The becoming of a dialogue

Show Me Your Words:

The Power of Language in Bollywood

By Connie Haham

Rupa Publications India

Pages: 313 Price: Rs 395/-

When I reviewed Connie Haham’s first book ‘Enchantment of the Mind: Manmohan Desai’s Films’, I had been impressed by the fact that a professor of Paris had analysed and sketched out the contours of ‘honee ko anhoni karde’ genre of the director’s films with gumption and panache.

Haham’s second book ‘Show me your words’ has come after a long gap, but it continues the decade-old tradition of analysing ways of Bollywood. The focus this time is not on a maverick director, but encompasses the entire canvas of the etymology and evolution of the language of Bollywood films.

Haham begins her book with the telling words of Firaq Gorakhpuri ‘lafzon ko aitiyaat se barta kijiye. Inme jaan hoti hai.’ This sets the tone of a book that does not talk about the semantics of language used in Hindi films, but instead opts for a nuanced understanding of how the language of hindi films developed over the years. To start with, as Shabana Azmi says, ‘Urdu was the language of popular theatre and set the tone for cinema’.

Dialogue writer and lyricist Ali Husain Mir also believed that ‘the conversation in films — the language of romance, the language of passion —will all be in Urdu’. However, no language can survive in vacuum. It has to open its door to other influences. So did Urdu. This resulted in a charming blend of Urdu and Devanagari called ‘Dakhini Meljol’ by historian Dr Ziauddin Shahkeb where Dakhini becomes the language of reconciliation. Slowly other influences crept in —the somewhat crude Delhi street language used in ‘Band Baja Baraat’, the bindaas Mumbai language used in Munnabhai MBBS or even the Gujarati lingo interspersed in Housefull 2.

Meanwhile, the urban middle-class or the uber rich were developing a different language. This was generously sprinkled with words from the English language. In Jab we Met, the character played by Shahid Kapoor says ‘Sirf hansi, khel, mazaaaq nahin hoti hai zindagi, Geet. Life mein serious bhi hona padta hai.’ Perhaps, the ‘scrambled egg’ metaphor of Farhan Akhtar is most appropriate. He talks about ‘urdu coming from my father, hindi from the movies, English from what I have grown up speaking…it all comes together and creates a new language’. This contrariness is reflected in our film credits. The films are in Hindi but the titles on screen and credits are more often in English.

However, unfortunately Roman hindi-urdu is gaining ground, much to the horror of language lovers. Amitabh Bachchan, is one of the many actors, who finds it difficult to deal with Roman Hindi. Tom Alter suggests a solution — He feels that learning all three scripts is essential. But the author is clear that ‘Roman hindi offers many people a link between the spoken and the written word’.

It is amazing how the author has objectively detailed the evolution of the contemporary Bollywood language. The author’s journey started in 1979 when she saw Manmohan Desai’s film Amar, Akbar, Anthony’ in Paris. Although, she had no intention of learning Hindi, she was unable to ignore the siren call of Hindi films. In her preface, she admits that “I found the voices I was hearing too beautiful to ignore.”

At the University of Texas she started to delve deeper into the Hindi/ Urdu language as well as its sociolinguistics, multilingualism, etc. A visit to Bombay sealed her fate. She was completely hooked. Her life-long passion resulted in a book that examines the language of Bollywood and its growth under the influence of societal changes and Bollywood temperament. A riveting book that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride through the mores of Bollywood ‘boli’.