curdling bang. Company (2002) is another masterful film of this genre, as is Maqbool (2003), which is based on McBeth.  One movie that stands out in its portrayal of a bandit is Bandit Queen (1994), which recounts in chilling detail the true story of the village woman turned Daku, Phoolan Devi. 

Bollywood cinema is full of the other classic character: the evil landlord.  These curly-mustachioed, rifle-wielding men show up in betel juice-stained muslin tunics or in riding breeches with knee-high leather boots.  They are cruel men, hungry for power and money, who economically exploit the farmers who labour on their lands and sexually exploit village women with impunity. Madhumati (1958) has a meanie (played by the Bollywood super-villain, Pran) who fits this description to a T, and Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam ("Master, Mistress and Servant"; 1962) features a drunk thakur often found at high-end brothels.  The 1974 film Ankur ("The Seedling") and the 1985 film Mirch Masala ("Chili and Spice") give us a land-owner and a tax-collector, and focus on the sexual "perks" these landed folk took for granted. The more recent, Oscar-nominated Lagaan ("Land-Tax"; 2001) pits the capricious and cruel Captain Russel, a cog in the wheels of British Empire, against the resilient and ingenious village-folk under his jurisdiction.  Both movies are brilliant, though quite different in their production and scale. 
All in all, Bollywood owes a deep debt to banditry and the landed gentry. And while Bollywood doesn't come out with as many of these movies as they used to, the genre thrives in Bhojpuri Cinema. 


Tadka Dal
Exploitation of rural folk turns them into bandits; landlords are nasty or noble just because.  But beware the recreational bandit...he ain't got no moral core to appeal to. 


Source
Much of the lore surrounding bandits and landlords has its roots in the era of the British Raj in India.  Many groups of rural folk were dubbed "criminal castes" and "criminal tribes", and were thought by the British to be endemically criminal, prone to violence and thuggery.  This era also saw highwaymen gaining an edge thanks to English-made rifles and easy access booty in the form of goods and passenger trains.  These folks gave many common words to the English language. 'Thug', 'loot', and 'dacoit' are just a few of these. 
The British also instituted the supremely exploitative zamindari system in India. Under this land-tenure system British-appointed landlords collected debilitating rents from their farmers on behalf of the British, but bore none of the traditional responsibilities that used to previously go with their status (like rent forgiveness and food-aid during droughts).  Added to this was the British policy of replacing food crops, which could sustain farmers, with cash-crops like indigo and cotton that left farmers with nothing if the crop failed. 


Thanks to Laura Wagner for suggesting this topic.

माना अपनी जेब से फ़क़ीर हैं, फिर भी यारों दिल से हम अमीर हैं!

Maana apni jeb se faqeer hain, phir bhi yaaron dil ke hum ameer hain!

Sure, my pockets are empty, but friends, my heart wants not!


So sings Raj (Raj Kapoor) in the film Anari ("The Simpleton", 1959). Like many films from the 1950s, quite a few of them featuring Raj Kapoor, this one too pitches the iconic little guy with the big heart against the greedy and devious world of corporations, corrupt middlemen and bourgeois snobbery. These movies have clearly socialist themes where traditional social and religious hierarchies are subverted in their measure of morality and ethics and age-old stereotypes of class and caste are upturned. Oddly enough, these same cinematic acts of subversion in the 1950s turned into classic Bollywood tropes just a decade later.
The poor here are cast as being uniformly naive and with the purest of intentions. If they are found to be involved in something unsavory, you can be sure that they have fallen to such depths out of desperation and the machinations of the rich and powerful. The rich in these movies are all almost always devious, malicious and greedy, with the exception of one or two characters who redeem their kind by attempting to bridge the yawing social divide between the main protagonists. Predictably, many are rich girl-poor boy romances where the besotted pair's idyllic dreams are thwarted by the realities of a merciless and bigoted world.
As I mentioned before, these films often starred Raj Kapoor as the little guy and many of them were produced and directed by him as well. Films like Awaara ("The Vagabond", 1951) and Shree 420 ("Mr. Thief", 1955) became international cult classics and continue to be watched enthusiastically not only in India but in the former Soviet Union and in much of the Middle East. Aside from the Raj Kapoor blockbusters, there were other big-budget productions like Naya Daur ("The New Era", 1957) which has strong themes of development and the power of the working class (the song Saathi Haath Badhaana--"Lend a helping hand, friend"--frames this theme perfectly). More poignant movies like Do Bigha Zamin ("Two Plots of Land", 1953) and Oscar nominated Mother India (1957) also presented tales of social and economic inequity.
Interestingly enough, most of these movies never portray the state and its tentacles in a negative light. Here, the state and its laws are always there to help the poor man out and are firmly shown to be on the side of the downtrodden. It's the capitalists, industrialists and the bourgeois gliterati who are the worms in the idyllic social apple conjured on the silver screen. The film Shree 420, for instance, features the eternally popular song "Mera joota hai japaani" where the hero, Raju (Raj Kapoor) sings, "My shoes are Japanese, my trousers are English, the red hat on my head is Russian, but still my heart is Indian" all the while trotting around in a fashion after Charlie Chaplin. This movie closes with the hero and the heroine (Nargis) walking into the sunrise and towards a socialist co-operative housing development!

