It's all Bollywood's fault – but I'm not complaining

It’s a fad these days to blame Bollywood for everything that’s wrong in one’s world. After all, life imitates art right?

So I blame it for making me want to be taller, prettier, richer and for wanting the waistline of the ‘ta tha thayya ho’ girI.

I blame it for making me want the ideal romance, for making me want to prance around in slow motion in that golden bikini of PC’s, or for wanting to do an item number a la  or wanting to marry Salman Khan. (Ok, I don’t really want ALL the things I just mentioned except the golden bikini bod.)

There must be millions who blame Bollywood for branding women as ‘mast mast cheez’.

But I also blame Bollywood for a bigger mess called the ‘maa da laadla’ complex.

How many times have we heard screen moms talking about their laadla betis and betas.

When a man’s primary line of defence becomes ‘mere paas maa hai’, when a business family’s acrimony is held in check only because of mommy, and when a world-revered Indian musician goes up on stage and thanks his mommy first, we know we are a mother of a nation with a mother of a problem!

In this lies the crux of my predicament.

Many Indian youngsters are the product of years of mollycoddling. At first glance this may not seem a bad thing. But dig deeper, and you realise it could be.

Half a decade ago, Oprah asked Aishwarya Rai about the age at which Indian kids leave home. The answer could very well be ‘never’ in the case of boys. For ladies, it’s a case of jab “doli uthegi”. We are mommy’s ‘lil boys and girls till we are married, and sometimes longer.

The expensive city and our paramparas don’t allow us to spread our wings. ‘Zamaana kya kahega’ is a popular refrain if you live in the same city as your parents but want a place of your own. So that’s where we stay and who we stay: overgrown mommy’s babies, which is not all that bad. Or is it?

Let’s take a quick look at our firang counterparts, globetrotters with adventure in their bones and the smell of freedom in their backpacks.

A year ago, my sailing instructor was a 20-year-old from England who sailed the seven seas by the tender age of 16.

A dancer in my drama class globetrotted on her pretty French feet. By the time she was 18, she was almost done with India, ‘Ze land of karma and yoga and butter chicken’, as she put it.

So, am I enamoured with that way of life? I ask the mamma’s girl in me.

Then another scenario unfolds. The one in which an American, who married my Indian friend, invited his parents over to his wedding like they were just another one of the guests. They didn’t fuss or scold or stress like an Indian parent would at their poppet’s wedding!

I also noticed them pay for their own meals at the umpteen dinner parties that happened.
Was there something wrong with their relationship? Not in the least. It is their parampara to let their bachchas be whoever they want to be. Be grown-ups.

However, that price for freedom is too much for me I realise. To not have to explain my every move to my parent post adulthood might be liberating. But the thought of my folks sitting in a corner on my wedding day, just letting me be, is every ‘mamma’s girl’s’ hell!
So back to my blame game. Bollywood taught me some other platitudes too. For now, I’m content being a mollycoddled Indian because I don’t know any better but also because I know so much better!