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Filmi vs the Everyday:Hindi films in the lives of women in an

Indian village
Charusmita, C.

This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster.

© Miss Charusmita Charusmita, 2020.

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 Filmi vs the Everyday

HINDI FILMS IN THE LIVES OF

WOMEN IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE

Charusmita

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the

University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

June 2020

The copyright in this thesis is owned by the author. Any quotation from the thesis or use of any of the information
contained in it must acknowledge this thesis as the source of the quotation or information.

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Thesis submitted in September 2019. Passed viva examination in December 2019 with minor
corrections. Final version submitted in June 2020.

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Abstract

This study examines the purpose and significance of contemporary Hindi films for
women living in Narwal, a north Indian village near Kanpur city. Based on ethnographic
fieldwork carried out over four months, interacting with more than 80 women aged 18-
80 years, this thesis highlights the complexities of audiencehood for women living in
rural India, where ‘rural’ is defined as ‘anything but urban’ and officially houses 69% of
Indian population (Census, 2011). Observations, conversations and interviews were
carried out in a variety of locations, in residents’ homes, local beauty parlours, schools
and workplaces. Despite these women’s negligible viewership of films in cinema
theatres, their limited viewership within their homes, and moral issues around women’s
film consumption, films fulfil these women’s desires in real and/or imaginative spaces,
with the term “filmi” connoting anything that is ‘other’ to village life in these women’s
imaginations. The thesis argues that by engaging in creative cultural production, using
multiple modes of filmic engagement, negotiating within their own households, and
capitalising on ‘men looking away’, women are breaking the everyday rules that govern
them. Their negotiations around their consumption of Hindi films indicate a slow but
steady social transformation which is visible through, and enabled partly by, their
dealings with Hindi cinema. Drawing on James Scott’s concept of ‘everyday resistance’
(1985) that, he argues, lies in the realm of the mundane, this study reveals that social
change is evolving through a growing cluster of ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott:1990) that
women deploy in the context of their love for Hindi films. Through these, the powerful
position of the village males gradually begins to be questioned, thereby challenging the
status quo.

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Acknowledgement

My first step into the world of academia, my doctoral thesis, is dedicated to my grandmother
(nani), Sarojini Awasthi, my grandfather (Dadaji), Budhi Behari Pandey, and my uncle (mama),
Nalin Awasthi, who left me for ever before they could witness me become an oak from a tender
acorn.

I could not do half of what I did without my mentor and supervisor Prof Rosie Thomas, who not
only gave critical inputs whenever required, but also made sure I never lose my confidence in
myself and my work. She always inspires me to do better, and to use punctuations more
effectively!

A big thanks to my pillars of strength Prof Daya Thussu, Dr Anastasia Denisova, and Dr Tarik
Sabry, who offered me unwavering support whenever I felt lost and unsure of my potential.

Dr Roza Tsagarousianou, my second supervisor whose academic rigour can only be matched by
her warm smile, was a huge support in thinking about how we can identify resistance in the face
of power, both theoretically and in life.

My friends Jacqueline, Ritika, Sunil, and Rupanjana, who absorbed my outbursts and provided
me with an environment that was safe, warm, secure, and happy. It is to them I owe my deepest
gratitude for helping me during my darkest times.

My colleagues-cum-friends-cum-coffee partners Dr Indranil, Nathasha, Dr Musab and Sarah,

who kept me company while they continued their own difficult yet satisfying doctoral journeys.
It is only in their company, our endless writing camps, poetry sessions, and cathartic get-
togethers, that I found solidarity and strength.

If and when I complete this degree, it is my mother who will be the happiest, but will express the
least. It is only due to her endless support that I have reached this stage. My father, who reminded
me to write every single day, deserves my most sincere thanks for leading by example through
his tirelessness. For dispelling times of doubts and fear, I owe my brother, Pranjal. One can
always count on him to lighten the darkest of moods with his humour, spontaneity, and
imaginative ways of providing consolation.

My husband, Anand, who I married in January this year, days before I left him to complete my
work in London, deserves the highest accolade there is. Thank you for supporting me even when
I didn’t want to face the world. Thank you for showing me who I could be. I know I have a long
way to go, but I hope your perfectionist ways will bring me back to what matters the most.

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I would also like to acknowledge here my Dadi, and my new wonderful family – Bijendra Kumar
‘Bikal’, Ranjana Singh, and my dearest Anjali – for blessing me with their value-systems and the
richness of their experience.

Although it is “beyond the scope of this section” to name each person who wished well for me in
this journey, I must thank all of my extended family, and my HUGE circle of friends, for whom
the completion of this thesis will come as a big relief.

People without whom this thesis would have been literally inconceivable deserve much more
than my gratitude. Mr. J.N. Mishra (mamaji), mami, and my grandfather Raj Kumar Awasthi,
who not only made me understand the nuances of everyday life in a village, but also taught me
to respect the culture, traditions, and ethos of a place that made me who I am. My nanaji, who
would probably the proudest of my completion, remains my most staunch critic, and I can only
try in this lifetime to become as hungry for knowledge as he is.

Women of Narwal, it is you and only you who deserve to own every word of this work. My
origins lie where yours are, and I hope that one day I will be able to look you in the eye and say
that I have given you as much as you gave me. I love you all.

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Statement of originality:

I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own research, and
extracts from other academic work have been duly acknowledged.

Charusmita

(New Delhi, September 2019)

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Table of Contents
FILMI VS THE EVERYDAY ........................................................................................................................ I

HINDI FILMS IN THE LIVES OF WOMEN IN AN INDIAN VILLAGE .............................................................. I

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................................... II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT................................................................................................................................... IV
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY:......................................................................................................................... VI
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................................... XI
LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................................XII

1 ............................................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................................................1
1.1 BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................... 3
1.1.1 The ‘rural’ in rural film consumption .................................................................................... 4
1.1.2 About Narwal: The legacy, landscape and current challenges .................................................. 7
1.2 RESEARCH AIMS ................................................................................................................................... 17
1.3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................................... 18
1.3.1 Overview of the research procedure ....................................................................................... 19
1.3.2 Networks and interlocutors ..................................................................................................... 23
1.3.3 Staying with the residents ....................................................................................................... 23
1.3.4 Watching films at home and at the Industrial Training Institute ............................................ 24
1.3.5 Spending time at beauty parlours and tailor boutiques .......................................................... 26
1.3.6 Interactions in schools and computer learning centre ............................................................ 29
1.3.7 Attending weddings, festivals and family celebrations ........................................................... 30
1.3.8 The semi-structured interviews ............................................................................................... 31
1.4 METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES ............................................................................................................. 33
1.4.1 Gaining access to village women ............................................................................................ 33
1.4.2 Power relation between researcher and participants ............................................................. 36
1.4.3 Unreliable statistics: ................................................................................................................ 37
1.4.4 Scale and generalisability of the study .................................................................................... 38
1.4.5 Confidentiality and ethical concerns ....................................................................................... 39
1.4.6 Field note taking and informed consent .................................................................................. 41
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................................. 42

2 ..........................................................................................................................................................45

A REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...................................................................................................................45

2.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 45

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 2.2 THE AUDIENCE COMPLEX ....................................................................................................................... 47
2.2.1 Audiencehood beyond filmgoing and viewership .................................................................... 47
2.2.2 Audience as an unstructured abstraction ................................................................................ 49
2.2.3 Need for an inclusive narrative of Audiencehood .................................................................... 50
2.3 PREVIOUS ETHNOGRAPHIC WORK ON INDIAN AUDIENCES.............................................................................. 53
2.3.1 A Voice Silenced: A critique of audience reception studies of Hindi films................................ 62
2.3 FROM GEERTZ’S ‘THICK DESCRIPTION’ TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF MEDIA...................................................... 68
2.3.1 The anthropological turn ......................................................................................................... 69
2.3.2 The landscape of ‘Meaning’: Analysing ethnographic data .................................................... 74
2.4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: EXAMINING ‘EVERYDAY RESISTANCE’ .................................................................. 76
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................................. 78

