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The paper evaluates the use of the escape motif in Ritesh Batra's 2019 film Photograph, with respect to its modernist tendencies of fragmented psyche, nostalgia for the past, and aesthetics. It studies the sense of increasing isolation within the protagonists of the story, Miloni and Rafi, and relates the same in the sociological context of the urban hub of Mumbai city. The identities of the characters are further analysed with respect to their socio-economic privilege in the society and the paper argues that the social conditioning of, and expectations from, the characters play an instrumental role in creating two different approaches to their aforementioned need for escapism. The longing for human connection, as represented in the setting and use of the meta-narrative technique in turning to old Bollywood films and music, is one of the prominent approaches seen within the characters and the film in coping with the modern escapism from their private and public selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Zeenat Aman helped inaugurate new forms of sexuality and femininity in 1970s Bollywood. Along with redefining the rules of a screen heroine's identity, Aman also created a range of grey characters such as Sheetal in Manoj Kumar's Roti Kapada aur Makaan (1974) and Sheela in Feroz Khan's Qurbani (1980). These roles became associated with hugely popular songs of the period, lip-synched by Aman, including ‘Aap jaisa koi,’ from Qurbani, and ‘Main naa bhoolunga’, from Roti Kapada aur Makaan. This paper explores how these repeated song sequences reflect Aman's positioning within these narratives even as they allow her to reshape her role in innovative ways. In this way, this paper examines how Zeenat Aman deviated from earlier binary models imposed upon Bollywood heroines, pitting heroine against vamp and, in the process, created new modes of femininity and female agency within these films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studies on corporeal beauty – the ‘body beautiful’ – constitute a mini academic industry, everyday practices of ‘beauty work’ are somewhat underresearched. This paper engages with notions and practices of beauty in a context of socio-cultural transformation and global flows in urban India. The ‘beauty parlor’ emerges as a socio-cultural space where urban aspirations are made and realized, mirroring the shifting place of beauty in the daily life of subjects with diverse class locations. A qualitative study of five beauty parlors in Mumbai revealed embodied practices of aesthetics that reflect the interplay of social structure and agency in the everyday life experiences of menandwomen. Providing tangible benefits in terms of new opportunities, beauty practices are also influenced by a desire for status, and ideas of ‘good health’ within an emergent ethic of self-care. Practices and consumption in the parlor juxtapose modernity and tradition materializing the field of beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hindi film song ‘Thoda resham lagta hai’ [It takes a little silk] written by the music director Bappi Lahiri for the film Jyoti (1981) was a long forgotten tune before being rediscovered in 2002 by American music producer DJ Quik. Based around an unauthorized 35-second sample of the recording, the Truth Hurts song ‘Addictive’ famously inspired Bappi Lahiri to sue Quik's associate Dr Dre (executive producer of the song), Aftermath Records, and Universal Music (Aftermath's parent company and distributor) for $500 million. Beyond Lahiri's claims of cultural imperialism, obscenity, and outright theft, DJ Quik's rearrangement of the song was, in turn, adopted by music producers, including Lahiri himself, in a wide variety of international genres. This paper tracks the use and reuse of the melody in Indian, American, and Jamaican contexts, focusing on the song's remediation for new audiences. Yet even as this well-traveled tune evokes different historical and local meanings, it evokes an eroticized Other in each context, including its original context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a particular focus on zines produced in Bombay from the 1990s to 2000s, this essay draws on and thinks with the masala that flavored the pages of three prominent Bombay queer zines: Bombay Dost, Scripts and Gaysi Zine. Through close readings of specific volumes, I demonstrate that zines constitute not only an overlooked archive of queer and trans cultures in India but have also been crucial to facilitating 'queer sociality' (Rodríguez 2011) between the sheets of the zine's pages and in the worlds through which its copies might travel. I develop the concept of masala-with a queer accent (Khubchandani 2020)-to reflect its usage and meaning in queer spaces to reference sex, messiness, gossip and at times unruliness and nonresectable behavior. Extending its potential, I suggest that masala names not only a genre of content that is erotically charged or gossip-laden but is perhaps itself an analytic or technique by which queer subjects make political claims and forge community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although often described as a rural dialect of Modern Standard Hindi, in the last five years Bhojpuri has emerged as the language for a new cinema industry, complete with superstars, superhits, and media speculation about the particular 'rural values' that have catapulted the industry into success. But despite Bhojpuri's reputation as a 'rustic' way of speaking, Bhojpuri cinema critically inhabits both urban and rural spaces. While Bhojpuri speakers generally consider Bihar and Uttar Pradesh their homeland, millions have migrated into urban centers seeking work, and the films' modes of production, narrative themes, and distribution have followed them from Bihar to Mumbai. Understanding these films solely in terms of 'rural values' thus dismisses the interplay between city and countryside that gives meaning to 'ruralness' in the first place. This article traces the movement of capital, people, and films along the Bhojpuri cultural circuit, illuminating how rural and urban identities, technologies, and audiences constitute one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation draws upon my earlier analysis of the Bombay blockbuster Fanaa (Khan 'Nationalism'), transnational responses to Fanaa posted on an internet blog and on interviews with South Asian and Somali Muslims in Windsor and Mississauga, Ontario, two areas with substantial multiracial populations. I argue that although Fanaa's narrative strategies risk reinforcing stereotypes, they also initiate conversations about escalating tensions regarding citizenship and belonging among South Asians. The film emerges as a popular cultural text which allows transnational bloggers to use the anonymity of cyberspace and articulate hugely confrontational views, something they may do not in person. Moreover, as Canadian respondents view the film, it complicates the trauma of separation and dislocation which South Asian minorities, like other racialized peoples, face in Canada. Further, the respondents rework the limited repertoire of Fanaa in ways that involve ways of seeing which both confirm and challenge the Orientalist gaze as they re-imagine community in everyday practices and resistances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]