Finding My Khandaan: My Life Through the Bollywood Khans
The Khandaan podcast is my latest companion. I listen when I’m cooking and occasionally when I’m taking a walk. I didn’t think I’d ever look back to ’90s & 2000s Bollywood with any kind of fond connection. But Amrita, Asim and Sujoy have me pulled into their newly liberalised/millennial India memories. And if you’re Indian, especially in Mumbai (home to Bollywood), you can’t help but be impacted. The podcast episodes are firstly giving me validation in feeling what I did for which I had no words or commiseration. They’re also making me acknowledge how much these narratives shaped my identity (even in my rejection of their ideas). The Khandaan trio make it safe for me to explore these ideas.
A Khandaan within Bollywood watchers
A podcast (unlike film) feels like a conversation. Books feel like conversations too. But film always makes me feel like I’ve been struck mute, my brain shut down and my self, a silent passanger wherever the director & actors want to take me. Most movies have only taken me to hell so I have no faith in the medium. I’ll probably never be a cinephile.
I’ve had to fish out specific scenes, single dialogues, an occasional song or two that made me feel something. The good moments weren’t usually in line with the artists’ careers or the box office successes. I’m still not convinced that Bollywood had enough such moments to merit the emotional investment of being a fan. Still, the Khandaan conversations feel like a nice curation of some of them.
Bollywood is our biggest source of pop culture. Looking back at the Khan trajectories is to embark on time travel journeys. Bollywood informs Indian fantasies and frames our relationships, khandaan and otherwise.
Does it surprise anyone that the most common North Indian male name is ‘Amit’? An entire generation of Hindi-speaking parents named their first born male babies after the biggest Bollywood superstar of the time. Weddings across the nation have sangeet and women of various cultures starve themselves on Karwa-chauth thanks to the glorification of these rituals in Bollywood. I’ve struggled to find my fam in his Bollywood informed world.
Good guys don’t always succeed in Bollywood
I wonder if my khandaan of people turn up their collective nose at Bollywood because we are distancing ourselves from ‘those’ folks. Isn’t that the nature of everything deemed cringe? Well, better late than never. Or as Ashok Saraf says in Prem Deewane, “Subah ka bhula jab shyam ko ghar aata hain, toh log poochte hain late kyon aaya?”.
Speaking of which, I wish this film got more love. It was funny and sweet. The songs were entertaining (Pedro!). Pooja Bhatt and Vivek Mushran played their silly teenager roles to perfection. Notice how Bollywood kids are usually precocious brats (a la ‘Sabse pehle loongi mummy-daddy ka naam’) or unrealistically kiddish? Not this duo. Prem Deewane had the gorgeous, glorious Madhuri Dixit playing everything from righteous anger to beauty dancing in love. And finally, the wonderful Jaggu dada, him of the unusually safe-but-sexy vibe that no Bollywood leading man ever had.
Khandaan’s Amrita tells me that it was factors other than creative talent or film successes that makes Jackie Shroff a mere footnote if at all, in Bollywood lore. The man was really punished for being a good guy, wasn’t he?
The confused 90s soul
Let’s take a look instead at the Bollywood moments that did grab popular fancy and inform our ideas even today. Awaara’s couple-under-umbrella was immortalised by RK Films as the image of Indian love. Featuring a married man with his well-known affair partner.
Sholay was probably the next film that had an enduring impact on the Indian imagination but it only went as far as iconic dialogues and great songs. I once included Basanti in a list of feminist Bollywood characters but I don’t think it really gets noticed as such.
Till that point, there was a parallel track of Hindi movies that spoke about feminist issues, class sensitivity, caste clashes. The 90s is when art cinema was absorbed into or gobbled up by the mainstream, depending on where you look. So we had find our moral compass in the masala. Khandaan trio, thank you.
The Bad Badshah of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan
I didn’t realise it then but Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaenge didn’t just decide Shah Rukh Khan’s star career; it also marked out that girls like me would always feel out of place. I hated DDLJ even at 15 which is how old I was when the movie first came out. I did not have access to nuanced feminist discourse or for that matter strong female role models.