3 ..........................................................................................................................................................81

ACCESSING FILM: .................................................................................................................................81

DEVICES IN USE BY WOMEN IN NARWAL .............................................................................................81

3.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 81
3.2 TELEVISION ......................................................................................................................................... 82
3.3 LAPTOPS AND PERSONAL COMPUTERS....................................................................................................... 91
3.3.1 The village ‘Computer Shop’ .................................................................................................... 93
3.3.2 Women and computer education ............................................................................................ 95
3.4 MOBILE PHONES .................................................................................................................................. 99
3.5 RADIO AND NEWSPAPERS .................................................................................................................... 106
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................... 111

4 ........................................................................................................................................................ 114

LOCATING THE FILM: ......................................................................................................................... 114

SITES AND FORMS OF FILM CONTENT................................................................................................ 114

4.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 114
4.2 WATCHING HINDI FILMS - SHAUK HAI PAR KABHI POORA NAHI HUA .............................................................. 114
4.2.1 Viewership in the absence of cinema halls ............................................................................ 115
4.2.2 Fragments of feature films: Videos in circulation .................................................................. 121
4.2.3 Televised film consumption ................................................................................................... 123
4.3 FILM MUSIC....................................................................................................................................... 126
4.4 EXPERIENCING FILM THROUGH VISUAL CULTURE: IMAGES AND OBJECTS ......................................................... 132
4.4.1 Images and posters in beauty parlours ................................................................................. 133
4.4.2 Photo studios in Narwal ........................................................................................................ 135

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 4.4.3 Imprints of Hindi film on everyday objects ............................................................................ 138
4.4.4 Use of profile pictures on social media platforms ................................................................. 148
4.5 FILMI CELEBRATIONS AND CHANGING TRADITIONS: “FILMON MEIN NAHI DEKHA KYA?” .................................... 154
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................... 159

5 ........................................................................................................................................................ 161

OUTSIDE THE QUOTIDIAN: ................................................................................................................ 161

FILMS AS EVERYTHING THE EVERYDAY IS NOT................................................................................... 161

5.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 161
5.2 TRANSGRESSION AND COMPLIANCE IN THE MORAL UNIVERSE OF THE VILLAGE ................................................. 163
5.3 UNINSPIRING TELEVISION: THE MUNDANE VERSUS THE SPECIAL ................................................................... 168
5.4 RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WORLD OF POPULAR HINDI FILMS ........................................................................ 171
5.5 CONNOTATIONS OF THE WORD FILMI ..................................................................................................... 181
5.5.1 Filmi as an avid film consumer .............................................................................................. 181
5.5.2 Filmi as an exaggerated version of the self ........................................................................... 182
5.5.3 Filmi as melodramatic ........................................................................................................... 183
5.5.4 Filmi as fashionably transgressive ......................................................................................... 184
5.5.5 Filmi as romantically bold and expressive ............................................................................. 187
5.5.6 Filmi as a slacker ................................................................................................................... 190
5.5.7 Filmi as unrealistic ................................................................................................................. 191
5.5.8 Filmi as rebellious .................................................................................................................. 193
5.5.9 Filmi as devoid of morals and cultural values........................................................................ 195
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................... 196

6 ........................................................................................................................................................ 199

“BUT IF HE CAN, WHY CAN’T I?”: ....................................................................................................... 199

RESTRICTIONS ON AND NEGOTIATIONS AROUND WOMEN’S FILM CONSUMPTION .......................... 199

6.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 199
6.2 THE STATUS QUO: CONCERNS REGARDING WOMEN’S MEDIA USE ................................................................. 204
6.2.1 Safety concerns around women’s media use ........................................................................ 208
6.2.2 Rules guiding women’s media use within households........................................................... 209
6.2.3 Differential barriers in accessing and using technology ........................................................ 211
6.2.4 Women’s social position in public spaces within the village ................................................. 217
6.3 A MOMENT OF CHANGE: FORMS OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE AND NEGOTIATIONS ............................................. 219
6.3.1 Negotiation through the use of multiple modes of film engagement ................................... 222
6.3.2 Away from the watchful eyes: Consuming film through print medium ................................. 223

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 6.3.3 Strategies within the household ............................................................................................ 229
6.3.4 Negotiating through creative production .............................................................................. 231
6.3.5 Men’s uncomfortable relationship with women’s preferences ............................................. 235
6.3.6 When men choose to ‘look away’ .......................................................................................... 236
6.3.7 What men cannot control ..................................................................................................... 238
CONCLUSION: THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................................... 240

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 246

LIST OF REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................... 252

APPENDIX I ........................................................................................................................................ 268

A SAMPLE OF AN INTERACTION: THE RESEARCHER AND THE PARTICIPANT ...................................... 268

APPENDIX II ....................................................................................................................................... 273

POINTS OF DISCUSSION WITH MY INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS ........................................................... 273

APPENDIX III ...................................................................................................................................... 279

PARTICIPANTS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 279

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List of figures

Figure 1.1 A map of Narwal (© Google Maps) 9

Figure 3.1 A poster in a beauty parlour in Narwal (©Charusmita) 89

Figure 3.2 A radio transistor in a household (©Charusmita) 107

Figure 3.3 Radio transistor in another household (©Charusmita) 108

Figure 3.4 An old radio transistor used infrequently in a household (©Charusmita) 109

Figure 4.1 A band-vehicle ('Baaraat-band') spotted in Narwal (©Charusmita) 130

Figure 4.2 Plastic bag with an image of Shah Rukh Khan for packaging clothes stitched by Durga Devi
(©Charusmita) 140

Figure 4.3 Durga Devi's catalogue book for saree blouse designs (©Charusmita) 141

Figure 4.4 Cardboard packaging box for bangles in Narwal (©Charusmita) 144

Figure 4.5 Packaging for women's vanity box in a Narwal household (©Charusmita) 145

Figure 4.6 Mouth freshener packaging with an image of a film poster featuring actor Salman Khan, being
sold on a cart in Narwal (©Charusmita) 146

Figure 4.7 Public display picture of Shweta (22) on her WhatsApp profile (©Google stock images) 150

Figure 6.1 Front page of 'Movie Magic' newspaper supplement - 01 (©Hindustan Times Media Group,
source: htmedia.in) 225

Figure 6.2 Front page of 'Movie Magic' newspaper supplement - 02 (©Hindustan Times Media Group,
source: htmedia.in) 226

Figure 6.3 Third page of 'Movie Magic' newspaper supplement (©Hindustan Times Media Group,
source: htmedia.in) 227

Figure 6.4 WhatsApp display picture of my participant, Seema (20) (source: participant’s WhatsApp
profile) 233

Figure 7.1 PictureTime's truck housing the portable DigiPlex (©PictureTime, source:
twitter.com/PictureTime4/status/668714617070354432) 248

Figure 7.2 PictureTime's DigiPlex from the inside in Delhi (©PictureTime, source:
twitter.com/PictureTime4/status/1078217469070839810) 248

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List of tables

Table 1.1 Summarised demographic information about Narwal 12

Table 1.2 Overview of my field work 21

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 1
Introduction

In 1973, when the Hindi film audience was being charmed and scandalised by the
controversial teenage love-story Bobby, a young woman of 19 decided to watch it in a
theatre in Jaunpur town with her college friends.1 Midway through the matinee show, the
darkness of the cinema hall was disrupted by men in police uniform with flashlights. “She
is here”, shouted one of the two constables. They escorted her out of the cinema hall
while her friends were still inside. That young woman was my aunt. Now 64 years old,
she recalls how watching a film that was considered sensual, and therefore controversial,
in a theatre with my friends evoked a strong reaction from her father. He was a reputable
jail-superintendent, and a middle-class Indian father, who said he did not want his
daughter’s demeanour (chaal-chalan) to be influenced by a morally corrupt (bhrasht)
film like Bobby. The film broke all records at the Indian box office that year and also
became the second-highest grosser of that decade (BoxOfficeIndia, 2019). This sensual
love-story also featured a kissing scene between the lead actor and actress which was
highly unusual in mainstream Hindi cinema at the time. The more compelling reason for
my grandfather to get his daughter out of the theatre was to teach her a lesson for life,
that it was not just the one film but the glamour of cinema itself which was a ‘bad
influence’ on young women. Not much has changed since then for women in small towns
and rural areas wanting to watch the films they love.

