She saw the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer period film Veer Zaara in 2004 and her whole life changed. No, she is not your regular Bollywood movie fan but a sensitive painter and sculptor — German artist Anna Mandel — whose recent works are inspired by popular Hindi cinema. Her paintings titled 'Bollywood: Light in the Dark' were recently exhibited at the 'Shah Rukh Khan and Global Bollywood' conference hosted by the University of Vienna, focusing on the growing popularity of Hindi cinema around the world.
Ever since the first Hindi film was dubbed and telecast at primetime in 2004 by RTL II, a privately-owned commercial German television channel, the craze for all things Bollywood among Europeans has only been increasing. Before that, only a handful — mostly club-hoppers — were familiar with some Bollywood music, courtesy DJs who fused bhangra rhythms on turntables at dance clubs in the more cosmopolitan cities like Berlin.
Smitten by the romantic Khan
When television beamed filmmaker Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham ( KKKG) into about two million homes in the heart of Europe, 73 per cent of the viewers were young women like Anna. While her paintings were full of movement and colour before, after her exposure to Bollywood a kind of white took over her canvas, giving her art a very special "light", full of "emotions" and "voices".
For Marlene Zach, 26, an office assistant in Vienna, a chance exposure to Bollywood overnight splashed her almost black-and-white life with a thousand splendid colours. "Shah Rukh Khan has done so much for me. Today, I can do anything for him." Marlene is so taken in with the romantic Khan that she has his gigantic cut-out from Om Shanti Om placed beside her bed.
Nicole Feigl, mother-of-two and an office assistant in a medical clinic, has also joined the ranks of obsessed fans. It was like she had been "struck by lightning" when she caught KKKG on television by accident when she was aimlessly changing channels one evening. "Everything I saw onscreen seemed familiar to me. Nothing was strange, as if I had lived it all in India in a previous life. I like Shah Rukh Khan because I feel I know him and I can trust him," says Nicole.
The KKKG saga was followed by the screening of Kal Ho Na Ho, Main Hoon Na and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. And the viewership soon jumped to six million households on Friday evenings. A survey found that a significant chunk of the viewers were aged between 12 and 29. The audiences, it seems, cannot have enough of the colour, dance, music, tears and laughter that Bollywood has introduced into their lives.
Touching the European heart
According to Anna, Hindi cinema is ideal for European audiences with "our dried up eyes" and "obdurate hearts desiring to open". Some Europeans see their continent as a spiritual wasteland despite all its material success. People find little romance and no thrill in looking up to political institutions for salvation. Present-day life is reduced to a head and a body. The heart is left to collect dust and souls have been put to sleep. Thoughts allow little time to nurse feelings. Anything that is unable to make profit or cannot be encashed is of no consequence and a waste of time. Europeans often wonder whether logic, strict rationality and far too much philosophising have prevented their existence from being spontaneous and more colourful.
For the past few centuries, the emphasis here has been on the material needs of the population and less on the spiritual. To wonder, to imagine and even to laugh beyond the tick of the clock arouses impatience, even suspicion. In the brochure accompanying her exhibition, Anna poetically pens her reasons for liking Bollywood films, including facts such as the characters crying unashamedly in a sort of cathartic way.
She finds lamentation on the Bollywood screen as a way to retrieve and release pain. The dancing is happiness, the enthusiasm is unlimited, humility is unpretentious and the streaming of emotions is without fear or shame. Moreover, she finds that there is compassion. Anna points out that no matter how magnificent European actors are, they are opaque; characters in Indian cinema allow light to pass through them.
"The sheer grace of the women on screen! Have you ever seen European or American actors laugh in the same way? With such a gleaming smile? Or weep?" Anna asks.
Gender-specific adoration?
Anna Neun, 30, admires Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for the way he portrays love on screen. "Like this fanatic, crazy lover to whom nothing matters except love. You don't find this kind of lover here in Austria. Austrian men are not like this," says this student of Vienna University.
Nicole admits that many more women are fans of Bollywood as compared to men. "Generally men find the melodrama, singing, dancing and crying, stupid. But this is because they are expected to be macho. Secretly, men know that women like men who are tender, who are able to express their emotions and also cry. That makes men anxious over the kind of roles (an actor like) Shah Rukh Khan plays on screen and as society demands that they be tough, they look down on the actor," she says.
"I don't know about India, but in Europe sometimes there is an absence of romance. And the kind of dedicated, gentle lover that Khan plays on screen makes him the lover that every woman longs for," says Prof Elke Mader, Vice Dean, Social and Cultural Anthropology Department, University of Vienna.
Academics warn against reducing Europe's passion for Bollywood as a marriage between the 'feeling' Indian subcontinent and the 'thinking' continent of Europe. But that is what it seems to be. Perhaps Europeans enjoy Bollywood precisely because here is one experience where they don't need to intellectualise — a piece of advice meted out by the great Khan himself.
In a 2007 interview to a weekly magazine, Khan says, "I don't think we should intellectualise entertainment. See the fun of it... I also have a sense of humour, which says take it easy and have some fun. I strongly believe films are for entertainment and messages are for the post office."
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