Tadka Dal
Money corrupts, while poverty has a purifying effect on the soul. (Not so subtle subtext: Trust in the socialist state.)

Source
Made in the wake of Indian independence these movies reflect the socialist values of those who spearheaded the independence movement, thus combing strong strains of both Nehruvian state socialism and the Gandhian emphasis on the power of the unlettered Indian masses. Social and economic egalitarianism were important aspects of the Indian constitution and was clearly what Indian intellectuals hoped would be an essential characteristic of the fledgling nation. The artists who were the creative force behind these movies were of this ilk. This trend of presenting the classes as morally and ethically dichotomous ended around the early 1990s at a time when a change in administration and government policy opened the gates of the Indian marketplace to foreign investment and ushered the Indian citizen into a newly globalizing world. The glammed-up movies of the 1990s brought to focus the glut of products and the sheen of upward-mobility to which a larger segment of India's primarily poor population now aspired. These movies featured the lives of the fabulously wealthy who, in spite of the trials and tribulations that come with such wealth, led ethical and moral lives. The film Maine Pyar Kiya ("I Have Loved",1989) was perhaps one of the last that framed the rich-poor divide in terms of good and evil. In contrast, the 1994 mega-hit Hum Aapke Hain Kaun...! ("Who Am I to You!") has no villains, just a love story between a guy and a gal from two jaw-droppingly rich families. They encounter a few bumps on the way thanks to avoidable misunderstandings, but all in all it's a wild romp through upper-class wardrobes and bourgeois morality.

यह भोग भी एक तपस्य है

Yeh bhog bhi ek tapasya hai
Tum tyaag ke maare kya jano?
Apmaan racheta ka hoga
Rachana ko agar thukraaoge

This glut, too is a kind of penance
But you, so wracked by sacrifice, wouldn't know it.
For wouldn't it be an insult to the creator,
To reject all of creation?


These words of unusual wisdom were sung by Chitralekha, a courtesan in the movie of the same name (1964). The setting is dramatic: Chitralekha has been distracting Beejgupt, a minor vassal of the Gupta empire. A great ascetic of the kingdom has arrived at Chitralekha's mansion to goad her away from Beejgupt...to make her see that her life of decadent, languorous sin is worthless in the larger scheme of things. Though she may seem to enjoy all that life has to offer, moksha--or the freedom from the cycle of birth and death--will elude her. To this, Chitralekha sings to the ascetic what is perhaps the most striking of courtesan songs, turning the entire premise of at least three major schools of Hindu philosophy on their heads.

This general theme comes in two primary flavours: ascetics attempting (usually in vain) to reform courtesans, and courtesans attempting (usually successfully) to seduce ascetics. Unfortunately, the latter theme is rarely found in the morally rarefied world of Bollywood. Where virtuous heroes find themselves seduced, the seductresses are always vampish and the men inevitably rue their dalliance. In general, however, courtesans and minxes in the movies have always maintained a healthy irreverence for preachy, pious men. Consider the song "Jao re jogi tum jao re" (Move on, ascetic) from the film "Amrapali" (1966) portrayed by the beautiful Vyjayanti Mala, who plays the title courtesan, Amrapali.
Depending on the period in which the movie is set, the courtesan may be replaced by a generally seductive siren, and the ascetic by a self-righteous and pious man. The song "Main ka karoon Ram, mujhe buddha mil gaya" (Oh god! What do I do! I've got me an old man!) from the film "Sangam" (1964) is a very unusual twist on this theme. Here, the vivacious Radha (again, played by Vyjayanti Mala) seduces her own stuffy husband (played by Raj Kapoor) with a classy cabaret.

