Old Posters & Bollywood Night in Helena

 Blood for Blood

I was truly surprised to see an old Hindi/North Indian/Bollywood movie poster featuring Rekha, a prominent movie star of the 70s , in downtown, Helena.
The poster mentioned Bollywood Night with a lot of high energy Bollywood dancing, Indian food and  live auction.  I saw more of these posters around town.

It reminded me of a time, when the posters of the latest movie were stuck everywhere in every town and city in India. Even outside the walls of our schools, despite the walls having “Stick No bills” written on them. I used to be intrigued by these posters and equally interesting movie titles  like – Dostana (friendship), Deewar (Wall), Kranti (revolution), Qurbaani (Sacrifice) and Judaai  (Separation).   Looking at them, the raw gritty intense expressions of the main actors portrayed in vivid broad strokes of paint, as I leisurely walked to school from the bus stop, the actors appeared larger than life. The posters were a craze, they were noticed, admired or disfigured or even stolen, depending upon the aspirations of the onlookers. They were completely hand made and hand painted till the 70s, later on, the faces were cut out from photographs - while the rest of the poster was hand painted. Now, it is a lost art and a legacy of the past. In fact, they are so rare now, that they are a precious collector’s item. The book “Bollywood Posters,” has a good collection of these posters with equally interesting anecdotes.

Anyways, I met Adele at the Real Food store, who really enjoys dancing and she is excited about dancing at Bollywood Night.  I was happy for her and truly wanted to help her, but felt inept because I don’t have any of that elaborate jewelry or clothing that goes with the Bollywood dances. I have never danced to movie songs either. My parents considered it indecent, but the real issue must have been my own reluctance to focus and be totally uninhibited in front of an audience.

However, my parents sent me to learn Bharathanatyam – a classical Indian dance.  I admired the girls who could dance perfectly fine, oblivious to the presence of numerous onlookers. It just wasn’t easy for me. I learned little besides the foot movements. I couldn’t dance comfortably with an ever-present audience of about 40 fidgety girls, some parents and the dance master, who stood with a little baton in his hand. The baton, though meant for counting the dance steps, could and would land up on the dancer’s errant part of the body- foot, leg, hand, arm or shoulder.

Then interestingly, we met the organizers of the Bollywood Night, two sisters - V J Supera and India Supera, who spend six months, every year in India working on various charitable causes. They had brought a dozen or more of those old hand painted Bollywood posters all the way from Mumbai. There was a bazaar night at their house, the other day, where they sold Indian jewelry, saris, and clothes and offered sari tying and turban tying techniques. Next thing we knew, Harnek was tying a turban, I was mentioning - giving Indian cooking lessons; we were not even supposed to be in town that night.

We were planning on going to Maine for the college homecoming weekend, to meet our son (after exactly seven weeks) and also to enjoy the visual splendor of fall colors in the New England area. In a matter of a day or two, the plans changed, we canceled our trip, as he decided to visit us instead. So, this Friday evening we will be in town, after the end of the JV high school soccer tournament in Kalispell. We will be going to Bollywood Night, it sounds pretty exciting… I had bought a beautiful princely outfit in Hyderabad, for my other son - a high schooler. Hopefully I can convince him to go…

Oh! Yes, Bollywood Night happens to be this Friday, Oct 17th at the Civic center -7 PM and it is for a charitable cause – Tibetan Children Education Foundation. There was an article in the Helena IR – Oct 3, featuring  the details of this event.