It was discomfitting to watch Rahul get patted on the back for failing college and stealing. While in the same universe, a girl who studied and worked hard had this appalling dialogue asking to borrow a month from her own life before being married off to a stranger in an Indian village. The injustice of it still burns inside me and only gets bigger each time men call me a feminazi or accuse me of destroying marriage. I feel soothing balm when Khandaan’s Asim or Sujoy express their disdain of toxic masculinity during the conversation. This is what your khandaan is supposed to do for you, not police and terrorise you.
Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan) from Kuch Kuch Hota Hain told me that it was okay for boys to assume girls would hang around waiting for them to choose them whenever they wanted. And that getting picked by a man had to do with things like dressing traditional and wearing makeup. I did not want to end up like Anjali Sharma. But I wasn’t Tina either.
Anjali Sharma (Kajol) was not a pick-me girl, to use a modern definition. For the 90s, she tried really hard to be respectful of Tina (Rani Mukherjee). Tina in turn was also not the mean girl that we were told beautiful girls were. Kuch Kuch Hota Hain was confusing for me because I liked the two female lead characters so much. But the story tells you you’re not supposed to care about anybody but the adult f*ckboi.
Rahul is not even a good friend. When Anjali leaves him, she says her father’s health has been deteriorating. When we see her next, her mother is a widow and it’s fair to assume that the aforementioned illness may have led to the demise. Yet, Rahul’s only words to her when she is leaving is an accusation that she’s leaving him behind. So much for pyaar dosti hain.
DTPH’s Nisha was written better than Anjali
Dil Toh Pagal Hain said the same thing. Except in DTPH, Nisha (Karishma Kapoor) got to have emotions – reasonably complex ones like jealousy and rejection expressed with beauty and compassion. I wish I could find the ‘Main achchi ladki nahin hoon’ scene by the lake since that’s my favorite part of the film. But since I can’t, here’s the Dance of Envy instead which is one of the few times Bollywood centered two women’s professional rather than romantic rivalry.
Honestly, I thought Nisha was the real protagonist of this story. She was probably the first time I saw someone I could relate to on screen (aside from the sneakers-with-heels). She dressed the way young people dressed in the 90s. Nisha didn’t take to sarees and worshipful adoration the minute the minute she fell in love. She also didn’t turn into a vamp or a man-eater on rejection but acted the way normal human beings did.
She had friendships, ambitions, insecurities, labours, decisions and actual conversations. Yes, from understanding the central character of Maya to sustaining the production through an accient to dealing with the tangled love lives backstage. Nisha had a trajectory. None of the other characters (including Rahul) had one. I was even relieved that she didn’t end up getting the guy. Because after what Bollywood tells me happens to women then, why would that be a good thing? Props to Khandaan’s Amrita for pointing out that Pooja/Maya was not a real person but a male fantasy. The Indian MPDG as it were.
Why DTPH was the better Rahul
The most I can say about SRK in this film is that Rahul was a slightly better friend to Nisha in DTPH than to Anjali Sharma in KKHH. He seemed disraught that she was in pain over his rejection. He took care of her when she was drunk. I can easily seeing DTPH’s Rahul setting up one of his bros in a 16 Candlesesque rape of Anjali Sharma and it getting written off as youthful hijinks.
DTPH’s Rahul showed at least some concern for Nisha when she broke her leg. But this meant he was also allowed to violate her privacy when she was dressing and wrestle with her on the bed. It’s written off because he doesn’t ‘see her that way’ (meaning he’s not interested in sleeping with her).
It’s a pretty damning statement about Indian men that they are allowed to violate women and it’s excused because either they don’t want to sleep with them (so it’s okay) or they do want to sleep with them (so it’s okay). The first time Rahul meets Pooja (Madhuri Dixit), he looks angry, not fascinated. The expression on his face is forbidding, threatening and it scares me to look at. Pooja’s response feels perfectly natural – she stops mid-dance, drops her arms and eyes and slinks away making herself as small as possible. What about that is romantic? The sexual tension feels hateful.