Tadka Dal
Hermits and ascetics: Resistance is futile.

Source
Hindu mythology has a long tradition of celestial maidens seducing ill-tempered ascetics. It is told that these ascetics would sit in penance, threatening to upset the cosmic balance with their quest for Truth and for power over nature's hidden secrets. When the gods themselves failed to break their penance, other-worldly bombshells would be sent down to seduce these mighty, yet wholly unprepared men. They never failed. The most famous instance of such a seduction was that of the sage Vishvamitra by the celestial dancer Menaka.

कांकरी मोहे मरी, गगरिया फोड़ डारी

kankari mohey maari, gagariya phod daari

He cast a pebble at me, and broke my pitcher.

So sang the innocently seductive Anarkali (Madhubala) in the classic Bollywood epic Mughal-e-Azam (1960). This may seem like an awfully odd thing to say, and not remotely sexy. But there are layers of meaning embedded in this line that need some unravelling. To begin with, this song is one with a Radha-Krishna theme. Radha and Krishna are the most popular couple of Hindu lore. Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the god Vishnu, is portrayed as a flute-playing cheeky cowherd who often flirts and torments the cowgirls. Chief among these cow girls is Radha, who is depicted as being jealous of other cowgirls, madly in love with Krishna, and deeply desirous of his attentions. One of the many ways in which Krishna torments the cowgirls is by casting pebbles at the water-filled pitchers they bring up from the river (think wet-shirt contest). So when Radha protests that Krishna has grabbed her hand, and broken her pitcher, the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
But that's just layer one. Beneath this Radha-Krishna motif is the fundamental imagery (common to many cultures) that identifies wombs with pots and pitchers. The shattering of a pot speaks of sexual intercourse, and the loss of virginity in particular. And so, there is hardly anything innocent about the court dancer singing coyly of broken pitchers to prince Salim.
There are other similar metaphors for sex one commonly encounters in the movies--and most of them equally evocative of sex as a battle, a tug of war. Losing items of clothing, jewelry, and especially nose-rings is one such sure-fire clue that there's been a roll in the hay. Women of easy virtue, courtesans and gypsies (no kidding) often happily sing provocative songs about dropping earrings (Mera Saaya, 1966) and letting scarves slip (Pakeezah, 1972). [Watch Pakeezah at http://moovieshoovie.com]

Tadka Dal
Women of virtue, guard your pots (or at least pretend)! The rest, celebrate your lost noserings.

Source
Pots and wombs go back a long way. The Mahabharata gives us an intriguing character called Gandhari, a woman from Gandhar (you'll know it as Qandahar, capital of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan), who married Dhritarashtra the blind chief of the Kaurava clan. After several years of being unable to bear a child, Gandhari finds she is pregnant, only to finally give birth to a clay pot. She throws the pot to the ground in anger and frustration. The pot shatters and each of the one hundred shards turns into a son and one lone shard a daughter.
As for nose-rings, there is a custom common in some quarters of north India where girls, on reaching puberty, get their nose pierced. They then take this nose-ring off on the night that their marriage is consummated (also presumably losing their virginity at the same time).

Thanks to Laura Wagner for suggesting this topic.

दिल जो न कह सका, वही राज़-ऐ-दिल कहने की रात आई!

Dil jo na keh saka vohee raz-e dil kehne ki raat aayi

This is the night to lay bare the secrets of my heart!

