Aaja Nachle is a movie that understands these scripts brilliantly. It is a story of an Indian dancer, who returns to her small town. She seeks to recreate the legend of Laila-Majnu as a contemporary play. The Laila-Majnu of the play merge with the fantasies and romances of a small town. The developers are planning a large mall and therefore the theatre has to come down. The play captures small town fantasies, doubts, failures and the need to dream again and again. Small towns contain large dreams and little neighbourhoods enact big fantasies.

All Madhuri has for her musical are some out of shape enthusiasts. She teaches them the power of aerobics. Aerobics is not just the American response to Yoga, it is an attempt to defreeze the Indian body, which, at the most, is capable of a few gyrations it calls ‘bhangra’, at marriages and birthdays. The movie is virtually asking us to recover the body, renounce middle-age fat, old age, debility, and the sloth and pulp of the middle class. Dance is a therapy to a new self and the dance offered is a democratic space accessible to all classes.

The focus is not just on the cinematic events, but on Madhuri’s return as well. In a cinematic sense, Amitabh Bachchan achieved the first step in Baghban and later went on to demonstrate that being 60 does not call for the imagination of withered spirituality, but is a moment for renewed physicality and sexuality.

But Amitabh as a perennial star is still a gendered performance. He underlines possibilities available to the retired man, as professional manager, doctor or banker. Bollywood movies are harsh to actresses beyond a certain age. They are condemned to playing mothers, mothers-in-law, greying crones. Our society is harsh on women whose eyes acquire crow-lines, or creases.

... contd.