Holly-Bolly ke bahane

Watching the closing credit title of a Hollywood movie makes me appreciate their dedication to the art. All people who put in their effort seem to get the due credit; so one is not surprised to see the credit for the "Teenager at the disco" or "The fifth waiter" or the "lady at street corner". Many of the credit titles are very funny and many very artistic. On the contrast the Bollywood¹ flicks seem to concentrate on the opening credit and by the time the movie reaches finale, by which time half of the janata² already gallops for the exit gates, the director himself seem to loose his interest in his movie (so typical of David Dhawan). What you get at the end of the movie is just a replay of a happy-go-lucky song from the movie with the credits running insipidly along side acknowleding the efforts put in by the film financer, friendly-neighbourhood banker and the superstar who did that 2-second obliging sequence. You can't even expect the decency from the producers to express their gratitude for the numerous technicians who put in their effort including those stuntmen who are at far greater risk doing stunts here compared to their Hollywood counterparts, who apart from the insurance factor get the advantage of all the safety-precautions technology can provide while performing a stunt.

To me this is a display of the typical Indian mindset, first: we embark on a work but we do not finish it with the same vigour, we even go the extent of losing interest by the end. Second: we don't give a damn about people who helped us in our work, all our glory is due to us, we tend to forget those on whose shoulders we stand. Thirdly: only our life is important and other's a thing to waste. Isn't this ethos visible in all walks of Indian life? We tell our illetrate chowkidaar³ to change our broken fuse fearing we would get an electrical shock if we did it on our own, we tell our 8 year old girl-servent to babysit and carry our baby all day long, we savor all the delicacies on the festivities with our well-fed neighbours forgetting the safai-wala who cleaned your house to sparkles for the occassion. This may sound melodramatic but we just need to peep inside our own proverbial girehbaan.

1 The common term for the Indian Hindi film industry 2 Hindi for public 3 Hindi for watchman 4 Urdu for collar