While growing up in India in the 1970s Amir Khan was wild about movies. He’d sit through the same feature three or four times at a stretch. Some of the films he saw were American (a favorite was the disaster movie Airport ’77) and others were from Hong Kong (Bruce Lee was a boyhood hero). But most were from Bollywood, the name Indians use for Bombay, the center of the world’s busiest movie industry.
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Still, Bollywood movies are usually wild, uneven affairs. Films can take several years to complete, in part because money is always in short supply and because stars are contracted month by month. An actor whose contract ends before the film is finished may not be available for another six months; you may actually see actors change clothes or lose or gain weight in the middle of a scene. The delirious, epiclike stories–most films are at least three hours long–include tangled love affairs, tales of rivalries and revenge, and tear-jerking plot twists: children torn from their parents, lovers unjustly separated, people killed by senseless acts of violence. Yet almost all Indian films are musicals. Even the makers of violent action movies like Angrakshak–in which a corrupt politician’s daughter is kidnapped by mobsters and nailed like Jesus to the floor of a deserted warehouse–find time for several bouncy dance numbers. Songs are usually lip-synched by the actors and sung by “playback artists,” who are often pop stars in their own right. Dubbing is commonplace, because the films cater to a country where there are 16 official languages.
Patel helped Khan adjust to life in America. “He taught me wherever you want to stay, you have to go with that country.” He also taught Khan how to run a successful business, emphasizing the importance of customer relations. “Money is not a big deal,” Khan says. “Relation is a big deal. If you build a relation then money is coming.”
Khan attracts many non-Indian customers, though his customer base is mostly Indian and Pakistani. Recent immigrants from Russia come to rent films by the late actor and director Raj Kapoor, who was for many years India’s top star and who remains popular in Russia and the Middle East. (Kapoor’s films have their own section in the store.) Most of Khan’s other European-American customers head straight for the shelf marked “Religious,” right next to a shelf marked “Cricket Matches.”
–JACK HELBIG
