HIT, HIT HURRAY

In-flight entertainment? Yes, all of a sudden in the mid-'90s, Indian pop culture was all global in look, feel, conception and theme, Bollywood took an outbound flight. And Bhangra was blaring on the world's public address systems

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The word 'entertainment' has a beguilingly harmless touch to it.

Just some fun and frolic on the side.

No deeper meaning. Indeed, what would be the point of being entertained, ask its guilt-free consumers, if you start assigning weighty associations to their act! But even a cursory scan of the 10 years beginning 1995 would disabuse you of that naïve notion.

Start with a piece of feelgood, sugary-pop confection called Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Smack bang in the middle of the 1990s, the Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol starrer arrives like a holdall mascot for almost all the impulses that decade gave rein to.

India had just globalised—the iron curtains had parted, the world had come crashing in.

In look, mood, colour and, most of all, in its geographical setting, Aditya Chopra's directorial debut tracks that perfectly. If self-conscious scripting accounts for the theme of two NRI kids romancing in world capitals—the very picture of American teen cool—that globalising strain is discernible just about everywhere else.

‘Chhaiyya Chhaiyya’, from Dil Se (1998), did it in another way. First it integrated multiple strands within India.