1 Jaunpur is a town in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India. An urban agglomeration, according to Census, Govt.
of India (2011a), Jaunpur is not comparable to mega cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and so on

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India has gone through paradigm shifts since the 1970s economically, socially and
culturally. However, even in 2015 in a village in Uttar Pradesh (same state as Jaunpur)
women were still actively discouraged from going to the theatres to watch films. There
is no cinema theatre in this village, which is around 36 kilometres from the famous city
of Kanpur and going to the city to watch it is said to pose safety, economic, and more
importantly, moral and social challenges for the women here. I remember the reaction of
the wife of one of my hosts in Narwal when I asked her if she would accompany me to
Kanpur to watch a film. She looked at me, amazed and amused, and said, “Sheher? Film
dekhne? Akele?” (meaning: City? To watch a film? Alone?). These three word-questions
asked in succession were enough to give me an idea of how surprised she was by my
proposition. This was similar to the reactions I got from other women, as well as men
about the women in their homes. If watching Hindi films was so uncommon for these
women, there was a strong possibility of women not engaging with them, I thought.
However, two weeks into my field research, I noted that, despite (or possibly because of)
the pleasure of consuming film often being a transgressive activity, I witnessed everyday
acts by women of varying age groups that hinted at a complex and unexplored Hindi film
culture thriving here, often away from the watchful eyes of those who disapproved.
Watching films at a relative’s place when the parents disapprove, listening to film songs
on a mobile phone that one is not supposed to have, dreaming of a grand Bollywood-style
wedding that is beyond the household budget, displaying affection through filmic images
on a social media app which you are not supposed to share publicly, dressing up in film-
inspired designs that deviate from rural sartorial tastes, and considering marrying a man
from a different caste ‘for love’, were all acts that were happening in the same village.
There were not only instances of transgressions but also rare moments when women
challenged the status quo within the household and outside, in relation to constraints on
their consumption of film. These women certainly did not fit the definition of ‘fans’ of
films. What, then, was the nature of this relationship that my participants shared with
Hindi films? Why were some of them willing to break the everyday rules of their society
to engage with Hindi films in some way? What then did it mean to be a female Hindi film
consumer in rural North India? This question is what drives this thesis.

A field visit for my dissertation for a master’s degree took me to my ancestral paternal
village, Bhaupur in Uttar Pradesh in 2011. This village was about 26 kilometres from
Kanpur on the Agra-Kanpur rail route, closer to the city than Narwal, and therefore,

2
relatively ‘modernised’. The village did not have a cinema theatre. I was hoping to
conduct group interviews of men and women together. All my research participants at
that time turned out to be men in the village, despite repeated invitations for women to
join the group. None of them came forward to join a discussion that was not just full of
male participants but also male onlookers, because that would be considered audacious.
Two young women in their early twenties, who were listening to my discussions from
behind the doors, told me they did not think that the Hindi filmmakers understood how
rural poverty works (Charusmita, 2015). They also pointed out the lack of authenticity in
the dialect used in the film (the case study for that research) and how they wished
someone would present a ‘real picture’ of rural life. A few other women too, who did not
come forward to take part in the all-male group discussion, had engaging tales of their
love for films once I spoke to them alone. There it was: women of different age groups,
sharing the common background of a rural community, sharing their thoughts on how
they see India’s villages being represented on the big screen. What did this mean? What
more did they have to share about their relationship with Hindi films? Moreover, if this
village was just 26 kms away from the city, what could be said about a rural space that
was further away from it? It was then that I decided to pursue further research on
women’s film consumption in a rural setting where the paradox was apparent – these
women did not watch full-length films and yet engaged with them in the most complex
ways. The village where my maternal grandparents resided at the time, Narwal, 36 kms
on the other side from Kanpur, seemed like a perfect choice to explore this. The unique
character and history of the village, its location, my familiarity with the dialect, and the
fact that this village was almost in the centre of the Hindi Heartland region of India were
further reasons to select Narwal.2

1.1 Background
With changing technology, the modality of consumption of films and their exhibition
spaces have also been refashioned. In comparison to men, in a village setting like Narwal,
the women as a community have less access to spaces of collective film viewing.
However, their modes of film consumption are multifarious and varied according to their
class and age groups. In Narwal, film products exist in various forms – on smartphones,

2 For an overview of Narwal, see section 1.1.2

3
at weddings, on everyday grocery products, in magazines, on radio, via recitations of
popular film dialogues, through poster advertisements on the back of public vehicles, at
festivals and other celebrations.3

A prominent visual and material film culture is evident in Narwal through the presence
and use of filmic posters, images on everyday objects, and display pictures on social
media.4 Smartphones enabled with 3G/4G internet have made their way to Narwal where
film products are now widely accessed through mobile phones.5 Tej K. Bhatia, writing in
2007, had described a bleak future for cinema in rural spaces and a much brighter one for
television. He had predicted a downward trend in film viewership because it is primarily
popular only with the young males, is expensive, and not easily accessible (Bhatia,
2007:66). His argument was not supported by any data or primary study and did not take
into account the rising access to films through other media. He extolled television and
went on to say that it is the only ‘proper’ mass-medium in rural areas (ibid.). My research
suggests this has changed drastically with the proliferation of internet; in chapter five, I
draw a comparison between television and Hindi film consumption in Narwal that shows
that television is considered to be ‘mundane’, while films loom larger in the imaginations
of Narwal women. I explore this somewhat surprising finding later in the thesis.

1.1.1 The ‘rural’ in rural film consumption

There is a surprisingly small body of scholarly work on rural Hindi film consumers in
India. Within that, as demonstrated by my analysis of Beatrix Pfleiderer and Lothar
Lutze’s study (1985), as discussed in the next chapter, there existed an insensitivity
towards understanding the local cultures, and men have dominated women as research
subjects in the already existing studies (see Mishra, 1980). My study, conducted in 2016,
provides a snapshot of women as film consumers in a rural space in India and describes
their varied and ‘textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011) experiences of consuming Hindi

3 See chapter four

4 I discuss this in detail in section 4.4
5 For studies on the use of mobile phones by women in Indian rural spaces, see Tenhunen (2014), Doron (2012), Jouhki
(2013), and Tacchi, Kathi, and Crawford (2012). I engage with their arguments in the section on use of phones in
section 3.4

4
film content.6 A study of women’s film consumption in rural spaces, which are not the
primary sources of revenue for the filmmakers, is significant because more than 68.84
per cent (Census, 2011a) of Indians reside in non-urban areas, a sizeable proportion of
the country’s population. Poverty and economic limitations, lack of film theatres, and
illegal film downloads online are primarily responsible for the rural people being at the
margins of film distribution, as well as what they perceive as an inaccurate representation
of them in mainstream Hindi cinema.

In mass media studies on India, the rural setting is already under-researched, but the
question that is relevant to this study at this point is this: What do I mean by ‘rural’ and
what makes it worth studying women’s film consumption in such a space? Rural spaces
in India offer a unique set of features which make it a significant location for studying
the role of cinema in everyday life. There is undeniably more to a village than being
caricatured, romanticised, or represented as a crime-infested hellhole with complete
failure of the State machinery, as films and mainstream media tend to do. But how is a
village defined in India?