We don’t get enough visibility into male vulnerability. But we are required to empathise with it and nurture it. Even the wokest of woke men do not include women as equals when they are truly sharing. They talk to us as if we are their therapists, doctors, caregivers, not their equals. It feels like a warm hug when I hear Khandaan’s Asim talk about loving Salman Khan’s dressing as a teenager but also pointing out that Shah Rukh Khan’s characters are really violent in their supposed romantic overtures. Yes, that makes sense. Human beings evolve and there are many facets to how we are impacted by a medium like Bollywood. I just wish more desi men would get that.
If tomorrow comes, it’s still going to be lonely for women
By the time I had my next notable experience with an SRK film, I chose it. This was Kal Ho Na Ho. I first heard of this film when the title track began playing in the car I was in. My best friend was driving, her first long drive from the suburbs to town. We had both finished b-school in the middle of the first recession and were out hunting jobs.
Unknown to our khandaan, we had also both struggled out of abusive relationships with the exact kind of men that we had seen in these movies. Spoiler alert – the Rahuls of the world are rapey, violent and they cheat. Best Friend had managed to finagle the family car that day and we had a day of facing the struggles of 23 year old women together. As this song started up, she said,
“This is from that new movie. I think this song is just for the two of us. I think we will be okay.”
Over a year later when the film was running in theatres, I had a job. A bragworthy one and in a toxic workplace that spiralled my anxiety further. I was still burning from the wounds left by that horrible relationship, was being pursued/gaslit by this guy and pressured into arranged marriage. I saw the film in the theatre with my family and knew I was not supposed to like it.
The next week, I left home on my way to work. Instead, I went to the theatre and bought a single ticket to the same movie. During that quiet weekday afternoon in the multiplex, with no khandaan to judge me or police me, I cried. I cried for how futile dreams were and how burdensome the thought of another day was. Then I bought another ice-cream just because I could. Kal Ho Na Ho was my first solo date.
I struggled with the SRK mythos for years. This man defines romance and positive masculinity for the entire subcontinent. I was excommunicated from this world when I was a mere teenager. Shrayana Bhattacharya’s book ‘Reluctantly Seeking Shah Rukh’ made me reconsider. I had written off the book based on its title. I only picked it up after hearing Shrayana speak on ‘The Seen and The Unseen’ podcast. As it were, the book made me even more sorry for the plight of Indian women and aware of my own class privilege. It did not make me any more sympathetic towards the SRK persona or Bollywood’s best offerings.
The Acceptable Khandom of Aamir Khan
Aamir Khan is the Khan that I liked. In past tense. And in my defense, I was 9 when his debut Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak came out. What does a child know about crushes or attraction or romance? Definitely nothing in 80s India where it wasn’t even spoken about. As the Khandaan trio points out, QSQT released at a time when what passed for romance was middle-aged or older men chasing young girls around trees. In between doing more important things like solving (or committing) crimes and being good (or bad) sons.
Aamir and Juhi looked young and fresh. And Aamir didn’t feel scary. I would go on to experience CSA two years later by a music teacher. But I guess children have an instinct for situations that they aren’t supposed to be in. Bollywood films felt that way. Till QSQT. The khandaan were the adults and it was them against us.
I liked that Raj (Aamir Khan) tried to help Rashmi (Juhi Chawla) when she was being harassed but was failing miserably till his friends got involved. Isn’t that what a friend is supposed to do? Want to help, not compete with the things that hurt you. I was a little taken aback with the kiss because again, 80s India. Things that we were not supposed to see or think about. The ‘playing house’ storyline of Akele hain to kya gham hain fit in perfectly for a kid which as an adult I can smile at for how unrealistic it is.
I remember a friend who showed me a poster of Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla. In great excitement he said,
“I hope in my next birth, Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla become my parents!”
And that is how my generation of kids knew crushes. It was also a gentle way to bring me into the reality of honour killings.
