The Last Matinee of Bhojiwood

People spit. In half-empty movie halls — more specifically, at Chandni Chowk’s once-glorious-now-aged only single screen theatre (Moti) — where the 700 hard-backed seats don’t recline and where they screen youth-crime-romance themed Bhojpuri films such as Rang De Basanti Chola, people spit. Balcony or not doesn’t matter. Hawking, machine gun-like spitting, feet up while sitting, talking loudly on the phone, entering as you please — it’s all cool. Turning back to glare at the one who spit doesn’t work. For one, the hall is dark. For another, even if it were an open air cinema and this was an afternoon show of the biggest grosser in recent Bhojpuri cinema history, Sasura Bada Paisewala (2005), boors in the audience may not take kindly to lessons in etiquette.

The approach to Moti cinema is, presumably, the delight of a foreign tourist hunting for an authentic slummy Indian experience. You have to navigate crowded gullies, pass ear cleaners, mangy strays, deft chhola bhatura walas with their giant blackened woks reusing the oil, rickshaws carrying steel pipes, ashen-faced sadhus pulling at chillums, and camera-toting white tourists living the Lonely Planet tour of the poor India, real India. Not many foreign tourists though turn into Moti. Pity because if it’s filth they’re looking for, this building, on its last legs, showcasing the season’s sleaziest, most popular releases is a goldmine.

Films for the masses
Single-screen halls like Moti, fighting a rear-guard action against the steady march of the multiplexes, became the connect between the Bihari diaspora and Bhojpuri cinema. From the narrow streets of Gorakhpur to the by-lanes of Old Delhi, the audience flocked to watch their heroes smash and gyrate while the seetis and the taalis echoed in the out-dated acoustics. For hall owners in Old Delhi unable to buy distributing rights to more expensive Hindi films, Bhojpuri was a God-sent.

Kirit Desai holds the lease to Moti cinema. A man in his seventies, he is resigned to his business and the image of the building that has been his workplace for six decades. Trophies of Raj Kapoor films, a celebratory plaque for the platinum run of a Manmohan Desai film — his shelves are evocative of a period long laid to rest.

Desai doesn’t watch the movies he screens. They’re neither his type nor, as he says, “very thought-provoking”. There’s a resignation in his tone, a throw-in-the-towel wistfulness about the crass content. As more of a go-to-the-multiplex-to catch-Rockstar-with-his-grandkids kind of guy, Desai seems to accept the fate which awaits a. Moti and b. Bhojpuri cinema at large.

Bhojpuri cinema is made for the “masses”. The migrant labourers from Bihar and eastern UP, the construction workers, the slum dwellers, the rickshaw pullers who carry those steel pipes, the people you never see. The closest this class comes to home is in the fantastic worlds dramatised and brought to life by Ravi Kishan, Manoj Tiwari, and off late, the SRK of Bhojpuri: Dinesh Lal Yadav, better known as ‘Nirahua’.

But for all the tacky costumes, the poor production values, posters that are loud, orange, screaming of artificial blood, thunder thighs, bad acting and a staged violence, money is being made. The problem: less money than used to be made a few years ago. Why? Because Hindi movies are now the new Bhojpuri.

Hindi movies catching up
With this current ‘bye romance, hello action’ wave of Hindi movies, the once Bhojpuri-cinema-goers now veer towards pot boilers with stars like Ajay Devgan (Singham) and Salman Khan (Dabangg, Bodyguard) in the lead. Bhojpuri movie titles too are being aped from their Bollywood counterparts. Not just that, they’re also remakes of the ’70s and ’80s Manmohan Desai brand of films. The actresses play second fiddle. If the main course is Nirahua with the 35 lakhs per film that ride on him, the garnishes are Rani Chatterjee and Pakhi Hegde. But the dish altogether is going through rough weather.

Suneel Jain is one of the biggest Bhojpuri movie distributors in the north. Grey-haired with red-stem spectacles, he operates out of a dilapidated three-room office above Bhagirath Palace, the wholesale electrical supplies market in Chandni Chowk. Jain cuts to the chase — business is down. Actually he says, “binness” is down; “50% less money than three years ago.” In 2001-2008, “cheap films” thrived. Now, in 2012, not even cheap films sell well, he says.

At Westend Talkies, yet another single screen theatre, a balcony ticket costs Rs40. Westend plays mostly Bhojpuri films. And here too, the glory days are well a thing of the past. Devdatta Chitnis, one of the partners, and an English Literature graduate from St Stephen’s College, is a staunch loyalist of the single-screen. Like Desai, Chitnis’ father too was in the business before him. But unlike Desai, Chitnis won’t step into a multiplex.

The halls that now show shady Bhojpuri flicks originally screened only the grandest old Hindi movies. Back when the term Bollywood wasn’t coined. Single screens have since lost out. Their share of Bollywood flicks have been swallowed by the multiplex sharks. And professionally, since finances are tight, Chitnis won’t even play — or like he says “exhibit” —ALL Bhojpuri blockbusters. “If the distributor demands too much money, I don’t run it.” Ask him what he runs instead and he thunders in a defiant-embarrassed tone: “ONLY PORN”.