A key challenge faced by scholars working on rural sociology in India is to define a

village (see Srinivasan, 2004:81). A ‘census village’ is, more often than not, a social unit
that bears little resemblance to on-ground rural organisation in real life. The census of
India defines rural areas as ‘all but urban’ (Census of India, 2011a). It formally describes
the urban regions as comprising ‘statutory towns’, ‘census towns’ and ‘outgrowth’ (ibid.).
These definitions only define the administrative boundaries marked by the government
for urban areas, and “one cannot say just where a village ends and a town begins” (Sharma
2004:48). Villages throughout India differ greatly in terms of economics, politics, Human
Development Index levels, language, clothing, and more. However, the social structure
in India is still such that “within the existing Indian society, class struggles have been
often assuming the form of caste struggles” (Desai, 1969: 38) even now. Rajendra Kumar
Sharma, an Indian sociologist who has extensively researched on rural and urban
sociology in Uttar Pradesh explains the distinction between rural and urban society based
on their social organisation:

6 ‘Textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011) consumption refers to the practice of accessing texts through multiple
platforms, elaborated in chapter two

5
 … ‘great importance given to family bonds’, ‘low educational level’ and ‘low social status of
women’, ‘greater bonding with the neighbours’, ‘higher influence of the community on the
individual’, ‘clear demarcations and inequality in classes’ characterise the sociology of a village
in India.

(Sharma 2004:49)

This still holds true in my experience, more than a decade since Rajendra Sharma’s
aforementioned study (2004). The everyday culture of urban and rural settings also
differs greatly. For example, according to Sharma, “Culture is more static in the villages
than in the towns…Traditions have a very important place in the rural culture, while
urban culture does not attach much importance to them” (ibid.). Here, Sharma refers to
culture largely as a set of social norms (ibid.). Having said that, it also cannot be denied
that cityscapes are also very complex and there are areas within cities or similar
demographics where traditions are important, or more important than in other areas or
demographics. The rural spaces in India are increasingly becoming “modern” yet there is
a clear distinction between city and village spaces and the difference is immediately felt
upon entering either of them. I witnessed in Narwal what Arvind Rajagopal had termed
an ‘incomplete modernity’ (Rajagopal, 1996:442), where modernity ‘offers a contested
and contradictory set of values’ (ibid.). Within the villages, the most basic unit in the
social structure was not the individual, but the family. As A.R. Desai said, “...family and
familism impress their stamp on the entire rural structure. Familism permeates it from
top to bottom” (Desai, 1969:31). More recent ethnographies of rural North India
confirmed this sociological characteristic of family as the most significant social unit (see
Singh et al., 2017:105; Madan and Madan, 1983:46). My observations in the field
confirmed that within the family, the woman is expected to play the role of the glue that
binds everyone together and this can be witnessed during festivals, rituals, and
celebrations, where women are at the forefront, leading the traditional festivities with a
sense of authority. This was also validated by my own experiences of visiting the villages
in UP as a child as well as through conversations by my parents who grew up in two
different villages there. The burden of honour, morality, and conserving traditions within
a family set up lies on the shoulders of women, who seem to have little power to subvert
these norms.7 However, the power structures within the village still favour the men. The

7 See Bhattacharya’s (no date) study on challenges faced by women in rural India in terms of health and employment.

6
caste system is still prevalent in this space, according to several scholars in the context
of rural North India before (see Sharma, 2004; Desai, 1969). It is in this social space that
I situate my study.

1.1.2 About Narwal: The legacy, landscape and current challenges

Narwal’s historical significance looms large in the minds of the people in and around this
village. By the end of the 19th century, when India was part of a struggle for independence
from the British Raj, resistance movements, big and small, confrontational and mundane,
had sprung across the country. Hundreds of thousands of villages and cities became
centres of resistance as well as birthplaces of future freedom fighters. In the present-day
Uttar Pradesh in northern India, Narwal still wears the legacy of being a hub for resistance
movements proudly on its sleeve. The Indian flag song, Jhanda uncha rahe hamara,
vijayi vishwa Tiranga payara, was written by the Padma Shri awardee Shri Shyamlal
Gupta ‘Parshad’, who was born in Narwal village in 1896.8 In 1918, when the Home Rule
League work was operating in the city of Kanpur, he helped organise a Home Rule meet
at Narwal along with Ganesh Shankar ‘Vidyarthi’, a leader of the Indian National
Congress and an independence movement activist. As documented by Vidyarthi’s
biographer, Moti Lal Bhargava, it was due to the persistent efforts of Ganesh Shankar
‘Vidyarthi’ that Narwal became a live centre for social, cultural and political activities
during the independence movement (Bhargava, 1988). With the help of about 1500
volunteers at the Narwal training camps he set up, Vidyarthi organised events that aimed
to help people there rise above the caste prejudices and untouchability. In February 1929,
he established the Sewa Ashram in Narwal and became its president. This was intended
to promote the production of Khadi using the spinning-wheel (Charkha), which he
regarded as the ‘saviour of the peasants’ (ibid.) and later became an iconic symbol of
Indian independence. At the invitation of Shyamlal Gupta ‘Parshad’, Mahatma Gandhi
too visited Narwal in 1934 to meet the Khadi Ashram workers. The people of this village
still boast of this legacy of social movements and the village’s contribution to the Indian
independence struggle. It became an educational hub for adjacent smaller villages

8 The song translates to: ‘May our flag be at the zenith for ever; the conqueror of the world, our tri-colour’

7
following independence in 1947. Narwal was recently declared a Tehsil in 2018 by the
Government of India, comprising 207 small villages of which Narwal village itself is a
part. However, in the village that served as the locus for numerous freedom fighters, the
battle for gender equity rages on, and it is not just Narwal that is grappling with this
problem in this region.

Despite being hailed as the ‘promised land’ of change and revolution at one point in time,
what I witnessed upon arriving there in 2015 was that negotiations between tradition and
modernity were invariably seen as the struggle of men, while women continued to protect
and uphold the izzat (meaning: respect, honour) and sanskaar (the moral and cultural
values) of the family. Susan Wadley, in her work spanning almost three decades on
village life in Uttar Pradesh, explained this as “the contradictory nature of femaleness—
that a woman, although subordinate, holds the family's fate in her hands” (1994:40).
Before leaving for fieldwork, my intention was to record film viewing experiences of
women in this space as my experience with my fieldwork in U.P. in 2011 had aroused
my curiosity. I had hoped to explore the thriving film culture in rural areas and what kind
of films appealed to women in a place where there was no cinema theatre and yet a strong
presence of Hindi films. I imagined my interactions to be excited chatters, lengthy
conversations about favourite film stars, studying the social factors that governed their
film choices. However, the gendered divisions of everyday life there seldom left room
for dramatic enactments of happiness, pain, or disquiet by women. In the first week, there
were hardly any women who were watching full-length Hindi feature films at a stretch
on television or laptops or city-screens. I asked one of the women I was living with, “So
women are not too fond of watching Hindi films here, right?” It took me two weeks to
realise how strong Hindi film’s influence was on women here and how they were
consuming (and not merely watching) Hindi films in different ways.

Narwal is located 36 kms south-east of Kanpur city and falls under Kanpur Nagar district.
A drive from New Delhi to Narwal takes about 7.5 hours. From the wide Delhi-Agra
Expressway to the narrow alleys of Narwal, the changing scenery along the route is
indicative of the shift from a metropolitan city like Delhi to a rural setup like Narwal.
The drive starts with Buddh International Circuit at the beginning of the highway while
the scenery gradually changes to beautiful sprawling agricultural farms.9 About 10 kms

9 Buddh International Circuit is an Indian motor racing circuit

8
before Narwal is a railway crossing at Sarsaul, where local commuters have to halt for
up to half an hour sometimes before being able to cross over. News-stands and small tea
shops have sprouted up in the last ten years, providing tea, snacks and newspapers to
people waiting. In September, one can see people selling BTC forms at the crossing for
entry to the teacher’s training exam in Narwal, bolstering the image of the village as an
educational hub.10 The students who pass this coveted exam further receive professional
government certification at the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), which
is just at the border of the village. Below is a sketch map of the village (figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 A map of Narwal (© Google Maps)

Upon entering Narwal, one first sees the Murli Manohar Temple, which is among the
eight Hindu temples in the village. Moving ahead, there is the Bhaskara Nand Inter
College, which is the oldest educational institution in Narwal. In the last decade, the
housing arrangement of the village has undergone a substantial change, according to
Jitendra Shukla ji (58), one of my interlocutors who is a distant family contact in Narwal.
He told me that irrespective of class and caste, people living in the earlier era could build

10 BTC stands for Basic Training Certificate (BTC). It is a Certificate level Educational course which is necessary
certification for the appointment of primary teachers in government primary schools in India

9
their houses wherever they could buy, inherit or occupy land in the village. In the last ten
years, there has been an unspoken but well understood segregation, with people of better
means building pucca houses in the central locations in the village.11 On the other hand,
poor people or those belonging to the so-called lower castes found it more suitable,
economically, to live in areas where land was relatively cheaper. Thus, the location of
one’s house is now indicative of one’s class, and often also caste.

