Column | How has Bollywood portrayed Diwali over the years?

Symbolically speaking, Diwali always signifies a return home. For Hindus, today is the night when Lord Ram returns to Ayodhya. Bollywood has used Diwali as an opportunity for song-and-dance routines or comic relief in his 80s and his 90s “family films.” But more importantly, some of the most successful and talked about Bollywood films of the past few decades have interpreted Diwali’s ‘homecoming’ theme in different ways.

Karan Johar, the glamorous monarch of Bollywood, decided to shoot a literal homecoming scene for Shah Rukh Khan in his 2001 blockbuster. Kabi Kushi Kabi Gum Diwali background. Khan’s character is a “prince” in the sense that he is the eldest son of billionaire Yashwardhan Raichand (Amitabh Bachchan) and his wife Nandini (Jaya Bachchan).

This scene is one of the most viewed scenes in the Dzhokhar stable. Khan landing in a helicopter, Jaya welcoming him with an aarti thali… it was played to the gallery in the way the audience expected from Johar. More than 20 years later, the scene has become the fodder for memes on social media, and the image of a beaming, doting Jaya has become shorthand for a sweet parent who knows her chosen son can do no wrong. Ta.

golden moment

Mahesh Manjrekar’s film is a stunning reversal of this scene. Vaastav (1999), Sanjay Dutt returns home to his parents’ shawl for Diwali. This is the first time he has met them since he became a full-fledged gangster. He is physically transformed, heavily armed, and wears a heavy gold chain. He then brags about the chain in front of his family (especially his mother, who is clearly disgusted) as a “pachasutra” (literally, 50 tolas; 1 tola = about 12 grams).

Boasting about money is also one of the official features of Diwali. Gold sales spike ahead of the festival as it is considered an auspicious time to purchase the precious metal. This can be seen as a Hindu version of the “prosperity doctrine” (the idea that God wants wealth to grow) popularized in the 21st century by some American churches.

One of Aamir Khan’s many heartbreaking scenes Thale Zameen Par (2007), the main character, Ishaan Awasthi, a dyslexic boy, sits awkwardly alone in a corner on Diwali night, even as his friends and family laugh, eat sweets, and set off firecrackers. is depicted. Ishaan is upset as his parents decide to send him to boarding school. This is also a reversal of the Homecoming theme, but it’s much crueler here, as it’s the parents themselves who are willingly uprooting their vulnerable children.

In October 2005, a few days before Diwali, a terrorist attack occurred in a crowded New Delhi market, with a bomb ultimately killing more than 60 people and injuring around 100 others. Since then, many Bollywood films have featured Hindu-centered terrorist plots. festival, usually either Diwali or Dussehra.Mr. Vidyut Jamwal commando 3 (2019), for example, climaxes with a Muslim good Samaritan thwarting a terrorist plot and then participating in a festival with his Hindu neighbors. Community harmony is therefore the usual takeaway from these plots.Ashutosh Gowariker’s Sways Here, the Diwali “homecoming” takes on a nation-state dimension, as the very American NASA scientist Mohan Bhargava (Shah Rukh Khan) returns to his village shortly before Diwali. I am.

banish Ravan

The film’s final Diwali song, Pal Pal Hai Baari, includes the wonderful line, “Man se raavan jo nikale ram uske man mein hai (Ram dwells in the heart of one who banishes the inner Ravan).” It is. The song, which provides a commentary on the Ramayana, was written by Javed Akhtar and is based on Shah Rukh Khan, both of whom are Muslim artists, making the song a popular choice for Bollywood’s “Let’s Get Along” collective. It is often cited as an example of the spirit of harmony.

However, Bollywood has historically also used Diwali night as a place for horrific events to take place before the eyes of the audience.like a pot boiler Zanjeer (1973) and Badr Ki Aag (1982), Diwali was the night of the film’s defining massacre, which in both cases led to lasting feuds between the families.

Recently, two films starring Kalki Koechlin have depicted Diwali in interesting ways.in Shaitan (2011), the scene in which the central characters go on a Diwali night spree becomes a horrifying prelude to the spiral of bloodshed and betrayal they will soon find themselves in. and, Kadak (2019), the Diwali card party becomes something of a gathering place for the macabre side of Delhi’s elite. Infidelity, fraud, and murder are revealed by the end of the night.

These expressions are as much Diwali as Johar’s helicopter return home. After all, in the battle of good vs. evil that plays out inside these characters’ heads, evil sometimes wins, right?

The author and journalist is working on her first nonfiction book.