"I don't like dopey song and dance numbers.""Bollywood singing and dancing getting famous in Hollywood as well.""Jacky Chan wants to sing and dance in Indian movies.""When will Bollywood get over this typical song and dance style?". Enough! Lately I have been encountering these phrases more often than before. This adds to endless list examples of low and mean self-esteems of most of Indians assuming everything foreign to better than Indian. I can not just figure out that how can same things are bad when associated with India while good while associated with foreign, usually United States. If you have to present doctor's certificate for asking for sick leave in India unlike US, then it is smugly labeled as excessive bureaucracy, instead of proper professionalism! Why on earth our actors and actress are running over Hollywood projects - with false pretense of representing India in global scenario and "not for money"! Why do you give a damn about Oscars as if all Hollywood directors are dying for film-fare awards? No, before you jump into comparing Oscars with film-fare, think if you are not just going to present a sample of one of those Indian? This is our award, and that is theirs, what is wrong?
Of course, without taking things on either extreme, I am not suggesting that all Indian things are better, but if some are, why not appreciate it? Indian Railways with its enormous size and traffic load, still do pretty well compared to many countries. There are chances of improvements, but then, where aren't in whole world? Personally, I feel that once in US, Indians can be broadly classified into two categories. First set of people consider themselves Indians, as they were before coming here, while second set takes all care to disassociate itself with all Indian identifications. Soon they find their system malevolent combination of inefficiencies. So cleverly they label all Indian corrupt or ignorant forgetting that they are - or at least have been - part of that very system.
Who claims that singing and dancing are not as essential ingredients of movie as the cast, script, cinematography and direction is? Just because Hollywood or other country don't make musical cinema doesn't set standards. Next time somebody says that Bollywood movies are funny because of singing and dancing and speaks low of them, I will just say that singing and dancing are as much life-and-blood - and not an anomaly - of Indian movies as talking is of any other movie. Can you imagine a silent movie these days? Then better not imagine, and wish for, a Bollywood movie without music!