The total population of Narwal as a revenue village was 5578, according to Census
(2011a).12 Indian government’s official sources recognise villages as follows:

Village or Town is recognised as the basic area of habitation... […] ...In the rural areas the smallest
area of habitation, viz., the village generally follows the limits of a revenue village that is
recognised by the normal district administration. The revenue village need not necessarily be a
single agglomeration of the habitations. But the revenue village has a definite surveyed boundary
and each village is a separate administrative unit with separate village accounts. It may have one
or more hamlets. The entire revenue village is one unit.

(Census of India, 2011b)

C Ramachandraiah, a professor of geography at the Centre for Economic and Social

Studies, India, highlighted a challenge in identifying the boundaries of small settlements
within these revenue villages. He said:

…even if there are hamlets [small settlements within the village], what appears in the Census is
the name of the (revenue) village…[..]…The concept of revenue village was introduced by the
British [in India during colonial rule] as the lowest administrative unit in the settlement hierarchy
for revenue collection and not for any local level planning and development. If one has to examine
various dimensions of development at village level, there is no way one can know about hamlets
through the DCHBs [the District Census Handbook. Some of the hamlets are quite significant in
size and are, sometimes, as big as the main village itself.

(Ramachandraiah, 1995:2301)

Keeping this in mind, the population of Narwal alone, without its neighbouring villages,
was ~3000 in 2015 when I started my fieldwork.13 This inhabitation within the revenue

11 Pucca housing refers to permanent and solid dwellings using substantial building materials such as stone, brick,
cement, concrete, or timber
12 A revenue village is a cluster of smaller villages, with one main village as its name
13 Due to outdated Census data and lack of statistics of specific location, I had to rely on the accounts of residents of
Narwal

10
village (also called Narwal, since this is the largest village among the group of nearby
villages) is where I carried out my fieldwork. However, all government statistics
pertaining to Narwal henceforth in this document are for the revenue village Narwal.
However, the qualitative data of my participants is from my field site (can be thought of
as ‘core Narwal’), which is the largest among the cluster of villages as counted for the
revenue village purposes, unless mentioned otherwise. The only the demographic data
that were available was that of the revenue village in the Census of India documents. This
estimate (2011a) stated that the total population of Narwal (revenue) village was 5578,
out of the total population, 2949 (53%) were males and 2629 (47%) were females. There
were a total of 1035 families residing in this (revenue) village. There were 842 residents
belonging to the scheduled castes, out of which 436 were males and 406 were females. It
is an area predominantly inhabited by Hindus (~90%), with less than 10 per cent Muslims
and zero Christians. In terms of caste, the Scheduled Caste (SC) constitutes 15.10 % of
total population in Narwal village and as of 2011 does not have any Schedule Tribe (ST)
population. Narwal village has a higher literacy rate than neighbouring regions of Uttar
Pradesh. The total literacy rate of Narwal village in 2011 was 81.51%, significantly
higher than the 67.68 % of Uttar Pradesh state. In this village, the male literacy rate was
87.59 % while the female literacy rate was 74.56 %. The local language is a dialect of
Hindi known as Khari Boli, which I can understand completely and can speak a little.
However, my interactions with my participants mostly happened in a mix of Hindi and
Urdu (Hindustani).

The ruling party of India, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), had a stronghold in this village
in the duration of my field work, the extent of which I witnessed during my stay. In
November 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetization of
all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi series, I witnessed people
standing in queues outside banks to deposit the old currency notes and chatting with each
other about how this was in the interest of a ‘greater good’ of eradicating corruption [ab
hatega bhrashtachaar, toh kya hua agar kuch maah ki taqleef hai]. The overwhelmingly
large majority of upper caste Hindus in the village and the discussions at the homes of
my hosts, all pointed to a large voter base of the BJP here. During my conversations,
which was mostly with women, the political landscape of Narwal did not come up, and
hence, I am unable to comment on how my participants voted.

11
Out of total population, 1654 were engaged in work activities, with 1430 males and 224
females. The table below summarises the information about their working population.
This does not include the wage labourers or women’s work at home.

Table 1.1 Summarised demographic information about Narwal

Out of these, 77.15% described their work as Main Work (Employment or Earning more
than 6 Months) while 22.85% were marginal workers, engaged in their work for less than
6 months. Following is a table that gives a glimpse of the occupational data of the worker
population of the residents of Narwal. The main worker population had 1156 males and
merely 120 females.14 There were different occupations within the main workers
category. The main cultivators (owners or co-owners) constituted 247 workers, with 228
males and only 19 females. Out of the main agricultural labourer workforce of 274, 249
were males and only 25 were females. The household industry workers (people working
with family at their shops, from their homes) were 71 in number with 65 males and an

14 Main worker refers to either officially employed or earning for more than 6 months

12
almost negligible number of females, i.e., 6. The category of main other workers
comprised 684 people with 614 males and 70 females.

The income distribution of the village could be not be found in any local administrative
official records, and hence I had to rely on the residents, and records of one of the local
Aanganwadi centres.15 Within the village, between 10 and 15 per cent of the total
population is below poverty line (BPL, as per the Government of India guidelines), i.e.,
their annual income is below Rupees 24,000 (~£273 per annum). The income of an
average family in is close to 80,000 Rupees per annum (~£910 per annum). As for the
families in which there are more members than 6, and thus, more earning members, the
family income is 1,20,000 Rupees to 1,80,000 Rupees per annum (~£1365-2047 per
annum). Families having the highest level of the income level earn 15-20 Lakh Rupees
per annum (~£17,061-22,749 per annum). These ‘high-income’ families are either
engaged in small but successful family-run businesses within the village or, as in some
cases, part of their family income is earned by members who work and resides in cities.
If the family income is above that level, they usually migrate to the cities to live or at
least, send their sons to work or study in the cities or get their daughters married in the
city. In rare cases, the families sent their daughters too to seek employment in cities.

There are three health centres in greater Narwal (including nearby villages) – a small
dispensary, a primary health care centre, and an animal health centre. There are three
nationalised banks operational in this area (Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and the
State Bank of India), but none of the private banks operate here. Given its reputation as
an educational hub, people from nearby villages send their children to Narwal for primary
and secondary education. There are a total of 14 schools and colleges in the village- two
primary schools, three high schools, seven inter-colleges, one industrial training institute,
and one district institute of education and training. The numbers of pupils in these
institutions is dependent on the size and level of degrees offered, ranging from 50 to
1000. This high number is inclusive of two institutes which are at the border of the main
village. This is not a typical characteristic of villages in India and this makes Narwal
unique.

15 Literally, courtyard shelter, these centres were started across India by the Indian government in 1975 as part of the
Integrated Child Development Services program to combat child hunger and malnutrition. These centres now are
instrumental in improving maternal healthcare and childcare, and most effective in rural areas of the country.

