If Hindi film lyrics are any indicator of the way we are, then the desire for money and materialistic success is now legit. Instead of blind faith in destiny and rebirth, there is the sense that money has to be made right here right now because the present is all we have.

There is a hint of desperation in these songs, a sense of ' Gimme money, no matter what'. These loud brash numbers blaring out of car and cell phone radios, and nightclubs across India's cities, underscore the birth of a generation which unabashedly worships the power of money.

The Money Song has been added to Bollywood's repertoire of situation- specific numbers like the Monsoon Song ( on a comeback trail nowadays), and the Item Song. The last five or six years have seen the rise of a new kind of Hindi film song which celebrates the making of a fast buck. In fact, it grapples with reality most intimately in its muchderided song and dance sequences, widely held to be the most obvious example of Bollywood escapism. The gambling which precedes the run- up to the main day, and the millions of rupees of firecrackers going up in flames on D- day, can only seem spiritual to a stubborn romantic.īollywood too has never shied away from reality. Money rather than religion has always been at the heart of this society.įestivals like Diwali have celebrated the power of money like few festivals in the west. Seen in this way, it is no surprise that our popular cinema too tries to avoid reality, for a spiritual people will watch, what else, but cinema that avoids the real world. The stereotypes have something in common in so far as spirituality is seen as a turning away from the world, a form of escapism. Among the stereotypes of India that have come to us from the west is that we are a spiritual country, and that Hindi cinema is essentially escapist.

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