Gabbar on your jacket, Anarkali on the coffee table and filmi bric-a-brac everywhere. The market for Bollywood kitsch has something for everyone
Basanti is a sunny yellow Ambassador with a blockbuster star cast. She has a babe on her bonnet (Rekha, in Umrao Jaan finery, hand raised in an aadaab) and an angry young man on her luggage rack (Amitabh Bachchan as, but of course, the Coolie). On one flank is the suffering Mother India and on the other, a defiant Madhubala (Mughal-e-Azam). Her owner, Julian Parr, a 48-year-old Briton who has lived off and on in Delhi for around 13 years, wanted an image of Madhuri Dixit on the booty—“coz you know, she has a good ass”. That couldn’t happen but Parr settled for a naughty wink and a sassy line on Basanti’s ample derriere: Ek chatur car kar ke shringar. He has a thing for Bollywood, does Parr.

You could say that about us too. If there is a thing such as an Indian cultural DNA, one strand of its double helix would be dyed in Bollywood poster colours. You might have lost the ability to sit through three hours of high-octane emotional drama, but scenes played out in sarson ke khet and Loin’s dens are still our biggest pop culture signifiers. There is something about a Sholay dialogue that can still bring a smile to your face however much you are in love with world cinema.

Delhi designer Nida Mahmood was playing on that connection when she included Gabbar jackets—sleeveless short jackets stamped with the face of the baddest villain ever—and tees and trousers with over-the-top Bollywood colours and dialogues. “We are trying to bring out the Indian element in a modern context, make things in a way that people would probably identify as cool,” says Mahmood, pointing at a trunk which has Ab tera kya hoga Kaaliya emblazoned on it. Mahmood and her business partner Raul Chandra recently set up the The New India Bioscope Company that brings out kitschy products. Handpainted posters, inspired by Bollywood of Seventies and Eighties, are used to adorn trunk tables, furniture, clothes, bags and table lamps.

... contd.