13
During my fieldwork, I observed that women who themselves had never received college
education, or even completed school, were instrumental in instilling discipline among
their children regarding education. It was common for families with 15-year-old children
preparing for their high-school exams, to withdraw the television connection on the
insistence of the older family members, especially mothers. Taking advantage of living
in a smaller community, parents often informally sought reports of their children’s
performance in school from their teachers, and, if poor, did not hesitate to resort to a light
thrashing, accompanied by repeated reminders of their own lack of education that led to
a lifestyle that was less than desirable. To me, this was not inexplicable or unfamiliar, but
the scale of it was certainly unexpected from women who still do not ‘permit’ their
daughters to step out of the village to get seek employment, even though numerous young
women (aged 18-28) either teach in the village’s primary schools or the industrial training
institute, along with giving private teaching lessons. Teaching is considered to be ‘the
most respectable occupation’ for women among my participants and their families. As
Vineeta (29), one of my participants, put it, “It (teaching) inspires learning for these girls,
and is convenient for the families”. These young women prefer to teach alongside
pursuing their graduation through distance-learning, as they can earn extra money from
a ‘respectable occupation’ and are not required to go out of the village for the same. The
BTC (Basic Training Certificate) is a sought-after, teaching-eligibility certification for
the area around Narwal, and numerous young aspirant teachers come here to teach or
complete this certification.

In December 2015 when I first visited Narwal for this research, women’s role in local
administration too seemed significant as almost every pillar and wall I came across in
public spaces was covered with election campaign posters. All of these posters had the
same template – an image of a saree-clad woman with the pallu (the loose end of a saree)
over her head, hands folded in a deferential pose, above/below a box of text with her
appeal for people to vote for her. In one of the corners of the poster, there was always a
picture of a man, usually either the woman’s husband or her father-in-law in the same
pose with his hands folded, urging for support. However, in the following weeks, I
observed that these were still largely proxies for men. In January 2016, a 43-year-old
woman, Saroj (38), was elected as village head. In September 2016, I got the opportunity
of interacting personally with her for about an hour about her responsibilities and the
challenges of being a female leader in the village. She was the Sarpanch (head) of the

14
Gram Panchayat of Narwal. In addition to a female village head, almost half the members
in the Gram Panchayat were women (6). This is the minimum number of seats reserved
for women in this village-level body and the elected women are still mostly appointed
due to such reservations. Saroj shared that she was elected because her seat was a reserved
one (for women) in the 2016 Gram Panchayat elections and her own father-in-law, the
previous Sarpanch, campaigned for her. Since the election, he oversees all day-to-day
affairs of the village, while she, in her own words, has stayed away from Narwal because
she is convinced that “he handles it better”.

Understanding and examining the social status of women in Narwal, or most of the Indian
villages for that matter, is a complex project in itself. The literacy rate, school drop-out
rate, college-education and employment level, among other measures, are not precisely
indicative of the routinised subjection that women face. Lack of equal agency in
household decision-making and restricted access to public places and to cities are just a
few examples of the limitations they face. Here it is important to mention that the idea of
subjection, as I perceived it, did not completely fit this context, as the young women
spoke of the relative freedom that they now enjoy in terms of education, access to
entertainment and mobile phones, their desire to own trendy garments, among other
matters. The older women I spoke to showed an increased sensitivity and understanding
about their own positions in their households and the society, accompanied by a cynical
acceptance of their future. Our interactions revealed their anxious expressions of how
they felt about their daughters getting into the ‘trap of modernisation’ and ‘forgetting
their values’ owing to exposure to media – especially films and television.

I noted that shifts in urban conceptualisations of traditional village structures are not only
driven by political motivations, but also heavily dependent on the ‘eye of the beholder’.
By this, I mean that for anyone who has not spent time there, the process of
transformation of a space from rural to urban seems linear and inevitable. The perception
of ruralness, then, comes from various other sources such as literature, films, television,
oral history, and so on. The complex microcosm of an Indian village has reconfigured
itself in ways that cannot be understood simply as a forward march towards
modernisation. I use this term, ‘forward march towards modernisation’ with some unease,
as ‘modernness’ or ‘being modern’ itself is a multiple-narrative category (Sabry,
2010:95). In this context, I use this term to point to the social, cultural and economic
process that brings people living in villages closer to the urbane and, further, a globalised

15
set of people in terms of lifestyle and aspirations. My study, therefore, attempts to explore
the social forces that impinge upon the lives of my participants, and whether and how
film entertainment culture is instrumental in social reconfiguration of any kind.

In December 2015, I started my fieldwork by looking for conventional film exhibition

spaces such as film theatres and collective television family viewing. I aimed to record
my participants’ film-viewing experiences with them as other scholars have suggested
that the location of film viewing is vested with so much meaning (Srinivas, 2010). I also
planned the duration of my stay to coincide with the two major festivals, Diwali and Eid,
so as to record any changes in film viewing patterns. As I mentioned earlier, upon
commencement of the actual research, I observed that there was almost negligible
viewership of feature films in public spaces. There is no film theatre in the village and
the nearest single screen theatre is close to Kanpur. The nearest multiplex theatre is only
inside the city of Kanpur. Women do not go to a theatre to watch films, unlike men, and
there is a moral panic around women’s film viewing. Susan Wadley, in her book on a
north Indian village, also alluded to women’s restricted movement from the village to
neighbouring towns or cities, and more so for recreational purposes (1994). She noted
that women only visited the nearest town “while passing through on trips to their natal or
affinal homes or to take a sick child to a doctor” (1994:11) and that “many women,
especially the poor, claimed to go no more than once or twice a year” (ibid.). She added:

Certainly they did not go for recreation, as the majority of Karimpur women have never seen a
film. Their primary recreation is a visit to the district fair held on the northern fringe of Mainpuri
[the nearest district] every April.

(ibid.)

Although her study was based on fieldwork of almost three decades, Wadley’s
observations still held true as of 2017. I also observed a complete absence of city-style
internet (cyber) cafes for the purposes of emailing, scanning, printing, or downloading
films. What I found were small shops with a single desktop computer system, operated
by a small group of men. In these ‘computer shops’, ordinary people could not use the
computer on their own but they were required to ask the ‘computer-wallah’ (the computer
operator) to carry out the required task for them.

Film viewership on television and laptops within households was also limited. Although
there was no local cable operator in Narwal who could provide precise data on how many

16
households have a television installed in their house, a 20-year-old young man who
installs dish TV within Greater Narwal had a record of all the households that he had
installed dish TV boxes in. According to his records as on October 2016, more than 800
households (in Narwal and neighbouring villages combined) had access to television
programmes in their homes (out of an estimated total number of 1200 households,
according to Census conducted in 2011). However, his records were not exhaustive, thus,
distorting the statistics in my study. In the case of the main ethnographic data, I had to
rely on local administrative statistics, data from health centres, oral accounts, my own
knowledge of the region, and most importantly my own observations. All of these gave
me a sense of how media technology, visual and material culture, and low-cost internet
data were supporting a thriving film culture in Narwal.

1.2 Research Aims

Investigating the experience of filmgoing and other film-related activities, situated in a
certain location and time-period, helps us examine the film culture of a society. The
impact of Bollywood on everyday cultures has been studied in the context of various
Indian audience groups such as urban youth, diaspora, children, and so on. 16 Each study
emphasises the significance of such studies to understand the cultural shifts in the society,
which are projected in Hindi films but adapted or negotiated by film consumers in their
lives. My study has just one question at its core: What does it mean to be a female Hindi
film consumer in rural North India?

The research aims were as follows:

1. To study the contemporary Hindi film culture existing in Narwal beyond viewership.

2. To examine the ways in which women in Narwal engage with mainstream Hindi films
and establish the relationship between them.

16 Contemporary Hindi film for the purpose of this research refers to the mainstream commercial Hindi cinema. I refer
to ‘Bollywood’ and ‘contemporary Hindi film’ interchangeably for the purpose of this study. Bollywood as an industry
and its reputation as popular Hindi cinema have been explained at length by many Indian film scholars before (see
Ganti, 2004:3; Nandy, 1981; Rajadhyaksha, 2003; Vasudevan, 2010). For the purpose of this research, I describe the
nature of Bollywood following Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s comment, “Bollywood is not the Indian film industry, or not
the film industry alone…It might be best seen as a more diffuse cultural conglomeration involving a range of
distribution and consumption activities from websites to music cassettes, from cable to radio.” (2003:27)

17
3. To investigate the role of factors such as gender, age and class in women’s Hindi film
consumption in Narwal.

