Bollywood movies are glorious, colorful spectacles of romance, action, drama, song, and dance. The biggest film industry in the world, Bollywood puts out some nine hundred movies a year, which are watched by passionate fans around the globe. Stephen Alter―a writer who grew up in India and has inside access to Bollywood―acts as translator and tour guide in this firsthand look into the world of Bombay films. Following the making of a Bollywood version of Othello, he explores the enormous popularity of Hindi movies and reveals the actors, directors, musicians, and feats of artifice that make them so compelling and unique. From the blessing ceremony performed each time a movie starts shooting to the secrets behind the song- and-dance extravaganzas, Fantasies of a Bollywood Love-Thief is a beguiling introduction to the rituals and culture of a moviemaking industry so similar to and yet utterly different from our own. PRAISE FOR ELEPHAS MAXIMUS "Magical and fascinating."―THE BOSTON GLOBE "Deftly blend[s] Indian history and culture with current debates about animal conservation . . . Joyous."―THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE Masala: 1. A pungent concoction of spices that excites all five senses. 2. The perfect combination of dramatic elements in a successful Bollywood film. Bollywood movies are glorious, colorful spectacles of romance, action, drama, song, and dance. India has the biggest film industry in the world, which produces some 900 movies a year, watched by passionate fans around the globe. Stephen Alter?a writer who grew up in India and has inside access to Bollywood?acts as translator and tour guide in this firsthand look into the world of Bombay films. Following the making of a Bollywood version of Othello, he explores the enormous popularity of Hindi movies and reveals the actors, directors, musicians, and feats of artifice that make them so compelling and unique. From the blessing ceremony performed each time a movie starts shooting to the secrets behind the song-and-dance extravaganzas, Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief is a beguiling introduction to the rituals and culture of a moviemaking industry so similar to and yet utterly different from our own. STEPHEN ALTER is the highly praised author of seven books of fiction and four books of nonfiction, including Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant and Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimmage up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture . As a writer-in-residence at MIT, he received both a Guggenheim and a Fulbright fellowship. He now lives and writes in India. Stephen Alter is writer-in-residence in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, and was the director of the writing program at Cairo's American University. He is the author of four novels and a memoir, All the Way to Heaven , as well as another travel book, Amritsar to Lahore , a bestseller in India. 1 shakespeare remixed If this were Venice there might have been an arched bridge of sculpted marble over a romantic canal, ornate balconies, and drifting gondolas. Instead, we are somewhere in rural India, three hours’ drive southeast of Mumbai, near a small village called Takave. According to the script it’s supposed to be another place altogether, the badlands of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), in a different part of the country, more than a thousand kilometers to the north of here. Despite a dislocation of geography, the arid countryside is close enough to match—hard, dry soil cracked by winter drought, yellow thistles and congress weed, sparse fields of maize withering under a fierce sun. Cattle egrets wade in the shallows of a stagnant river spanned by a narrow footbridge built on pillars of crumbling cement. First day of shooting—Friday, January 13, 2006. The film is Omkara, Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice. The Bard goes Bollywood. Seated on the concrete bridge, Iago and Roderigo get drunk in the afternoon. act i, scene iii roderigo: I will incontinently drown myself. iago: If thou dost, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou silly gentleman! roderigo: It is silliness to live, when to live is torment: and then have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician. Instead of speaking Elizabethan English the two actors deliver their lines in colloquial Hindi. Roderigo is Rajju and Iago is Langda Tyagi, two small-town gangsters mixing bile with whiskey. scene 37, shot 1, take 1 rajju Dolly key liye hum apni jaan bhi dey sakhtey hain . . . such hai . . . nadi mein kudh jayenge . . . (I’ll give my life for Dolly . . . It’s true . . . I’ll jump in the river . . .) langda To mainey gotiyan pakad rakhi hai kya teri . . .kudh ja. (Have I got hold of your balls? . . . Go ahead, jump.) rajju braces himself and jumps into the river, shouting out. rajju Dolly . . . !! Desdemona . . . !! The names have been changed but most of the initials remain the same. Othello is Omkara. Omi.