Bollywood in Bamako

 Ah Bollywood, Bollywood, you have enraptured the imagination of people through time and space. Your heroes jumping from rooftops, single-handedly disabling dozens of armed bandits, your heroines in body hugging blouses and artfully draped saris,  batting their eyelids and casting languorous glances from kohl rimmed eyes have lightened men’s miseries and made them dream of a happier clime. Here it suffices to feel an emotion to break into song, and go dancing through meadows and over hills. Here love triumphs over the barriers of class and caste, the wicked are punished and the enemy eventually contrite.

And Bollywood has a very special place in the heart of the citizens of Bamako , the capital of Mali. Mali is a country in the west of Africa; thousands of kilometres away from India, on the other side of the Arabian sea.  I am quite sure only about 1 percent of Indians have heard about it and 1 percent of Indians is already 1000000000 people. It’s a country of diverse ethnic groups such as Fulas, Bobos, Bozos, Dogons, Malinkes, Soninkes, Bamanas, each with their history and language, customs and traditions. Here the national language is Bambara, which a Hindi speaking employee in the Indian embassy of Bamako told  me did not in anyway resemble Hindi,  like other Indian languages did. ” This language is absolutely meaningless,” he assured me.    And yet these people whose language does not resemble any Indian language throb to the rhythm of Bollywood beats.

 One of the cult films in Bamako is Don, released in 1978, starring Amitabh Bachhnan; the tall, lanky, actor of the seventies and eighties.  His onscreen personality was synonymous to that of the angry, young man who is the avenger of the innocent. Amitabh Bacchan was and is a household name in India, which is in the order of things. .  But in Bamako too he is almost as popular though he is better known as Don, like the name of the action-thriller film where he plays the role of the hero as well as the villain.  The other film and hero which rivals the fame of Don is Disco Dancer known here as Jimmy with Mithun Chakrabarty in the leading role of a pop star Jimmy, released in 1982. In 1978 I wasn’t even 10 years old and in 1982 when I was in my terrible teens , “ Jimmy, Jimmy aja, aja aja , aja or I am a disco dancer,”  blared from every loudspeaker in town. I remember going with my cousin to see this film in a decrepit film hall in Bengal and being mesmerised by Mithun in crotch hugging white, bell bottoms, gyrating amidst flashing blue, green and pink strobe lights .  The  café-au-lait complexioned, wavy- haired hero with the muscles of  Rambo, was my heart-throb for quite some time.

Mamadou is a young artisan who has a small shop in N’goloni, the colony of artisans. I had gone there with my companion when he and his friend invited us for tea. Here the tea ceremony is a long drawn out affair. The tea leaves are brewed thrice  in a small metal kettle on an equally small brasier . The first brew is very strong and the Malians say that it’s as strong as death, the second brew is a little milder and is as good as life, and the last brew is as sweet as love. When you sit through these three brews you get ample time to get acquainted with your tea-mates . We thus came to know Mamadou and his friend both stoic philosophers in spite of their young age.

The conversation turned to music and films. “Hindu films are the best,” he exclaimed.  “Indeed!” I replied trying to puzzle out how films of Parvathy or Shiva could interest a young Muslim Malian of 25 years.

“I love Jimmy. Great dance, Great music! “ he enthused.  

 “Jimmy?” I echoed, even more bemused. I didn’t know any Hindu divinity by that name.                    

“ Yes, Jimmy, Jimmy aja, aja, aja.”

It took me a few seconds to make the connection, and then I replied with, “I am a disco dancer.”

“Yes,”  he beamed.

“You have seen Jimmy?”

“Yes!”

“But Jimmy is an old film! I saw it in my teens!”

“Everybody knows Jimmy here,” replied Mamadou. 

During the rest of the conversation I gathered that Hindu is equivalent to Indian,  and that Jimmy in Mali  has the same aura as Elvis Presley.  Thus a generation which wasn’t even born when Disco Dancer was made, has been infected with the Jimmy fever. In my mind I saw thousands of pirated copies of Disco Dancer circulating in the lanes and by lanes of Bamako. His friend, a charming young man with dreadlocks,  who rapped for us a song of his own composition in Bambara,  was not of the same opinion. He was a fervent fan of Don,  

Since then I’ve heard a waiter reminisce  about how excited his friends were whenever a Hindu film came to town and how they would go three or four times to see the same film.  To prove his point he hummed the tune of a song sung by Kishore Kumar in one of Rajesh Khanna’s film;  Zindagi ka safar, Hai iye kaisa safar. It' a melodious, philosophical song which says that the journey of life is strange indeed, impossible to foresee and to understand.   This was also a very popular song during my teens.

 While house hunting  I came across a Franco-Malian lady proprietor, an impatient, snappish person who was transformed when she came to know I was from India, the land of Bollywood. She turned to her brother and said, “Remember how we would climb up on the terrace to see Indian films,” then turning towards me and saying, “I used to live in  Mopti and there would be open air projections of films near our house.  It was wonderful. There was this film about a friendship between  elephants and an orphan who grows up to own a circus.  She looked at me expectantly, “Hathi mere Sathi,” (Elephant my friend)  I volunteered hopefully. It’s a film of the 70s which was a big hit with children. I went to see it when I was about seven or eight years old with my mother.  “Exactly,”  she confirmed.

And besides them there have been taxi drivers, teachers working in the French school, doctors, house help, who have unanimously expressed their love for Bollywood’s ravishing heroines,  action packed stories and the mesmerizing songs and dances. However most of the films they have spoken to me about date from the seventies and eighties, and it’s Amitabh Bacchan, Rajesh Khanna, Zeenat Aman, Hema Malini, Mithun Chakraborty who are the evergreen heroes and heroines. Contemporary films are less appreciated. Some of the critiques are that they have too many songs and dances, are not traditional, do not have good action and are not as gay as the old films.

So Bollywood is the bridge between Bombay and Bamako, and the ambassadors from India are the actors and actresses of the seventies and eighties. The Hindi and Hindu gentleman at the Indian embassy who thinks that Bambara is gibberish would be surprised to learn that the strangeness of Hindi has not deterred Malians from appreciating films made in this alien tongue.

Arunima Choudhury