When Ardh Satya Met Himmatwala

by Avijit Ghosh

English 392 pages 1 edition

The 1980s. In Hindi cinema, it was the decade of the dark and powerful police drama Ardh Satya . It was the decade of the kitschy excess of the action comedy Himmatwala . It was a decade of opposites. It was a time when the best of New Wave 2.0 won acclaim and awards across the globe, and B-grade ‘sex films’ drew crowds into rundown small-town theatres; when ridiculous lyrics set to ‘disco music’ created massive chartbusters, and the poetry of Kabir, Tulsidas and Faiz also found space in film songs. It was a time when Amitabh Bachchan’s injury had all of India praying for a miracle; when Peter Pan Jeetendra was spending more time shooting in Madras than in Bombay; when Rekha still ruled but Sridevi was rising to superstardom; when Naseer, Shabana, Om and Smita were the Fab Four of arthouse cinema; when the flamboyant dancing stars Mithun and Govinda brought a whole new aesthetic to Bollywood; when North and South met and mated like never before. It was a time of furious change beyond the silver screen, too: video cassettes brought cinema to drawing rooms and bedrooms; television and one-day cricket emerged as fierce competition to films; piracy put movie theatres in crisis; film stars were elected to the Indian Parliament in surprising numbers. In this thoroughly researched and entertaining book, Avijit Ghosh, author of the acclaimed bestsellers Cinema Bhojpuri and 40 Retakes , narrates the fascinating story of perhaps the most eventful, disruptive and transformative decade of Hindi cinema.