The Pub

Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and the Case for Bollywood

Julia Stanton

In seventh grade, I bought a pair of twenty-dollar pleather plants (two sizes too big) and proceeded to wear them to my semi-formal middle school awards banquet. I can’t recall what possessed me to buy those pants or to wear them in public, but memories of that ridiculous addition to my middle school wardrobe suddenly surfaced when I recently re-watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, a Bollywood movie where all the actors and actresses at one point don pleather and head for a local dance club. In middle school, my pleather purchase made me stick out like a hillbilly at a country club, but on a Bollywood set, I could have assimilated into the scene without a second glance.
My best friend in high school, Christa, first introduced me to the wonders of Bollywood. She grew up watching Bollywood with her mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from India back in the 80s. Christa initially hesitated to invite me to watch Bollywood movies with her family. “You might not like it,” she said. “It’s really different from American movies.” I convinced her to invite me to their next Bollywood viewing, and she introduced me to Kabhi Khushi. The plot of Kabhi Khushi follows Rahul Raichand, a wealthy high-caste Indian, who inadvertently falls in love with Anjali, a mischievous and outspoken lower-caste girl related to the Raichand’s nanny. Rahul’s father, however, is a staunch believer in traditional Indian values and refuses to associate with low-caste Indians. Moreover, he insists on arranging his son’s marriage, despite changes in modern Indian culture, and he even disowns Rahul when Rahul decides to marry Anjali. Finally, after years of separation, Rahul’s brother Rohan takes it upon himself to reunite the family.
In only a matter of hours, I fell in love with Bollywood. I was mesmerized as I watched hordes of women in colorful saris swirl gracefully across the screen to the rhythmic beat of a Hindi song. The artful choreography combined elements of both traditional Indian dance and popular Western dance. Not only did these dance numbers entertain, but the melodramatic acting, which struck me as ridiculous, was strangely satisfying. If a character responded angrily, a resounding roll of thunder followed their every sentence. If a character grew sad, their eyes immediately welled with tears—men included. When a couple wanted to express passionate love, they would slip into an imaginary “dream sequence” removed from real life, where the couple would proceed to sing a duet of unending love and devotion. I found that these raw and unambiguous emotions made me more attached to the characters and their ultimate fate. Halfway through the movie, I melted into a puddle of tissues and tears in the far corner of the couch, while Christa laughed unsympathetically at my poor attempts to defog my cloudy glasses so I could keep reading the subtitles.
As I’ve grown older, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham continues to charm me with its depth. Thematically, it holds much complexity, addressing highly controversial issues in Indian culture, such as its critique of the caste system—a recent trend in the Bollywood industry. In Kabhi Khushi, love transcends societal artificialities and even familial loyalty. Kabhi Khushi portrays a son acting against the will of his father and indicates that family elders have the obligation to forgive violations of tradition and to keep their family unified rather than blindly enforcing outdated rules. While America may be accustomed to these ideas of equality and individual freedom, such cultural statements are revolutionary for Indian society. Watching a foreign film like Kabhi Khushi allows American viewers to experience these issues from an entirely different perspective and to wrestle with the global implications of such differences in cultural values.
Now, despite the serious nature of some of the themes, Bollywood movies are humorous, especially to an American audience. In American culture, higher quality movies tend to create more lifelike illusions, but this is certainly not true of Bollywood. In fact, Bollywood usually offers an unrealistic portrayal of life, and most Americans who like Bollywood enjoy the hilarity of the unrealistic acting, the random dance numbers, the frequent costume changes (that may or may not make sense in the plot), the skewed depictions of Western culture (such as the popularity of pleather pants), and the corny romances. Indian audiences, however, expect and eagerly anticipate these aspects of Bollywood drama, and they would not favor a more realistic reworking of the genre.
Furthermore, unlike the genre divisions we see in Western culture, Indians want the package deal. They want to see comedy, romance, adventure, and social commentary all rolled into a musical production. This expansive treatment usually makes Bollywood movies quite lengthy: Kabhi Khushi, for example, lasts almost three and a half hours—definitely your money’s worth. Kabhi Khushi resoundingly meets all Bollywood expectations. It manages to incorporate aspects of every desired genre, while also featuring an all-star cast, an award-winning soundtrack, and some of the best choreography I have ever seen in a Bollywood film. In addition, the astoundingly beautiful cinematography captures all the energy and local color of Indian culture. I laughed; I cried. I experienced a tidal wave of emotions like I have never felt when watching an American movie.
Unfortunately these exaggerated elements of Bollywood, along with the industry’s play on the word Hollywood, may give Americans the impression that Bollywood movies are only a lower-quality knock off of Hollywood’s glitz and glam, but in truth, Bollywood has a glitz and glam that is all its own. In fact, the Bollywood industry typically produces twice as many films as the Hollywood industry and consistently surpasses Hollywood in terms of number of tickets sold worldwide. The global success of Bollywood has made an impact on American producers, and the American public is consequently experiencing a slowly growing exposure to traditional Bollywood elements in American films.
The recent resurgence of American-made musicals, for example, indicates Bollywood’s growing influence on Hollywood, and the wide-spread popularity of these musicals in America suggests that our nation’s populace is opening up to unique oddities treasured by Bollywood fans across the globe. Films such as High School Musical, Hairspray, and Mamma Mia all draw on the Bollywood tradition. Each of these movies includes melodramatic acting, a catchy soundtrack, and choreographed group dance numbers. Granted, Rogers and Hammerstein certainly experienced their share of success, and Broadway musicals have been made into movies in the past. But these newer musicals and Broadway remakes have a distinct vibrancy and overdramatic flair that echoes popular Bollywood.
In Mamma Mia, for example, during the musical number “Lay All Your Love on Me,” in which a young couple engages in a passionate duet, a horde of men magically appears on the beach and proceeds to perform a choreographed dance number while wearing flippers and snorkel masks. There was a time when this type of utter ridiculousness could only be found in Bollywood movies—no longer. Bollywood has infiltrated Hollywood, perhaps only on a small scale thus far, but if the popularity of such musicals persists, the Bollywood influence will become more noticeable as American audiences come to appreciate the aesthetic aspects of Bollywood filmmaking that American directors have neglected for so long.
Everyone should watch at least one typical Bollywood movie, such as Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. This type of movie helps American viewers come to an understanding of Indian culture and encourages them to consider issues of universal importance that are sometimes obscured by human tendencies toward ethnocentrism. Kabhi Khushi brings viewers back to the fundamental importance of love, family, and forgiveness, topics often disparaged by blockbuster American films that instead champion wealth, independence, and the pursuit of sexual pleasure. In light of Bollywood’s success, American directors now seem to be borrowing certain aspects of the Bollywood genre, taking American musicals in a direction that combines the more serious social critique with light-hearted enjoyment of life, which, I personally believe, will point the American film industry in a more positive direction. Most importantly, Bollywood serves a good helping of entertaining, laugh-out-loud fun. If you find amusement in the ridiculous nature of life and get a kick out of your melodramatic friends, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham will have you wishing that you could turn your life into a Bollywood musical—minus the pleather pants.