4. To assess the role of contemporary mainstream Hindi films in the everyday lives of
my participants.

The questions with which I started my fieldwork were these: Does being a woman film
consumer mean merely getting access to films? Does it mean living in an environment
where everyone is surrounded by a strong film culture? In what ways are they consuming
films in ways that are different to men in villages? Does film consumption mean more to
women than just access? To understand the audience relationship in question, I chose to
use Participant Observation method for data collection combined with an ethnographic
analysis. The following section explains how I collected primary data and how I made
sense of it to fulfil my research objectives.

1.3 Methodology
Understanding this subgroup of the Hindi film audience required me to live in Narwal
and to be part of the women’s daily routines, such as living within the households,
accompanying my participants to public places and places of worship, identifying their
friendships and occupational social networks, and so on. The focus of this section is not
only on what information was collected, but more importantly on the question of how it
was collected. My earlier study (2015), conducted in 2011, made me aware that focus
group interviews were not only not conducive settings for women to talk about their
everyday lives and disrupted their routine, but also attracted unwanted attention from
men and senior community members, which would discourage the women from taking
part in my study. Other quantitative methods such as surveys would also have defeated
the purpose of studying film consumption in everyday life. The study had to be
methodologically designed to attempt to make distinctions between what people said,
what they did, what they did not say, and what they (probably) meant.

Ethnographic methods such as participant observation, in-depth interviews, and

recording my field notes could help me to record the ‘act of their consumption, but also
the context of their consumption’ (McGuigan, 2010). Accordingly, I chose to use
participant observation and in-depth interviews for collecting data. This study is not a

18
classic ethnography, i.e., it was conducted for a period of only 4 months as opposed to
long-term work in the field. The analysis was based on recorded observations and
interviews, informed in part by statistical data (the demographics of the village,
occupational distribution, caste distribution, number of television sets, and so on).

In this section, I describe my experience of living and collecting data in Narwal village
in Uttar Pradesh. I begin by giving an overview of the research procedure and how I
gained access to my participants. I then provide brief descriptions of how I formed and
expanded my network with help from my interlocutors. Throughout these sections, I
reflect on my interactions with the women (and men) of Narwal and reflect on my own
positionality as an unmarried, upper caste, middle-class, urban female. I also outline the
challenges I faced in collecting as well as analysing the data. Lastly, I describe the field
note-taking process and address ethical concerns of confidentiality and informed consent.

1.3.1 Overview of the research procedure

This study is based on data collected over almost four months of fieldwork in Narwal
village.17 I interacted with more than 80 women in Narwal of varying age groups and
classes out of which 50 women were under the age of 40. For the purpose of this study, I
classify women under the age of 40 as young, between 40 and 60 as middle-aged and 61
onwards as older women. The first few weeks went in familiarising myself with the
village and the rest were utilised in interacting with people and obtaining demographic
data. Below is a small table to give a general idea of my fieldwork schedule (table 1.2):

Week Primary Tasks

• Familiarising myself with the village streets,

• Obtaining authorisation from authorities in schools and other

institutions,

• Identifying my hosts,
Week 01-03
• Identifying public places where I could interact with women,

17 A stretch of three consecutive months from September 2016 to November 2016 and a recce field trip for 3 weeks in
December 2015.

19
 • Visiting the Block Development Office for collecting data from
(1st Dec – 22nd Dec
government records,
2015)

• Attending Ganesh Chaturthi festivities

• Spending time at a tailoring boutique

• Making note of media devices in the households,

• Screening the first film,

• Meeting the village head,

• Visiting Aanganwadi centres,

Week 04-08
• Meeting the female staff at various schools in Narwal,

(1st September 2016

• Spending time with children at the pre-primary and primary
onwards) schools to build networks with their mothers, sisters,
grandmothers

• Spending time at the public spaces such as temples and

marketplace to interact with both men and women,

• Visiting the primary health centre

• Spending time with women at the ITI,18

• Screening the second film,

• Introduction to the computer-learning institute,

Week 09-11
• Visiting beauty parlours,

• Interacting with weaver women of Ganesh Sewa Ashram,

• Visiting the agricultural farms within Narwal

• Interaction with the photo studio owner,

18 The Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) (post-secondary school centres providing industrial/skill training), are an
initiative of the Union Government of India, which provides certification for professional skills like plumbing, knitting,
fitting, and electrician training.

20
 • Attending a local wedding

• Assisting primary school staff with curriculum

Week 12-13
• Re-visiting women for more candid conversations

• Interacting with my male hosts about rural film distribution

• Collecting data about film distribution at the computer-shops

• Semi-structured interviews with 20 women

Week 14-16
• Spending time with young women from the computer-learning
centre

• Preparation for analysis and groundwork for future follow-ups

Table 1.2 Overview of my field work

I will explain all of these in the following sections, but not before mentioning my own
social position there which affected my data collection. I am a Hindu by birth and come
from a Brahmin (so-called upper caste) family. I was also aware that my maternal
grandfather being a well-respected teacher there up until 1990 put me in a position of
social privilege in Narwal. None of my family members reside in that village now but it
was impossible for me to completely dissociate their perception of me from my caste and
class identity. Since it was not possible for me to ‘go completely native’ for the purpose
of this research (Bryman, 2012:445), I sought help from a few people from Narwal who
later became my interlocutors. They introduced me to their families, friends and
communities and offered to host me in their homes. I ensured that no single household
became my ‘permanent place’ for the duration of my fieldwork. This was because my
hosts did not let me compensate in any way for my stay, and I did not want to be a
financial burden on them, and hence, it was best to keep rotating between different
households. Moreover, it was in the interests of my research that I optimised my time in
Narwal. The first week just went into building my network with (male) heads of the
families and the next step was getting access to women in their households.

21
The participant observation method of obtaining data was also inflected by that fact that
I was a 26-year-old unmarried female who was an ‘outsider’ seeking interactions with
the womenfolk about their lives. The first three weeks of my fieldwork went in
familiarising myself with the roads and alleys within the village and I passed up no
opportunity to introduce myself to any member of the village who was willing to interact
with me. However, I had to put in further effort in order for people to view me as a
researcher, a non-invasive person, who had come only to pursue her study. I bought new
clothing locally and shopped for several notebooks and colouring books as gifts to be
distributed to children studying in local primary schools. This activity allowed me to
spend more time with the female staff members before the schools ended for the day.
Four out of the twelve educational institutions in Narwal had an almost all-women
teaching staff. These were young women in the age bracket of 18-28. In the final phase
of my fieldwork (week 14-16), I conducted 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with
women of various age groups, occupations, caste and religion, so as to validate my
findings and cross-question.

The study is focused on the lives of women, and not men (or both). This was guided by
social factors in the region. First, social segregation along gender lines was sharply
defined in the village. My position as a ‘young unmarried female researcher’ would have
made a study of men strenuous and inexpedient. Due to cultural and moral concerns, I
would not be granted access to the men privately in their daily setting for the purpose of
a study. Second, it would have been unfruitful for my research if I included men as my
participants because I would not have been able to establish a relationship strong enough
for them to converse with me candidly. Lastly, it would have been grossly uncomfortable
for the women knowing that I was having conversations with the men in their house and
they would not have welcomed me inside their homes.

As outlined above, my fieldwork involved a range of activities that were useful in

collecting data and developing an analytical framework. Although a richer description of
everyday village life could have benefitted my study, I elaborate only on the most relevant
experiences in the following sections due to the limited scope of my thesis.

22
1.3.2 Networks and interlocutors

As most families’ household heads were male, I approached them first to get introduced
to the women. My age, marital status and gender meant that I could not simply walk
around on my own in the village, I always had to be chaperoned. In the first two weeks,
the people, generally young men, facilitated my interactions and data gathering by taking
me around and introducing me to who they thought of as ‘suitable’ women for my
research. Although I did benefit from their experiences, networks and knowledge, I was
acutely aware that I needed to have interlocutors (informants) of different statuses within
Narwal, i.e., of different classes, castes and age-groups. I mostly interacted with men
within their houses, explained my intent and requested them to connect me with women
of varying age groups in their neighbourhoods. After the first two weeks, I knew enough
women to tag along with them to market spaces, beauty parlours and temples. Having
women as interlocutors was advantageous as they ensured that when I went to a
household, they could engage other household members by talking to them about various
things, and I could observe and interact without all questioning eyes on myself. In
exchange for helping me with the research, I photographed some of the women (prints of
which I was required to hand over to them), helped their children with their school
homework, and offered suggestions for pursuing higher education.

