In a recent Brown-India Initiative lecture, SOAS professor of languages and cultures of South Asia Rachel Dwyer presented on the role of religious mythology in the development of popular Hindi cinema. Given its lengthy song and dance scenes, Bollywood, the name lent to films made in Mumbai, is a genre most often compared by Westerners to musicals. Yet, to stuff a Bollywood film in the same box as a Hollywood musical is to neglect a certain type of life, vibrancy and intensity of emotion that simply cannot be reproduced anywhere else in the world.
