Bollywood in a trance

Aradhika Sharma

Badla mizaaj mera phookte hi grass

Grass lage hai mohe sabka ilaaj

Thoda toh main jhoom loon iske nashe mein

C’mon DJ laga de dubstep trance

(Lines from the song “Manali Trance” from The Shaukeens)

There are certain themes that Bollywood prefers to steer clear of. While filmmakers are getting increasingly experimental yet many are cagey about dealing with topics like homosexuality, surrogacy, activism, hero struggling with his dark side, etc. They prefer themes of romance, sacrifice, supernatural, family and themes of triumph over adversity. The Bollywoodians (to coin a term) also love to make gangster movies, especially gangsters trading in murder, weapons and drugs. But while there are plenty of movies that delve into the dark side of society, there aren’t many that depict drug users, except in the most marginal and stereotyped ways. India has long had a drug culture (Think “Boom Shiva” and bhang lassi) but for various reasons, has preferred to ignore it on celluloid.

The truth is that it’s not just the underworld that’s doing drugs and hallucinogen. It is regular people — students and professionals; labourers and villagers, who are doing serious as well as recreational drugs. Until recently, Hindi filmdom has been cagey about showing users on the silver screen except as victims. Recollect Jaanbaaz? Feroz Khan directed and starred in this steamy 1980s action film, playing a cop married to Sridevi. She gets forced into drug addiction and ultimately dies as a consequence of it. Feroz Khan then vows to eradicate the drug death-trap, and wages war on the guilty criminals. Similar was the theme in Pankaj Parashar’s Jalwa, starring Naseeruddin Shah. When Naseeruddin’s young brother dies as a result of a drug overdose. Kapil vows to put an end to drugs and drug-dealers by joining the police.

But today we watch “Manali Trance” taking the listener-viewer by storm. “Manali Trance” is the song from Akshay Kumar’s film The Shaukeens, which is garnering a massive number of hits on YouTube. The song is picturised on the lissome beauty, Lisa Haydon, who was so vibrant in the film Queen. Sung by Neha Kakkar and Honey Singh, the song appreciates the quality of ‘grass’ and how it is the ‘ilaaj’ to all problems. The sexy Haydon grooves to the tune mouthing the song seductively, keeping the viewer glued to the screen. The youth is relating to it not just because of the gorgeous Haydon, but because it strikes a strong ‘grassy’ chord with them.

Unlike drugs and dope, which Bollywood has been unwilling to talk about so far, alcohol has been an element quite natural to many Hindi films — part of the script, dialogue and song lyrics — used even in comedy and romance. Perhaps, it’s a reflection of society, which is unwilling to accept the widespread use of drugs, even though it’s evident right under its nose and at every level.

The Indian Censor Board goes ballistic every time there is an ‘immoral’ movie out — that may supposedly ruin generations of ‘impressionable youngsters’. Still, many movies have either sneaked past their eagle eye, or passed the muster, and shown some pretty unambiguous scenes and songs depicting drug use. Even though Hindi filmdom has miles to go before it has a “Cheech & Chong” (the drug-inspired, Grammy-winning comedy act by consisting of Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong, who found a wide audience in the 1970s and 1980s) or Harold & Kumar (This was a series of stoner comedy films starring John Cho (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar), but some tracks are being made in that direction.

These recent Bollywood movies are bold in their own way with the depiction of drug use slowly coming out of the closet. They accept that this is an increasingly followed (for good or for bad) choice and the stoners and addicts that we choose to be sanctimonious about, are very much a part of us.

The original junkie iconic song which became a cult number was “Dum Maro Dum” from Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna with Zeenat Aman, tripping on pot in a drug den in Kathmandu. The atmosphere that the smoky chillums and the doped out group in the film created remained un-copied for decades.

Deepika Padukone recently reprised the song in a film of the same name. “Dum Maaro Dum” addressed the subject of drug smuggling in Goa. The remixed version gave Deepika the opportunity to add massive amounts of sexiness to the hippie song.

An authentic depiction of a serious addict was of Pankaj Kapur in Khamosh. Pankaj Kapoor played to perfection, a mentally unstable and depressed addict, crippled by his dependence on heroin.

Recently, there have been a bunch of movies that have shown the stoner lifestyle realistically. Go Goa Gone was the closest to a stoner movie that Bollywood has come to. It was hailed as India’s Harold and Kumar, which did not glorify drug use but spoke of the dangers of rave culture in a riotous and overstated way. The film opens with two dope heads sitting on a sofa smoking weed and watching Indian Thriller. They go to Goa, attend a rave party where a new drug is introduced, and after that there is chaos. The song “Babaji ki Booti” has both Kunal Khemu and Vir Das plainly smoking and getting high on pot.

Vir Das appeared in another movie, doing drugs. In Revolver Rani, he’s openly snorting lines of cocaine when he goes to Mumbai in quest of stardom. That he prefers to do coke and sleep around instead of doing an honest day’s work is another story.

The one movie that was revolutionary in the hero’s collapse because of drugs and alcohol after his beloved gets married is Dev D. Abhay Deol becomes a complete loser and degenerates because of the weakness of his character that allows him to face life only with the aid of the deadly cocktail of drugs and booze.

Talking about the world of fashion, who better to explore it than Madhur Bhandarkar in his film Fashion? He takes the character of Kangana Ranaut, who plays a supermodel and later Priyanka Chopra, who sink into the labyrinth of the drug users world — getting their fixes in dressing rooms because of the pressures of their glamourous lifestyles — as scary as it is fascinating. In another of his films, Traffic Signal, portraying the lives of people who live in the streets, Bhandarkar creates the character of Dominic played (fabulously) by Ranvir Shorey, who plays a junkie who can’t do without his fix.

A movie that takes on the reality of kids doing drugs just for the heck of it is, Shaitaan. Anurag Kashyap’s film is centered on a bunch of youngsters who go on drinking sprees and do drugs because it’s supposedly cool. The movie does carry a lesson though because the kids get themselves into serious trouble caused by their cocaine fuelled lifestyles that end in death and mayhem and the end of their charmed world.

Gangs of Wasseypur, set in an industrial town of Dhanbad, Jharkhand, has the drug obsessed, incurably stoned Faizal (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) playing a crime boss and heading a gang war. It was a terrific performance that catapulted Siddiqui into the realm of great actors.

It looks like a reality check is finally in the Bollywood offing. Whereas in Hollywood, there are many films on drug abuse, addiction, manufacturing, and distribution, in Bollywood (save a few films down the ages) it’s a newer playing field. The thing is that hash, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines are available and being insanely used as part of mainstream and pop culture. Holding that up to scrutiny on celluloid without sanctimony can only help, not hinder the process of awareness.