Bollywood’s affair with the mob
Gangland entertainment has attracted the Indian audiences as one can admire the anti-hero gangster because he’s an unbound character. Mobsters also make compelling stories, says Shakuntala Rao

Suketu Mehta, in his book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, blows the lid on Bollywood. Mehta creatively peels at layers of Bollywood’s stormy marriage with the underworld. The author writes about sitting next to Sanjay Dutt at one of his TADA-related court appearances. He narrates the scene in his book. "The judge enters and the roll call is read, 124 names in all. Salim Durrani! Yokub Memon! Sanjay Dutt! And the movie star half stands, and then sits back down, just one of the bomb-blast suspects."

Sanjay Dutt is not the only recognisable face with an underworld connection. A new name emerges each day: Bharat Shah, Govinda, Salman Khan, and more recently, Mahesh Bhatt, as each seem to cater to a host of mafia cronies. Yet the connection goes beyond financial transactions. Gangsters also make compelling stories for the audiences.

In the last decade a whole range of films, achieving various degrees of box-office success, have been made about gangster life: Satya, Company, D, Gangster, Chocolate, Sarkar, Family, Vaastav, Musafir, and Karam to name a few. The most wanted criminal in India, Dawood Ibrahim’s gang called the "D-Company" has had the distinction of having two films made about them. Indeed, a film like Satya portrays mobsters with a curious blend of sympathy and revulsion that will feel familiar to fans of directors like Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola.

In Hollywood gangster movie genre dates back to D.W. Griffith’s 1912 film Musketeers of Pig Alley but the genre surged in popularity during the 1930s. The rise coincided with the rising notoriety of real gangsters like Al Capone and "Baby Face" Nelson. Film historians have argued that gangster films had represented an American form of tragedy, pivoting on capitalism’s dark underbelly. Author of Bullets over Hollywood: The American Gangster Picture John McCarty claims that the formula for all gangster films typically involves a poor immigrant so desperate for success— money, flashy clothes and cars—that he falls prey to a life of crime. His rise is feverish and his downfall complete, usually culminating in a spectacularly violent death.

Gangland entertainment has attracted the Indian audiences as the cultural anxieties continue to mount over the overwhelming ghettoisation of major urban cities and the poverty that surrounds the slums. One can admire the anti-hero gangster because he’s an unbound character who goes where he wants, yields the gun against the corrupt system and "takes no bull" for answers.

On one hand Bollywood’s bigwigs live in fear of the midnight phone calls that often accompany demands for exorbitant ransoms, on the other they keep making films—at times subtly, at times overtly—glorifying the gangster life.

As another series of bomb blasts rips through Mumbai, Bollywood directors get busy writing about those they loathe and love the most.

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