Skip to main content

Mummy-ji culture nowhere seen in Bollywood

Tuesday, August 04, 2009 MUMBAI: They were once a feared presence on set, keeping an eye on their daughters to protect them from roving eyes or hands. But the days of Bollywood heroines being chaperoned by their mothers are numbered."Mummy-ji", as everyone from the director downwards always called her, is becoming a thing of the past, as actresses in India's popular Hindi-language film industry prefer to forge and manage their careers alone."I think the prime reason is because our industry has become more corporate and sleazy people have disappeared," said Celina Jaitley, the daughter of an Indian army colonel, whose first break was in the 2003 hit film "Janasheen"."Heroines are more confident to decide their lives on their own, unlike in the past," the 29-year-old former Miss India added.Bollywood has changed almost beyond recognition in recent years, not least in that it is now considered a profession worthy of girls from respectable families.But that wasn't always the case. When film-making first began in India in the early 1900s, there were few actresses at all, leaving men to play the female roles.Later on, well-known female singers and dancers began sending their daughters to act. Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, many girls from poorer families entered Bollywood.Even in the 1970s, when an increasing number of young women from more high-profile, urban backgrounds got into film, it was still considered a socially inappropriate profession for a middle-class woman.Chaperoning by "mummy-ji" persisted until the 1990s, fuelling stories of interfering mothers and their sometimes impossible demands, like asking for mango juice out of season, which film crews bent over backwards to try to meet.But since the explosion in satellite and cable television here from the turn of the 21st century, attitudes towards India's entertainment industry have changed, along with expectations for women in society.India's film industry is projected to grow at 11.6 percent a year over the next five years, from 107 billion rupees (2.2 billion dollars) in 2008 to 185 billion rupees in 2013, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a study out last week.While Bollywood heroines have always been idolised, now actresses from non-film backgrounds like Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty are successful role models for millions of Indian women.When they are not acting or running their own production companies, they can be found using their fame and hard-earned cash to launch beauty products, promote yoga videos or invest in Indian Twenty20 cricket teams.Asin Thottumkal, daughter of a businessman and a medical doctor, bought her own home in India's entertainment capital Mumbai after a successful debut in Aamir Khan's hit film "Ghajini" late last year."I am loving my own space," the 23-year-old said.But the strong family ties that still bind in India have not been loosened completely."Though I have moved into my own house, my parents are just a few metres away," she said.Priyanka Kothari, whose film "Agyaat" (Fear) is released on Friday, agreed."I take my own decisions in life but my parents are always there to guide me," the 25-year-old chemistry graduate said.There are other reasons, though, why her mother no longer accompanies her to film sets and prefers to spend time with her father."Now she herself does not want to come because she gets bored when my working hours stretch endlessly. She just has to sit and do nothing," she said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...