Gender on the Move

By Arundhathi N

Often touted as the culture industry of India (Rajadhyaksha 2003), Bollywood has not only manufactured ideas of aspiration and romance, it has also been responsible for weaving a narrative about the city of its genesis-erstwhile Bombay-or contemporary Mumbai. Like many who are outsiders to Mumbai, the researcher's first introduction to the city happened through Hindi cinema- Bollywood cinema in particular. The first Bollywood song that comes to mind when one thinks of Mumbai is an old number from the 1956 film CID, titled Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan. The song is picturised with Johnny Walker moving through the city, at times walking and at times on a horse-drawn cart, singing about the vices of the city. The final stanza of the song is picturised on Kumkum, who till then has been silently, though disapprovingly, listening to Walker as he has been enumerating the problems of city life. In her short but final ode, she clarifies that Bombay is a city which is fair and just, where every person ultimately gets what (s)he deserves, and hence 'ae dil hai aasan jeena yahan, suno mister, suno bandhu, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan, ' claiming that it is actually easy to live in Bombay. While the lyrics of the song can be taken as a fairly simple critique of urban living in cities other than Bombay, what stands apart are the following lines..

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9234173848
• ISBN13: 9789234173841
• Release Date: September 2022
• Publisher: Department of Anthropology Pondicherry Univer
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"