A Poetic Blunder

A couple days ago, my father and I were watching Nazar TV. The description of Nazar TV according to Time Warner Cable is "South Asian Entertainment". However, I find it to be an excuse for some vindictive Indian somewhere to play very old song clips from B-rate Bollywood movies. Some, are quite humorous just because they are so outlandishly ridiculous. For example, in the 90's Amitabh Bachan made a movie called Daweil Hum which consisted of him dressing up like John Travolta and acting out a more melodramatic and silly version of Saturday Night Fever. My brothers found the clip to be boring, they much prefer to watch cartoons. My father on the other hand thought it was completely stupid and was upset that this was being called Indian "culture". I find that, I have to agree with him. However, near the end of the broadcast, they played some classic clips and my father seemed to enjoy these quite a bit. So naturally I asked him why. He told me that when he was a boy, he use to listen to these songs and memorize them to try to learn vocabulary. But it wasn't just regular old words. It was the depth to the words and the way they were used and put together to mean something much more important. He translated some lines for me since my Hindi is a little rusty and than commented, almost nostalgically, that it wasn't a song, but a poem.

And that got me thinking.

What if, the reason Bollywood made all these silly movies wasn't just to make money? But to connect with the general population. To make a statement through poetry. To try to connect everyday feelings of love and loss and poverty and make something more of the world? What if their intentions were pure? What if they had just made a poetic blunder? Maybe all those Bollywood producers had not yet had their vision? Not yet fully realized what they wanted to portray?

But I guess that's reading more into something than there really is. That's just me being nostalgic. Still I can't help but a hope that a little part of the people making all these movies realizes that eventually there won't be much culture to degrade. That maybe they'll stop before it gets worse. This isn't meant as an insult to Indian movies. I've seen my fair share of very very good Indian movies and very very bad Indian movies.I just hope that in thirty or forty years, there's something to be said for Indian movies.

And not just poetic blunders...