Bollywood … the New Hollywood?

Raj Kapoor did it in the fifties, Indian films and his pairing with Nargis was a hit with Russian audiences. His blue eyes did the trick, and Awara and Shri 420 sold overseas, but did not actually invade the West.

In 1958, a certain section of audiences in the western countries got to know of a young filmmaker called Ismail Merchant who had teamed up with James Ivory to make some memorable cross- over films on Indian themes. These caught the imagination and fancy of the pallid western cultures, where most of the issues discussed in these films didn’t even exist!

But slowly the scene changed, and in the late 1990s, when the Subhash Ghai’s Taal became the first Indian movie to enter the top 20 in the box office in the US and in the Top Ten in UK.. The film, starring the Miss World Aishwarya Rai, and shot in the scenic hills of Himalayas, Chail, coupled with the high energy music industry scenario, grossed US 1.08 million within the first ten days of its release in the US alone.

History was rewritten and Indian films were no longer `foreign’ to western audiences. A whole number followed, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, a love story about an ethnic Indian woman, grossed over USD 7 million in three months in the UK, Kutch Kutch Hota Hai on enduring and endearing love collected about USD 6 million in a little over two months. The western markets had tasted blood . Even film markets in traditional countries like Japan went in for Indian films, specially South Indian languages, Tamil film "Muthu" grossed USD 3 million in Japan alone. About 1.2 million Japanese watched the film -- a story of a feudal lord -- in little over three months while another Tamil film, `Yajaman", collected similar amounts in Japan.