I rather like that none of the Khandaan episodes I’ve heard so far, champion Aamir Khan movies as great political representations. Because as they say in the Rang de Basanti episode, the politics are rather idealistic and not really connected to reality. On the other hand, Sujoy pointed out the terrible propaganda/misrepresentation in Shah Rukh Khan’s Dil Se (another film I really loathed because of how violent the hero’s romance is). Yes, I think I believe people who sound like me a lot more than these larger-than-life stars whose primary agenda is to sell me something.
I remember when the Aamir mythos began building and it started with Rangeela, a film that marked my first ever visit to a movie theatre with friends. I did not like Aamir Khan in the movie. The theatre was Gaeity-Galaxy (as it is still known to homegrown Mumbaikers), there were at least 15 of us and we fit into two rows of the balcony seats.
I did not like Munna. He was nowhere as exciting as the Munna who first caught my crushworthy attention. Anil Kapoor in Tezaab was an a man in anguish from his economic & political circumstances and had a hint of righteous danger about him. But Rangeela’s Munna was just a lower class Rahul. No prospects, no ambitions, just a lot of entitlement but without the systemic support. His big grouse in life was that someone else paid attention to the girl he took for granted. His loud buffoonery just seems like a classist take. So much for Aamir wokeness.
And he definitely did not deserve Mili, the hardworking budding star spotted by the heartthrob. I did like that her family were supportive of her, unlike Bollywood khandaan stereotypes. I chose to hold on to just the song ‘Haye Rama’ and it became my prize winning performance seven years later on the campus circuit. As I realised later, it was a song that centered the woman (even if the visuals didn’t quite do that). And in the music, it echoed the performance of the woman. That film should have been called Rangeeli.
Aamir’s evolution into Thinking Woman’s Posterboy
The later Aamir films were crafted to cater to me much better, as the pretentious feminist intellectual. I struggled to enjoy Dil Chahta Hain’s selfish, cruel Akash. A male friend explained that, “That’s how we guys talk to each other.” Still, that’s not how I would speak to my friends or want to be spoken to by a friend of any gender. The film was radical in that families allowed their sons more freedom. But what’s new about that? The female characters still went by the khandaan rules.
Lagaan is the only one that came close to having a big impact on my life. I watched it with a classmate on our second day since lectures were cancelled in honour of a trustee’s funeral. I knew nothing about it and she promised that it would be about cricket, which made me groan.
In the two years following, there were multiple lectures where I referenced the leadership skills of Bhuvan and it became a class joke that my prsentations would always include a still from the movie. Still, that was at a distance. And I guess Shrayana said it best when she said, “Salman protects us. Aamir teaches us. Shah Rukh sees us.” I’m not interested in being taught (talked down to) by a man who has shown no more regard for my gender than his fellow Khans.
Still, Aamir is the one that it’s permissible for my class of women to appreciate. It’s always a good sign this Khan does not appear to have a standom like the other two. Standoms are toxic curations, seeded by capitalist agenda. That said, it does still leave me with the problem of being all alone in my opinions about my culture’s most pervasive influence.
The Salmonella poisoning of Bhoidom
Can I say it finally? I called it right. I never liked this man. Not even in the (relatively) unproblematic Maine Pyar Kiya. Rajshri Productions when they do portray women like me, do so as vamps, hateful, vicious women. Funny coincidence then that I played Seema in a colony production of Antakshari. My mother was the producer and Suman (Bhagyashree)’s clothes didn’t fit me. 😂
Salman’s next big film, Hum Apke Hain Kaun was even easier for me to dislike. As the Khandaan folks pointed out, this was one of the films that set the trend of excessive Hindufication and regressive familial rituals as markers of nationalism. I am nowhere in that enmeshed, toxic joint familyverse that treats sisters-in-law as fair game and places the burden of familial happiness on the culinary talents of its daughters-in-law.
And I just didn’t find Salman hot. Of course, that changed and how. I think he’s a horrid but what a goodlooking horrid! My biggest problem with him (and there are so many vying for that position) is the one that hits too close to home – the violence against women. Multiple women from his past have spoken out about his abuse. The most famous one of them all still couldn’t touch his starpower. But the Aishwarya-Salman story impacted for so many reasons. A friend said this to me about the Aishwarya-Salman story and the memory keeps revealing new lessons, each time I think of it. She said,
“My moment of reckoning came when I read about the Aishwarya Rai-Salman Khan relationship. To know that a woman like could get battered was to realize that it had nothing to do with looks whatsoever. And that’s when I stopped needing those (fairness) creams.”
