Of Imagined Worlds
Darshana Sreedhar
PICTURE ABHI BAAKI HAI: BOLLYWOOD AS A GUIDE TO MODERN INDIA by Rachel Dwyer Hachette, India, 2015, 295 pp., 499
February 2015, volume 39, No 2

Of Imagined Worlds

Rachel Dwyer’s Picture Abhi Baaki Hai is a de-tailed account of the films produced in India from 1991 to 2001 and the nuanced ways in which the imagination of India and its ‘New Middle Class’ enters the circuit of Bollywood. Originally published as Bollywood’s India: Hindi Cinema as a Guide to Contemporary India (Reaktion Books, 2014), the title of the Indian edition is an evocative take on one of Shah Rukh Khan’s dialogues in the Hindi film Om Shanti Om (Dir. Farah Khan, 2007) and reminiscent of the title of another Hindi film Mere Dost Picture Abhi Baki Hai (Dir. Rajnish Raj Thakur, 2012). Dwyer takes the onset of economic liberalization and the opening of the markets to international players as a key moment to chart the changes that soon culminated in the consolidation of the new middle classes. Her account taps into the larger picture where the diasporas emerge as crucial stakeholders and a sizeable viewer base for Hindi cinema in the years following the 1990s. Dwyer focuses on how these films drew synergies from the larger discourses on the aspirational mobility of middle classes and their urge to succeed in a space chiselled out by changed configurations and power hierarchies. The book maps out the imagined worlds mobilized in these films and how these reflect the nation’s hopes, anxieties, fears and dreams.

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