Bollywood stayed Bollywood

　　In India, the movies mean Bollywood, the film industry whose name conflates Hollywood with Bombay, where the first Hindi-language film was made. Even after Bombay was renamed Mumbai in an effort to free the city of its colonial legacy, Bollywood stayed Bollywood. It churns out at least two hundred films a year, each costing less than a million dollars——a sixth of the average price tag of a Hollywood film. Profilic, popular, song-filled, and sentimental, Bollywood films almost always swoon over the three-hour mark. As a result, they all have intermissions, during which theater concession stands rake it in selling spicy veggie burgers, samosas, and "American snacks" such as caramel popcorn.

　　Movie soundtracks are Bollywood's best promotional tool. In the weeks before a bid studio release, music videos of the songs take over TV channels. The songs are recorded by army unseen "play back singers" but associated in perpetuity with the actors who have lip-synched them. I'd hear Geeta humming a new film tune, and later that day, Joginder's cell phone would announce itself with the same song. India's star culture is even more obsessive than our own. Hollywood has the celebrity website TMZ, but in India, Bollywood gossip isn't relegated to the niche media: it is often a top story on the nightly news. Many movie stars have actual, real-life shrines erected to them, and when they are not literally being worshiped, their faces everywhere, from well-produced TV ads for toothpaste to hand-painted movie billboards on rural unpaved roads.

　　Bollywood's biggest romantic hero, Shah Rukh Khan, is best known as "King Khan", though Geeta preferred to refer to him by the less obsequious nickname "SRK". He's produced a stunning five dozen films over his career of almost twenty years. When he was named one of Newsweek's fifty most powerful people in the world, the Indian media treated it like a national accomplishment; when he was invited to present a Golden Globe Award, Indian announcers said it spoke to the country's growing might; when he was detained at Newark airport in 2009, presumably because of his Muslim last name, the TV channels called it a "national humiliation".

　　……

Sideways on A Scooter, Life and Love in India, P52~53
Miranda Kennedy
ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2