What got me started on all this pontification about Indian movies being filled with hippies was watching Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Although I liked the movie, one question went through my head throughout the movie: don’t any of these people have jobs?
And then I put analysis and realised that pretty much all Hindi movies have no yuppies. So I sort of lost hope in Bollywood’s ability to showcase yuppies. But then two months later a movie came along which actually had all the rich people stereotypes including yuppies. In fact all three stereotypes had lead roles. This movie was Bachna Ae Haseenon and the three heroines each represent one of the stereotypes.
Minissha Lamba was basically the lala. She was from a rich serd family and married a rich serd guy with a massive family house and reasonably decent family business in Amritsar Sahib.
Bipasha Basu was the hippie. In the first half of the movie, she landed up in Bombay and became a Shiamak Davar dancer which is basically your beginner or starter hippie. The point is that it involves no MS Excel. In the second half, she’s become a supermodel or superstar or both, and all her daily inconveniences are smoothed out by a succession of secretaries who take care of them. So between the first half and the second half she moves from beginner hippiedom to advanced hippiedom.
Deepika Padukone plays the yuppie. She does an MBA, works three jobs, and hunts for stock tips. She also follows tech and plays computer games. When Ranbir Kapoor asks her to put jeevansathi with him, she says K to him because she’s afraid he’ll ask her to stop working (which would result in her lifestyle moving from yuppie to lala).
The most interesting character is Ranbir Kapoor because his classification matches whichever woomaan he’s putting blade on. He starts the movie as a lala by being the rich son of a rich dad who goes on holiday to Switzerland and blades the lala Minissha Lamba. Then in the next segment he’s a video game designer which is a very hippie job. So he blades the hippie Bipasha Basu. Finally he gets promoted to senior management and has game designers reporting to him, and just tracks their progress, so he’s become a yuppie. In this part of the movie he puts blade on the yuppie Deepika Padukone.
I am not sure if the movie is a metaphor for how liberalisation forces lala family-owned businesses to professionalise and hire yuppie senior management. That sort of speculation is better left to people with columns in Sunday newspapers anyway.
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Game designers are not rich and so no classification is possible. In the said movie since the hero has lala parents he is rich.
“Serd”? I like this better than the usual “Surd” which is actually the “unresolved mathematical expression of an nth root”
Or maybe I grew up in South India, where people aren’t familiar with “Serd” while the rest of India has made significant progress. Unlikely, though.
I wanted to point out that even caste and religion stereotypes are utilized in bollywood movies.
Funky guys have to be Punjabi.
Akash Malhotra(Amir khan in Dil Chahata Hai), DJ(Rang De Basanti), Samir Malhotra(Mujse Shaadi Karogi)
Rich people are Marwadi/Baniya/Lala
Sanjay Singhania(Gajini), Dharmraj Singhania(Anupam Kher in Rang De Basanti), Prem Oberoi,
Action Heroes/Villain are suppose to be Rajput(but never both)
Army/Police People: Its a Rule to be a Rajput
Ajay Rathore(Sarfarosh, Rang De Basanti), Ins Arjun Ranawat(Salman in Garv),
Veer Pratap Singh(Veer Zara)
Best example is “Rang De Basanti”:
1) Amir Khan the Funky Guy: Daljit Singh(Punjabi)
2) Siddhartha the Rich kid: Karan Singhania(Marwadi)
3) Atul Kulkarni the Hindu Fanatic: Laxman Pandey(you bet if they showed Josh Kapoor as the Hindu Fanatic)
4) Kunal Kapoor the required Muslim guy for a patriotic movie(like a black guy is required for a patriotic hollywood movie, which these days is also accompanied by an Latino/Jewish/Arab American)
5) Madhavan the Army guy: Ajay Rathod(Rajput).
Major Veer Singh in Veer Zara was Punjabi, not Rajput. Not sure about his religion – could be either Sikh or Hindu. Normally Hindu Punjabis are treated better than the unrealistic Sikh characters in Bollywood…maybe because the directors making them are Hindu.
But the “Major” means army person…leans more toward Sikh. But he’s not turbaned, so may be Hindu or Sikh.
Southies in Bollywood are pretty much idli-sambar oilheads (unrealistic again).