{"id":3006,"date":"2016-04-25T14:39:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T09:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3006"},"modified":"2016-04-25T14:39:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T09:09:41","slug":"bihar-bollywood-archetypes-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3006","title":{"rendered":"Enough With the Ms Braganzas & Mr Iyers. Where are the Biharis in Bollywood?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p><\/div>

n the college hostel that I live in, I can usually be found discussing useless Bollywood trivia with my peers. For instance, did you know that <\/span>Raju Hirani<\/span><\/a> named Rustam Pavari in Munnabhai after a friend? You\u2019ll find many a Rustam in Hindi cinema: Sometimes in the form of an overweight, cherubic boy named Kaizad, blinking behind his rimmed spectacles. You\u2019ll see him as the loudmouth Farhad who asks aunties their cup sizes for a living. The point is, you see Rustam or Farhad or Kaizad and you immediately know their cultural identities. <\/span>\n\nSimilarly, there will always be a Miss Braganza in her pink pencil skirt, toting a bag from Causeway, and addressing everyone as \u201cdarling\u201d almost by default. Miss Braganza\u2019s neighbour in the <\/span>cooperative housing society<\/span><\/a> will be a Mr Iyer, who works with the electricity board to support his family of four. Their landlords in Andheri are of course, a Deshpande family which <\/span>looks<\/span><\/i> like a Deshpande family. Don\u2019t even get me started on the Kapoors, Khannas, and oh, the Raichands who almost always live in a Delhi kothi, which could be in Janakpuri or Vasant Vihar, depending on what the movie is trying to say. They always have grand businesses and a grander sense of themselves.<\/span>\n\nBut in the 21 years that I\u2019ve spent hooked to cinema, I haven\u2019t found a single Mr Jha who chews paan<\/span> more frequently than he curses the bourgeoisie. I haven\u2019t come across a 17-year-old Pooja who tops her school in Muzzaffarpur to join the Delhi University, and who bonds with rickshaw-pullers in Kamla Nagar in theth<\/span> Bhojpuri, not without whining over how the \u201cEnglish-types\u201d mistreat them. <\/span>\n\nI hate to admit this, but I secretly had hopes from <\/span>Half Girlfriend<\/span><\/i><\/a>. I know, I know, <\/span>Chetan Bhagat<\/span><\/a> wrote it, Mohit Suri directed it, and Arjun Kapoor acted in it… Well, 80 per cent disappointment came with Arjun Kapoor\u2019s mass murder of Bihari pride, the remaining 20 per cent was salvaged by Seema Biswas, playing the village matriarch, and <\/span>Vikrant Massey<\/span><\/a>, who played the best friend. (He had me at \u201cAur hum hain Shailesh Kumar Pandey.\u201d)<\/span>\n\nWhat stood out with these characters and actors was that you didn\u2019t need a \u201cmyself coming from village area\u201d or an Oscar selfie with the house help at an upscale gathering as a\u00a0testament to their Bihari-ness. Shailesh Bhaiya<\/span> and Rani Sahiba are the people I look for in Hindi cinema \u2013 people that I <\/span>know of <\/span><\/i>but don\u2019t <\/span>know<\/span><\/i>. Just like I know Sushant Singh Rajput in <\/span>MS Dhoni: The Untold Story<\/span><\/i><\/a>. I cried tears of kinship for the six golden words, \u201c<\/span>Ye valentine-phalentine hum nahi maante,<\/span><\/i>\u201d and for everything his coach Mr Banerjee did at his \u201c<\/span>rui maachh <\/span><\/i>to cricket match\u201d expeditions (to someone who\u2019s been taught by the real-life KR Banerjee, it meant the world). <\/span>\n\n

I feel a sense of kinship that these states share owing to their treatment of, and at the hands of, the other 26 (hint hint, BIMARU).<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nI understand Bihar is a difficult identity to abide with in this country. It\u2019s rarely evident in terms of appearance and is way too fluid to identify from accent or lifestyle. In the two months of summer that I spent in Ahmedabad last year, I met countless south Indian autowallahs who\u2019d ask me if I\u2019m from the south and <\/span>MBA students<\/span><\/a> who\u2019d hopefully ask, \u201cBangali?\u201d in an all-too-familiar accent. Pharmacists in Nirlai Nagar and Mahesana that I worked with, wouldn\u2019t bother answering my survey (carefully designed in English and translated into Hindi) in anything but Gujarati. Thankfully, I had a colleague named Viral bhai to score dhokla points with them. <\/span>\n\nCommon to all three of these instances, is the assumption of a cultural identity. The autorickshaw guys saw my dark skin, the MBA folks saw the feminist literature in my hands and the chai-sutta breaks, and the locals, well, they just saw themselves. \u00a0Funnily, I could only tell the MBA people about my hometown, Ranchi, because for people that came from Muzzaffarpur or Purulia or Bokaro Steel City, it would indeed be a big deal. <\/span>\n\nFor everybody else, I was from <\/span>Delhi<\/span><\/a>. I\u2019d implicitly decide which version of truth to share with whom. I told my Gujarati landlord, Bipin bhai<\/span> that my hometown was Ranchi, only to be met with an \u201cAain? Shu?\u201d<\/span> But when I told him that I live in Delhi, he figured that he <\/span>had <\/span><\/i>to treat me well. <\/span>\n\nAs someone with roots in UP and Bihar, and brought up in Jharkhand, I tend to blur the borders. But more importantly, I feel a sense of kinship that these states share owing to their treatment of, and at the hands of, the other 26 (hint hint, BIMARU). It\u2019s the way that Bollywood has brought our cultures to us, language is an important element, but what is often missing is an accurate portrayal of lifestyles. <\/span>\n\nBipin bhai, for example, believed that Delhi was the land of the rich and powerful, but he had no idea Jharkhand became a separate state 17 years back. He was surprised I didn\u2019t eat litti chokha<\/span> for dinner every evening and was shocked out of his wits that I had money to pay to have the whole room to myself. His knowledge was limited to that <\/span>Biharis<\/span><\/a> are poor migrants who steal jobs and do menial work everywhere. Not that I find anything wrong with it, but I had to use my Dilliwali voice to give him a correct picture of Bihar.<\/span>\n\nMaybe, if we\u2019re done fawning over the Kapoors now, it\u2019s time to put Sharma ji ka ladka on the screen. Except this time, he doesn\u2019t need to be malnourished to look the part. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bollywood has its share of Kaizads, Miss Braganzas, and Mr Iyers. But I haven\u2019t found a single Mr Jha who chews paan more frequently than he curses the bourgeoisie in theth Bhojpuri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":3007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[1155,359,141,5912,334,5913,1789,5914,3595],"class_list":["post-3006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-arjun-kapoor","tag-bihar","tag-bollywood","tag-braganza","tag-delhi","tag-farhad","tag-half-girlfriend","tag-kaizad","tag-vikrant-massey"],"yoast_head":"\nEnough With the Ms Braganzas & Mr Iyers. Where are the Biharis in Bollywood?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bollywood has its share of Kaizads, Miss Braganzas, and Mr Iyers. 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