King of Bollywood by Anupama Chopra

Author:Anupama Chopra
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: PER004000
ISBN: 9780446508988
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2007-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

10

Murder, He Wrote

Little about Yash Chopra suggested romance. He was a bald, aging filmmaker who spoke with a throaty Punjabi accent so thick that his sentences often needed translation. He didn’t smoke, touch alcohol, or even imbibe caffeine in any form. His favorite drink was a wholesome milk concoction called lassi. Despite spending decades in the business, Yash had acquired little of Bollywood’s flashiness. With his singularly staid shirts and habit of addressing everyone younger as beta (child), Yash had an avuncular air about him—in fact, many of his actors called him Yash Uncle. Yash had had an arranged marriage when he was thirty-seven. He had two sons, who treated him with old-fashioned reverence. As did most of the industry: Yash Chopra was Bollywood’s high priest of romance.

Yash wasn’t so much a filmmaker as a school of filmmaking. Over forty years of making successful films, Yash had developed a style that was instantly recognized and widely imitated. The quintessential Yash Chopra film reveled in overblown beauty. The heroine, usually played by the leading actress of the day, was portrayed as an ethereal, virginal goddess swathed in chiffon saris. The romance, conducted in spectacular foreign locales (usually Switzerland), was achingly pure. Yash celebrated chaste sensuality; he was a connoisseur of the rain song, in which the heroine, inevitably wearing white clothes, got wet. But sexuality rarely tainted this sunlit world, and lust, betrayal, jealousy, envy, insecurity, the inevitable untidy debris of relationships, didn’t get much screen time either. Above all, Yash propagated family values. His films were filled with rich, beautiful, noble people who struggled gallantly with social and familial obligations.

Through the 1990s, Yash became a movie mogul. His company, Yash Raj Films, grew from a successful but stodgy production house that released one or two films every few years into an integrated entertainment conglomerate. The company dabbled in film production, television software, music videos, and home entertainment. It also included a global distribution network and a music company. The sprawling 180,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Yash Raj Films Studio opened in 2005. A year earlier, the Hollywood Reporter ranked Yash Raj twenty-seventh in its annual list of Top 100 production houses in the world.

Yash’s life was the quintessential film fairy-tale story. He had come to Mumbai on January 1, 1951, with 200 rupees ($5) in his pocket. He was then only nineteen. Yash was born in pre-Partition Lahore and was largely raised in the house of his elder brother, B. R. Chopra, who was then a film journalist. In 1945 Yash moved to Jalandhar to continue his education. Just before Partition in 1947, B. R. Chopra moved to Mumbai and became a filmmaker. Yash joined him as an assistant at a salary of 150 rupees ($3) per month. For seven years, Yash toiled as a mid-level assistant. In 1959, B.R. gave Yash a break as a director with a film called Dhool Ka Phool (Flower of the Dust). The film about the fate of an illegitimate child was a big success and Yash went on to make four more films for his brother.

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