By Deepal Chadha

On Saturdays it’s a routine that my mother will wake up early and watch AVS, a weekly few hours of Bollywood programming. It never struck me until today, but this might actually be a little strange. Much of the shows are replete with conspicuously overt sexuality and rip-offs of the most generic American rap music. Basically, my mother is watching programming aimed at mimicking American youth culture. Hmm…

When I grew up, I always got together with my family to watch Hindi movies. It was nice. Everyone watched the same movies- the kids, the parents, the grandparents... I don’t ever remember there being a Hindi movie equivalent of Can’t Hardly Wait or She’s All That, movies that, if watched with the family, may make both parents and children feel awkward.

A big difference in American movies is that they fall into many different genres, each often aimed at a specific demographic. This hasn’t really been the case in Bollywood, at least not in the mainstream. The movies have been aimed at pleasing everyone. I wonder if this is because Indian society is (or was, dun dun dun dun) in some ways more homogenous than American society. In particular, it’s always seemed to me that there’s something different about the culture surrounding the youth and adults in India versus that in America. There seems to be less of a separation between the two groups in India. My little cousin recently spent the entirety of her India visit together with aunties, uncles and their kids. It’s not so uncool hanging with the fam.

Perhaps we are in the transition phase of the beginning of Bollywood’s genrefication (clever, I know). There’s a trend in the new movies coming out. For purposes of discussion, let’s call this new trend in Bollywood “westernization”. As the movies have more of this soda pop, “rap”, orange shirt, overt sexuality, clubbing, drinking (American youth culture mimicking?), maybe our aunties and uncles will get too uncomfortable and the directors and writers will not be able to please everyone. Maybe they’ll stop trying this tack and start making some movies for young people and others for older folk. Maybe movie watching won’t be as much of an all-inclusive communal experience anymore. Maybe things will be different…

So my question is this - Are we in the midst of a hereto forth unseen in magnitude, apocalyptic fracturing of Indian society along the lines of age? If we are, is this Bollywood thing just a reflection or a cause? What came first? The murgi or the anda? Then again, I’m pretty sure my mom’s still enjoying her Saturday morning fix of Bollywood and as usual I’m alternately paying attention and scoffing, but still sitting there nonetheless. We’re happily coexisting. There may be something much less fickle beneath the surface…