These defiant words are uttered by Pradeep Kumar at Meena Kumari's wedding in the movie Bheegee Raat (1965). She squirms in anguish as her ex belts out this ballad reminding her of their shared past. I call this genre of Bollywood songs: "Wow! I can't believe you didn't marry me, b**ch!" It's fairly common, and this is the basic set-up. The hero and the heroine fall in love early in the movie. The heroine at this point sings a sexy, sensual song for the lusty hero. But there are trials and tribulations and the heroine ends up marrying another man (usually due to circumstances beyond her control). The wronged hero then decides to show up at his erstwhile girlfriend's wedding and torments her with his own self-pitying version of that same sexy song she'd sung for him. The heroine recognizes the song, is reminded of her crimes of passion and her past desires, and is in equal measure terrified and heart-broken at her circumstances. The man who is actually marrying the heroine usually either looks on in triumph at the hero's helplessness, or suddenly begins to connect the dots. This is a fantastic genre of songs for the simple reason that it packs so much drama into those five minutes of plaintive singing.
Meena Kumari seems to be the queen of this genre. Here's another classic example from the film Gazal (1964). In the first version of the song Naaz Ara Begum (played by Meena Kumari) renders an incredibly sensual ghazal: Naghma-o-sher ki saughat kise pesh karoon? Yeh chalakte ue jazbaat kise pesh karoon? (To whom shall I present this gift of song and verse? To whom shall I present these overflowing passions?). Later in the film, her beau Ejaz Ahmed Ejaz (played by Sunil Dutt) renders a heart-wrenching spin on the same ghazal: rang aur noor ki baaraat kise pesh karoon? Yeh muraadon ki haseen raat kise pesh karoon? (To whom shall I present this procession of light and colour? To whom shall I present this beautiful night of desires?)। The sturm und drang is palpable.
Interestingly, the tables are turned in another Meena Kumari movie, Dil Apna aur Preet Parai (1960). Here Karuna (Meena Kumari's character) sings this sweet, seemingly innocent song which leaves the just-married hero (played by Raj Kumar) decidedly uncomfortable.

Tadka Dal
Don't invite your ex-lover to your wedding. Don't have overly-needy possesive ex-lovers. And preferably, don't have ex-lovers at all.

Source

Bollywood, like Disney, believes in love at first sight that results in happily-ever-afters. And any opportunity to mess this equation up is an opportunity for protracted twists in a plot and therefore great drama. Disney gives us poisoned spindles and evil step-mothers; Bollywood gives us tormented jilted lovers with a natural talent for angst.

परदेसियों से न अँखिया मिलाना

Pardesiyon se na ankhiya milaana

Don't go falling in love with outsiders!


This is the title of a famous song from the film Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965) and showcases a much repeated piece of Bollywood advice: Don't go falling in love with foreigners. In this film, Raja (Shashi Kapoor) is a poor, humble and innocent boatman in Kashmir who falls in love with the smart, city-slicker Rita (Nanda). Predictably, the city-girl is not about to move into some Kashmiri village and be a wife to the boatman, and so Raja's hopes are dashed. In an odd case of reel-time pre-emption, Raja sings this song "Pardesiyon se na akhiyaan milaana; Pardesiyon ko hai ik din jaana" (Don't go falling in love with outsiders, for they have to leave some day) and then promptly disregards his own words of wisdom.

This is, however, a true Bollywood film. And so no broken-hearted heroes allowed. While providing the viewer (and the protagonist) with a reasonable bit of advice, this movie of course perpetuates this legendary urban-rural pairing. So Rita eventually comes around and recognizes the innocent beauty of Raja's heart. Other complications follow, but in the end, the lovers are united. One can only surmise that the loving couple may have had quite a tough time getting used to each other's ways...but hey, it's the movies!

Tadka Dal

Don't mess with people who won't be able to spend forever and after with you (or be prepared to move to alien locales yourself).

The Source

Bollywood is rife with tales of city boys whisking off their tribal lady loves from hill-sides and waterfalls, or uptown girls turning into rural belles to be with their bucolic beaux. This modern myth is quite prevalent in some quarters of Indian society. The ancient tale of Shakuntala and Dushyanta is probably the earliest examples of a city-slicker paired with a woman of the woods.This romance is found in the Mahabharata, but is most famous as the plot of Kalidaasa's ancient Sanskrit play Abhijnaanashakuntalam. In this tale, the beautiful Shakuntala (daughter of sage Vishvamitra and the demigoddess Menaka) falls in love with King Dushyanta. Shakuntala, who lives an idyllic life in a forest with her girlfriends and some friendly deer, hooks up with King Dushyanta who is lost during a hunting trip. The King promises to make her his queen. Trials and tribulations ensue, but the story ends with a somewhat-happy turn of events.