Acouple of months ago, when his ultra-violent Kannada movie Madesha was set to face cuts on the censor table, 33-year-old film producer and real-estate shark Govardhan Murthy threatened Censor Board officials. He went even further on October 7, when in the middle of an inebriated haggle over a real-estate deal at his farmhouse near Bangalore, the film producer allegedly pulled out his gun and shot dead a 26-year-old newcomer to the Kannada film world, Vinod Kumar, who was also a property dealer.

The lines between the Kannada film business, Bangalore’s real-estate industry and the muscle power that straddles both worlds are often blurred. Reel life spills into real life and vice-versa. The events of October 7 were just a symptom.

A large section of mainstream Kannada cinema today is typically marked by stories of ‘street violence’ — teens who pick up knives at the drop of an insult, sickle-brandishing goons chasing each other — and storylines that spurt blood at every turn. Filmmakers dwell on stories of youth gone wrong — ordinary youngsters called ‘murder accused’ or ‘rowdy sheeters’ in police annals are glorified as heroes on screen.

In a section of Sandalwood (as the film industry here is known) there even exists a popular belief that to ensure box office success, posters of new films must carry prominent images of someone, preferably the hero, brandishing a sickle, the preferred weapon of mass destruction in the rage-driven, testosterone-pumped street stories.

The sickle (machu in Kannada) brand of films usually carry taglines like ‘a violent love story’ to draw in crowds of front benchers.

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