This week I share yet another first section of a chapter from the larger project that I am working on. As I shared in one of the previous posts, this project collates memories from childhood, mostly told through movies that we watched. You can read previous posts from the memoir here:
If you grow up in India, you cannot be too far from the movies. With a thriving performing arts culture, Indians took readily to movie-magic. But there has been a cultural shift in the last decade and a half since the proliferation of smart phones. There’s now a camera in every person’s hand. Now we are both consumers and producers of images.
Cameras tell us who we are, by the way of where we point them.
Selfie statistics1 show that as of 2021, selfies represent 30% of 358 million selfie related posts shared on social media. And no points for guessing which demographic leads. About 48% of photos taken by 18-24 year olds are selfies, as opposed to 15% taken by those who are 65 plus.
Bollywoodization of Weddings
While this trend is world-wide India has been affected by this phenomenon since VHS recording was popularized in the mid eighties. In fact, today wishing to feel like a film-star Indians try to replicate movies in their own life. Just look at how self-absorbed, and pretentious Indian weddings have become. There was no concept of a pre-wedding photo shoot, when we were growing up. The photographers hired by families just arrived a few hours before the rituals and took exclusive shots of the bride and groom at their respective residences.
Today, Indians spend thousands on just one photo-shoot scheduled on a different day and even create entire films with interviews of groom and bride, along with their relatives, as if everyone’s life is a movie. This is a direct result of Bollywoodization of weddings. Photo-shoots and videos allow both the bride and groom to pose as if they are film stars, as leads in their own life.
Forgetting that the wedding is community ritual, a rite of passage, a reminder that they will be joining a community, with the primary role of continuing of lineage as prescribed by dharma. Honest living, responsible parenting and of-course dedicatation to their parents as they move into a different stage of life.
Due to my love for images - both still and moving - I have been making films and keeping photo journals as long as I remember. But Indian families are paying big bucks for ‘someone else’ to create a photo-video-memory.
It’s one thing if I am the one behind the camera asking my mother, cousins or siblings about their feelings. Quite different when an absolute stranger asks the same questions, and the respondent is performs, trying to imitate people they see on screen.
Actors and Cameras
Watching Grease or Grease 2, I often felt as if the actors were always aware of being seen, as if their movements were slightly exaggerated under the constant scrutiny of a camera. Everything was performative, but in a polished, self-contained way, where even teenage rebellion looked choreographed for visibility.
It felt different from Bollywood films I had grown up with, and yet strangely familiar in its desire to turn ordinary life into spectacle. But what stood out most was something else—these were teenagers who actually occupied the centre of the frame, whose desires and dramas were taken seriously. In Bollywood films of that time, teenagers were almost invisible, existing at the margins of adult stories, rather than being allowed to carry a world of their own.
In this first section of the chapter, I return to my first viewing of Grease, and to what it first made me understand about actors, cameras, and the uneven visibility of teenage lives on screen. Teenage life and aspiration were so different for me growing up in India, even decades later.
__________
Greasy Grace
One afternoon, Daddy called from his office and asked for me,
‘Are you done with homework?’
‘Yes.’
When I answered with a positive nod that I am sure he could hear the across the phone lines, he said,
“Be ready in an hour, we are going for a movie.’ By then it was common for Dad and I to go to the movies. Mom did not like going to non-Hindi movies. My siblings, who were quite young, joined us for some movies. Daddy often took Chawla uncle’s sons, Babu and Kaka, whenever they were in town.
Chawla uncle worked for the Indian Army and was often posted in remote areas of India. For Daddy they- Babu and Kaka were -like his own sons, so he introduced them to movies and books. But this trip to the movies it was just Daddy and I. I was so excited that I forgot to ask the name of the movie. I was just happy to be getting a break from my daily routine. I had read the movie’s description several times in the newspaper while Daddy read through the ‘real news’, only a few days ago. There was no internet in those days, so my information about the movie was restricted to a paragraph in the newspaper. Nor could I get assistance to pronounce the first or the last names of the lead actress. But Daddy was obviously paying attention to what I was reading.
The movie was Grease 2.
Grease 2 was about teenagers in the United States. I had always wondered about school life in another country. Bollywood hardly made movies about teenagers. At the time India’s most popular movie stars were my parent’s age or older. Grease 2 intrigued me, even though I thought it was a strange title. Apparently, it is was a reference to the ‘greasy’ culture of the 1950s, in the U.S., which by the way, was not the same as the rest of the world. In the 1950s, India was a newly independent nation. Many teenagers in the capital, where I grew up, were refugees in their own country. Thanks to the British, India had been ruthlessly broken into two countries, leaving many wealthy families homeless, landless, and bank-less.
Unlike the teenagers in the movie Grease, teenagers in Delhi in the 1950s, were growing up with a determination to restore the pre-partition glory to their families. With an ‘A’ rating Grease 2 received in India, one had to be eighteen and above to be allowed into the theatre. I was not eighteen yet. There was no way I would be allowed, even with my friends. Although there was no policy of checking IDs in India. They went by our faces.
But if an adult went with us….
After the first few minutes, Daddy fell asleep. It was so unlike him. Did he fall asleep or was he embarrassed to be watching the movie with me? It is a cheesy movie. Except, for me, it helped me get a peek into what American high school was like. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. There was no focus on education, students did not respect their teachers, and underage students smoked openly and talked about stuff that I had never heard in Bollywood films or real life. But there was a love story somewhere in the movie, tied with songs and dances. So, it was somewhat like the Bollywood films.
Teenager as I was, I thought about the movie a lot in the coming weeks. I even bought the paperback based on Grease 2, to continue reading more about the Pink Ladies. Of course, I was interested in the love story, but I was also fascinated by the fact that American schools had an intercom. Principal’s voice rumbled into the classroom, like an invisible God. In our schools in Delhi, we had a Peon bring a circular, that our teacher would read to us. Imaginative as my mind was, I wondered how many American students drove to school in cars. I lived so close to my school that if I ran from home towards school when the morning bell rang, I would arrive at the gate before the bell stopped ringing.
A little out of breath, but I would make it.
Then, that summer I heard from a friend that it was titled Grease 2, because there was actually a Grease 1.
I wanted to see if the earlier version of T-Birds and Pink Ladies were tamer than those in Grease 2. One of those weekends when family and friends rented VCRs for a movie marathon, I suggested Grease as one of the options. We rented a VCR at Chawla uncle’s house. Within the first few opening scenes all the adults left to have tea and snacks in another room. I realized my mistake.
I could not cover my face enough because everyone in the room kept giving me accusing looks, ‘Couldn’t you have chosen a better movie, a Bollywood movie? What crassness is this?’ There was much hormone-hopping, but no heart. No love. All love stories in Bollywood ended in a happy resolution. Each romance led somewhere. Usually matrimony.
And what was this thing called ‘a summer fling?’
