Bombay Cinema’s Aesthetic Other

Abstract

The term shastriya, while aligned with an art form such as cinema, sounds extremely anomalous. Shastriya connotes the sense of something classical, used primarily within the confines of North Indian/Hindustani classical music. It is not without reason that cinema remains dissociated from epithets like these, especially since cinema’s self-imposed inferiority gets in the way. This inferiority stems primarily from the publicness of cinema, from its status as a public institution. So when Mani Kaul tried to define his cinema with a preference for a term like shastriya, it was a decisive statement against the supposed publicness of the medium. His Uski Roti (1969) was given the Sunday evening slot in television, a slot better known for the popular Bombay films. Kaul, on a lighter note, suggested a different slot for his shastriya cinema:

[I]t was as if they had shown a classical programme during Chhaya Geet. The point is not that classical music is superior to film music, it is that you cannot confuse the one with the other. They could have had a programme called Shastriya Cinema or something and shown Uski Roti there—like they have Mallikarjun Mansur on Shastriya Sangeet! (Rizvi & Amladi, 1980, pp. 9–10)