The Mustard Field Dilemma
I’m not sure when I started noticing it, I mean it was always around me. Every television set in every South-Asian household is known to have blared Bollywood content once or twice in its short lifetime. And every child has been subjected to watching a sultry looking brunette, dressed in white shalwar kameez, being chased by a supposedly handsome-looking, floppy-haired guitarist; whose only dance moves are spreading his hands in the gesture of a giant hug. But really; all it means is that he is feeling complex, encompassing emotions and they can be explained by no other bodily gesture than this.
Love in Bollywood either belongs in the pristine white sheets or some far-flung location, usually involving wheat or mustard fields. The hero is always chasing after the heroine, they play a tantalizing game of hide-and-seek behind the giant neem tree, all for the hero to be rewarded with the opportunity to deeply sniff the heroine’s neck and an equally awkward yet never-ending embrace.
Bollywood cashes in on this concept, that love has to be elaborate. It has to be grand. It has to be in a botanical setting, otherwise, it would never make sense. It has to be sultry, it has to be oozing with just the right amount of cheese, and it has to feature nature. Plenty of it.
The antidote to this for someone who prefers slightly less cheese, but an equally romantic scenario — the age-old, bangles getting caught in someone’s kurta. Whereupon, tugging at it will cause the owner of the kurta to throw an intense glance your way, never taking eyes off you as he tries to free the entangled strand with his teeth. Romance and cheese, well-balanced in this case.
It is quite entertaining to see people swallow such content, and then grow up internalizing this warped idea of love in South-Asia. The strongest, most independent brown women that I know, wait for the day when their own bangles get caught in someone’s kurta when they too are chased by some guy (their father clearly does not approve of) in some wheat fields in either side of the border. Since the Western idea of dating to marry, often seems improbable in a community like ours, we rely on pure coincidences and solitary moments of escape.
Where love must be organically pursued, without an unnecessary soundtrack in the background; it is ironic to see that the Axis Mundi of a culture which prides itself on practicality and upright morals, seems to lie in this make-believe, the fantastical idea of dashing heroes and damsels who-probably-don’t-know-they-are-in-love-but-can-be-convinced-if-wooed-enough.
Dating like two consenting adults is frowned upon. Lust and longing? Absolutely abhorrent feelings to have. What can two well-established, good-to-do, independent men and women who are attracted to each other, do in this scenario?
Illicit. Clandestine. Thrilling
These three words come to mind when looking for a loophole in the given scenario. Forbidden love, seems to be the recurring theme in modern-day Desi relationships. Since not everyone and their dad owns a farmhouse in the outskirts of Haryana/Lahore, the age of the internet has closed such gaps and allowed for ease of communication. Slick, oily haired gangly boys, aspiring to make it big in this dog-eat-dog world, and demure, wide-eyed girls with an innocence about them; seem to keep the culture of this kind of love alive on a tiny little screen within the confines of their homes.
Arranged marriages may not be the route that they want to take, but young lovers, as digitally connected as they maybe — look forward to these Bollywood cliches coming true in their own love stories. Truth be told, there is something absolutely endearing (and misogynistic) about the marriage of traditional love with new-age sexuality. There is something exciting (and highly problematic) about saying no quite a few times, and then being serenaded in a mustard field, as if that will bring about the magical three-lettered YES that the hero is looking for.
And can we just talk about the awkward intimacy that arises, as a result of all this effort? The loosening of the sari’s pallu, which is supposed to be sensual, yet the hero makes it awkward by sniffing the heroine’s body all over like a Basset hound. The heroine with her eyes closed, is perhaps trying to understand this sudden wave of consent that is flowing through her blood, she tries to move away as if teasing the hero; only for her to be dragged back in again for an ‘almost kiss’. And then — two flowers come into focus, blurring the rest of this highly cumbersome mating ritual. The rest is up to what you make of it, as Bollywood has fulfilled its purpose; and you the viewer, are now left wanting more.
As I said, there is something highly thrilling about this kind of love. Love that would make zero sense in the real world, due to racial, political and geographical circumstances; but on your television sets it is perfect, it is all too real and no one can take that away from you.
No matter where brown kids go in this big bad world, no matter how much or how less Bollywood has impacted their life; but if we’re being true to ourselves, somewhere deep down in our hearts of hearts, we all want our bangles to be stuck in someone’s kurtas at some point in our lives. We all do want to (consensually) be chased in some mustard field and have the end credits rolling out when things get a little too steamy.