It’s hard for me to enjoy Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, given it was where their relationship began. I am not an Ash Rai fan but what followed after, seems like retribution for the choice that Nandini (Aishwarya Rai) makes between Vanraj (Ajay Devgan) and Sameer (Salman Khan).
And speaking of the movie, South cinema did it way better over 15 years earlier with Mouna Ragam. Starring the incomparable Revathy as Divya, the spirited young woman caught between her exciting activist lover Manohar (Karthik) and a sensible HR manager Chandrakumar (Mohan).
Mouna Ragam endowed its heroine with far more agency and hence the story was hers even if the title described the male protagonist. Nandini, in contrast was a pretty figurehead for Sameer to chase, for Vanraj to protect and for her khandaan to barter around in pursuit of their egos. Mouna Ragam even took Divya from Chennai to Delhi to Agra and showed us her evolution. But Nandini wanders or prances through Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam in the same Kamasutra chic sanskari naari fantasy whether she’s in Rajasthan’s havelis or Italian opera halls.
If this is indicative of a more progressive mindset in South India then I’m not sure I enjoy that realisation. I’ve had a troubled relationship with Tamil culture, thanks to growing up in Bombay and being judged for not being adequately Tamilian. In a face-off between Bollywood and Kollywood, I’d be sitting in the former camp against my will. Yet another way Bollywood let me down and what better personification of that than Salman Khan, slayer of black bucks, violator of mediapersons, vanquisher of pavement dwellers and famous beater of women?
Who does Bollywood touch?
I didn’t really think about all of this while growing up in the same environment. But it occurs to me when I explain it to my friend Topher. Don’t they say teaching is the best form of learning? In teaching my American friend about India, Indians today and what moves us, I’m learning so much about my own self.
Topher is parent to the HeroPress community which nurtures people who are using WordPress to rise above their limitations. He is committed to humbly learning as much as he can about these lives and do what he can to make their future brighter. For Topher, it started with a picture of an Indian child in a slum.
That is who is impacted the most by Bollywood. And this is who pays for the movie tickets, downloads the movie posters to set as phone wallpapers, sets the film songs as a ringtones, carries a film image to their local barber and tailor. Thus, many of our conversations revolve around Bollywood, its nuances and its cultural impact. Topher is trying to raise funds to help him do this. Do consider donating here.
Nostalgia as a roadmap
I might have been a very different person had the internet been as pervasive in the 90s as it is now. If nothing else, I’d have had access to others who thought the way I did, who demanded to see lives like mine on screen, who called out unethical narrative decisions. Young millennials and Gen Z’ers dismiss 80s, 90s and 2000s Bollywood as ‘that’s how people were’. No, that’s not how we all were. That was just how the powerful, rich men that ran the medium were.
I find solace in the Khandaan podcast and its ability to turn nostalgia into a lively conversation. It’s like a warm hug from the past, one that invites us to reflect, critique, and even celebrate those moments that shaped our identities—however complicated they may be. Despite my ambivalence towards much of Bollywood, the Khandaan trio offers me a way to navigate these murky waters, providing both validation and insight. It’s comforting to hear familiar voices discussing moments from the ’90s and 2000s that resonated with me, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. The Khandaan trio are Asim Burney, Amrita Rajan and Sujoy Singha.
Their discussions remind us that while cinema often feels like a monologue, there is now a space for dialogue, allowing us to engage with our cultural narratives actively. In the end, whether we love it, loathe it, or simply tolerate it, Bollywood is undeniably part of our collective fabric and our cinematic heritage.
There’s a LOT going on in this post about who they are, who you are, and how you got here. I’ll probably have to read it several times before I grok it all.
Thanks for the plug. 🙂
@Topher: I’m just glad the LOT is out of my brain and now down on my blog! Thank you for our numerous conversations that helped me understand what was going on and helped me put this post down!