Bollywood heads Up!!!

Recently I watched DeV D, a very different and unique movie in many ways. But something which I realized while watching it was not related only to that movie but with many of them which I have watched in the recent times. Apart from a very independent and nasty lead actress “Paro” in the movie who had an attitude which could put many men to shame, there was something else also which caught my attention and that was the North Indian connection. Till about 2 years back there were very few movies which will be made keeping the North India as the base, even if we get one or two sunny deol flicks made in the filmy north Indian villages complete with the “sarson ka khet” and traditional well, the story later on during the course of the movie will eventually shift to Mumbai where hero will come to either take revenge or to win his love interest back from her “Khadoos baap”. No one bothered about the details and north India was limited to a small village in Punjab where people will be shown speaking fluent Hindi which could put the scholars to shame. But it seems suddenly bollywood is waking up to North India, if we make a list of the movies released in last 1-2 years we may find that a lot of them have been based in the Northern part of India and in them the hero or the lead actor never shifts base to any other part of India. Rab ne bana di Jodi, Oye lucky oye, Dev D are a few examples of these kinds of movies. The lead actor in these movies is a North Indian guy whose name is not the only northy thing about him, his mannerism, his way of speaking; even his Hindi is also having the north Indian touch. These movies do not show the filmy north India but try to capture the spirit of North India. In Dev D, the characters are speaking Punjabi and are not speaking the metro Hindi, when shown residing in a Punjab village. Times are changing and instead of showing filmy “sarson de Khet” villages, the directors are more interested in showing the actual locales and that is why we are seeing a lot of Delhi and Punjab on screen which gives a very good feeling at least to me. This is because I am able to relate to the characters in the movie immediately and that is because I have spent 25 years of my life in North India. A lot of people, like me immediately relate to the characters if they are from a particular ethnic background be it Munna in Rangeela or Lucky of Oye lucky oye, hence if the hero is a north Indian character the people from Punjab, Delhi etc. relate to him immediately. Now the question which comes to mind is, why this sudden change in the film industry? Why has North India become a preferred destination for our bollywood?
When we try to analyze the business of Show business, we can safely say that it’s not only the love of art which drives it, it’s the love of money also and that is why it is known as show “business”. The southern part of India boasts of a very developed film industry which is sometimes having better resources at their expense then their big brother bollywood. Also, the Hindi speaking and understanding population is very less in this part of the country, hence this does not seem to be a good market for the Mumbai film industry. Local Mumbai market is already saturated with a lot of films turning out having their story based in Mumbai and also the charm of watching a movie because it features Mumbai locales is not that great, it’s a simple case of “been there done that” for most of the Mumbaikars. But, if the film is shot in the north India say Delhi or Amritsar then people of these cities still feel good to see their cities on screen because it’s a relatively new experience for them.That leaves us with the eastern part of the country, again the population speaking Hindi Is very less in the North eastern states and it is also very difficult to make a movie based in that area due to many logistics issues, hence the most safe market open right now is the northern India and that’s exactly why the director’s are choosing the northern destinations.. The movie can do average business in the whole country but it can do very good business in North India if it is based there hence it seems a sure shot winning formula right now to base the story and its characters in some north Indian city or village and make sure that the ethnicity of it is not lost during the course of story telling. Apart from the national market, there are hundreds of north Indians who are living as NRIs and will be so happy to see their “pind” on screen, this means additional overseas business for the movie. Considering all these factors it seems that bollywood is going in the right direction as of now and that is north.