Set In Stone

The heart of Indian cinema lies in its songs, and sometimes the heart of the song lies in a fort or a palace or a historic monument, giving songs a powerful imagery that goes beyond the lyric or the tune or even the performers

- Rehana Munir

Popular indian cinema speaks through songs, and not just their music and lyrics. Songs have a narrative all of their own, drawing not so much from the film they belong to, but to the vast and independent tradition of song-in-film. They escape from the screenplay into a parallel world governed by its own laws and cater to viewer expectations that have little to do with the parent film. The dream sequence, the wedding song, the dance sequence, the college montage – there are dozens of familiar tropes that viewers recognise and historians locate easily within a broader, in-cinema context. of all these tropes, the romantic song reigns supreme. hindi cinema’s iconic courtship ritual has been appropriated by regional cinemas, too, and famously adopted by Western filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann and Danny boyle, for a halfway effect between parody and homage.

Songs need locations. And these, too, have their cinematic tradition. Popular cinema is still the realm of acceptability, especially when it comes to desire. There are boundaries and mores, with filmmakers largely sticking to age-old romantic conventions. The Indian film industry, for few stray exceptions memorable because of their rarity, is infamously coy about ‘the kiss’ between lovers. For years, euphemisms like windswept roses and canoodling birds triggered the required viewer response while keeping society’s self and state-appointed moral police happy. And for that purpose, gardens were most handy.