The Dream Factory

14 days till departure

I arrived in Tel Aviv, from Kibbutz Yotvata, in January 2000. At that time, Dil To Pagal Hai was a hit. The title track was being played liberally on local radio. I was fascinated by the music. There was something so real, so authentic about it. I bought the CD and listened to it over and over and over. It made me dream of India, before I had ever been there.

Some time later, I had the opportunity to see the movie on DVD. It starred Shah Rukh Khan, the biggest star in Bollywood. It was long – three hours. And it took a very long time to make it’s point. But the point (which I soon discovered is an interesting matter of itself in Hindi cinema) was poignant: don’t accept an arranged marriage if there’s someone else you really love. If you can, marry for love. And you can. Dreams can come true.

This is a culturally sensitive point in India, where arranged marriages by far and wide are the norm. In most cases, this does not mean coerced marriages. When youngsters get to marriageable age (and this varies with social level and educational background) parents of the same caste and ethnic group confer with each other and set up introductions between prospective couples. In the end, most couples themselves choose their match. Clearly, this is not an easy decision, especially at a young age, and to be sure, implicit social pressure can be considered a form of coercion.

When you marry in India, entire extended families are tied by kinship. That’s why it is so important to know what kind of family you are marrying into. It also speaks directly to the point of what kind of life each can provide the other, especially in the case of the groom providing for the bride. Honor is involved. Marriage can be a vehicle for social climbing. More often than not, there is also the issue of a dowry. The bride mostly goes and lives with her husband’s family. Indian mothers can be notoriously jealous of their sons, and this understandably leads to friction between them and their daughters-in-law. There is a strong personage of the evil mother-in-law. Indeed, this is one of the abiding stereotypes of Indian cinema and soap operas.

Women can find themselves in a very vulnerable position, since it is frighteningly possible that they can be denied rights and opportunities at the hands of their husbands. Marriage is a one-way contract for them, since there is still an enormous taboo against divorce. And all the while there is pressure from both sides to make a good match in a timely fashion. India is a very tradition-bound and conservative society. As in other such countries, this characteristic is more acutely palpable among the poor rural masses. And while many sectors of the population have embraced forms of Western modernity, often the aspects adopted are selective, and the tradition-bound thinking is right below the surface.

And yet, India is also a cosmopolitan and multi-faceted democracy. India has the largest movie industry in the world. And with such a varied population, for a movie to have mass appeal, it has to speak to multiple audiences, often simultaneously. In most cases this is done with universal archetypes. This is a bit of an indictment. Nevertheless silly romantic fools like me can look for and even find meaning within such content, since it is presented in a thoughtful and intelligent manner. Above all, movies are entertainment. There has to be drama, and music, laughter and tears. In short, they have to engage you and draw you in, whether you are the university intellectual, entrepreneur, computer programmer, office clerk, factory worker, soldier, rural businessman, or poor farmer. And to both entertain and sensitively relay a social message to which people would otherwise be instinctively resistant, is in essence, the genius of the Bollywood film. And yet, most movie-goers the world over are looking for light entertainment, and sure enough there is plenty of that in Hindi cinema. But there is also more for those who are looking.

Once you overcome the initial foreignness of the medium, Hindi cinema is wonderful entertainment that also shows you a window of how social change is taking place in the world’s largest democracy. And many of the lessons, while not articulated in a way in which we are accustomed, can help us ask questions about ourselves and our own societies.

For years I have had this cockamamie fantasy about acting and dancing in Hindi cinema. One might even expect that given that I have what in all likelihood amounts to Israel’s largest collection of Hindi cinema DVDs. When I see the colors and the costumes and hear that film music, I imagine myself in the scene, being part of all that magic. Except that I’m crazy enough to actually do it, and write a book about the experience to boot! Two weeks from today I arrive in Mumbai. I know where the extra recruiters hunt for their labor. And I’ve got my smattering of Hindi. And I’ve got some pretty good moves for a white boy, too.

If I’ve come away with one lesson from the Bollywood ethos, it is to follow your dreams, even if you have to face down all the obstacles and prejudices that the world hurls at you in the process. Here goes.