My local interlocutors also helped gather statistical information about the village. For
instance, a 20-year-old son of a beautician works to install dish and cable television in
households of Narwal and surrounding villages. He shared that until 2014 he used to
maintain a hard-copy record of all installations, but since then he has been using an SMS
service for the same and he had no recent registers. I had to examine the records from his
phone to ascertain the number of TV installations since 2014. Another young man in his
30s, who runs a primary school, accompanied me to the Block Development Office to
help me gather some demographic data. In this way, I expanded my network through this
first set of residents who were my local interlocutors, and later my hosts.

1.3.3 Staying with the residents

I lived in four different households during my stay in Narwal. None of the families agreed
to accept any monetary or non-monetary compensation for my stay in their homes and

23
insisted that it was ‘my own home’ and that ‘I could come and stay there whenever I
please’.

The first family I lived with was a couple in their early 60s who I knew through my
grandfather. The husband, who I addressed as uncle, was a well-respected Chemistry
teacher who had taken voluntary retirement from a secondary school to pursue his interest
in Indic and astrological studies. He introduced me to many of his male and female
students in Narwal. Theirs was an old neighbourhood with mixed-income housing. Next
to their house was a primary school where I could spend time with children and their
female teaching staff. The next family consisted of a total of seven members – a woman,
her husband, mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his wife, and two children. It was easier
to understand the everyday decisions that women make when I spent three weeks here.
Staying there, I also gained access to women who came from the adjacent village to work
here, such as students, farmers, teachers, shopkeepers, gardeners, trinket-sellers and
cleaners. The third family was also a joint family with different generations of family
living together in an arrangement similar to the second one. The last household that I
stayed in had two members – a woman and her daughter. I also lived briefly in the houses
of two young women aged 22 and 24 who I met at the ITI (only for three and four days,
respectively). All the families I lived with could financially afford to host me for the
required number of days. This certainly did not give me a comprehensive picture of
familial dynamics within households of lower class or caste, but I did so to avoid being
a financial liability on them and to not make them uncomfortable with my presence. My
hosts further introduced me to their friends and relatives in Narwal, thus helping me
expand my network.

1.3.4 Watching films at home and at the Industrial Training Institute

In the absence of cinema halls and given the families’ reservations of about sending
women to the city to watch films, I organised two film-screenings for all-women groups
in Narwal. The first screening was on a hot afternoon inside the house where I stayed
with seven people. This was a Brahman, middle-income household according to Narwal’s
income levels.19 I used my laptop for the screen and there were a total of five women in
this group including me: a woman aged 65, her daughter (23) and two daughters-in-law

19 Section 1.1.2

24
(27 and 35).20 The film was a family drama, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), that starred
Salman Khan, one of the most popular film stars in the country and in this region. I chose
afternoon as there would be no men present in the house, and therefore it would be
appropriate timing for me to have conversations about the film while it was being
screened.

The second screening was on a slightly larger scale at the Industrial Training Institute
(ITI). My first host in Narwal had introduced me to a young woman aged 21, a former
student of his, who taught a Stitching Technology course at the Narwal ITI. Some of the
women who were trainees were married and wanted to be gainfully employed to support
their families. A total of 204 students (males and females) were enrolled in one of the
three courses offered – sewing technology, electrician-training and fitter-training. The
sewing technology course had 25 young women in each of its two batches. These women
hailed from middle- to lower-income families. This course only had one male enrolled
under it who hardly attended the classes. Upon entering the campus, there was a courtyard
with classrooms on all four sides. The classroom for sewing technology was located at
the far end, beyond the rooms where young men could be seen gathered around the
teacher’s table for some sort of demonstration. Their chatter was interrupted when they
directed their eyes at me, curious. There were two female teachers of the sewing
technology course too, aged 21 and 42, with whom I had discussed a potential screening.
They were happy to help and shared that the students will be happy to spare time after
their classes as the syllabus was nearing its end. When I visited the ITI for the first time,
I did not inform the female students about the screening. I just asked them if they could
spend some time for a group activity after their class the next day, in response to which
they just looked at each other and smiled at me politely. Their ages ranged from 18 to 30.
I then distributed chits of paper to them and asked them to write the name of a film that
they wanted to watch the next day. This led to a hushed chatter within the room that
became increasingly louder when I got the chit ‘ballot’ papers back from them. The film
was screened in two parts on two consecutive afternoons, as some of the women at the
ITI were travelling from nearby villages for stitching classes to Narwal ITI and had to
travel back before the sun started to set. Since the families of these women would not
have encouraged watching films at the ITI, where they had gone to attend classes, I only
had a small window of time to screen the film so as not to compromise on their class-

20 A detailed account of our interaction is in section 4.2

25
time. On the day, the women were curious about my visit and the screening. One of them
(20) asked, “Is this a new government scheme that has been launched? I had heard about
the laptops being awarded to meritorious students but what purpose is the film screening
going to serve?” After I answered the first round of questions by two enthusiastic girls
aged 18 and 19, we all watched the film Pink (2016) together.21 For the day, I had hired
a small projector beforehand along with a screen and a pair of portable speakers.
However, due to power failure and technological issues, at the last moment I could not
use the apparatus. I had to use two laptops, kept at a distance from each other and, with
the help of one of the teachers, I ensured that videos on both screens were synced. It was
a tedious process and the screening was not devoid of interruptions, one of them by a
man.22

The first screening was more telling of how the familial relationship affects film
consumption and the second one gave me a better insight into what aspects of film-
viewing women of varying age groups enjoyed. I discuss these findings more in the sixth
chapter (section 6.2).

1.3.5 Spending time at beauty parlours and tailor boutiques

Upon entering Narwal, once you reach the central part of the village, you can see one of
the oldest Hindu temples of the village: Raval Devi temple. It is said that, during the
medieval age in India, the Mughal invaders (Aakramankaari) had destroyed some of the
idols in the temple but it had stood the test of time and is still here today. If you walk
from the temple towards to marketplace for half a kilometre, you will see small garment
shops and a digital photography studio. In between the temple and the studio lies one of
the oldest beauty parlours of Narwal, now known as ‘Susheel Genral Store and Beauty
Centre and Photo Copy Centre’ , which is evidently multi-functional in the village. There
are six operational beauty salons in Narwal, as well as several individual beauticians who
operate from within their homes. Women who offered beauty services in Narwal were
between the ages of 28 and 49.23 Females running the parlours were often not the only
ones involved in the business as they worked in shifts along with other women family

21 The screening provoked mixed reactions and discussions and I discuss some of them in chapter four
22 See chapter six, section two for a detailed account of the interaction
23 As of December 2016

26
members. This was done so that they did not lose out on their designated household
chores and were also able to spend time with their children once they were back from
school. The older women in the beauty business would train the younger women in the
family so that they could run it together. Most women prefer to invest in these services
only on occasions like weddings, family functions, traditional ceremonies, and so on. The
parlours, however, still exist in locations where the women can afford to spare money for
grooming services. This means that in localities where the majority of the households are
below the middle-income group, women either do not visit the parlour at all or use
traditional in-house treatments as and when required. Beauty parlours were an important
location for my study as the women coming here were away from their homes for a small
period of time to do something for themselves. The act of going to a parlour in the village
did not mean that women could relax or spend a longer time than needed, as that would
come at the cost of delaying household chores. This activity was not considered an act of
luxury or as spending time ‘with oneself’, but a task that was to be completed as swiftly
and discreetly as possible, such as threading eyebrows, hair removal, simple haircuts,
face-bleaching, henna-application, and make-up and hairstyling on special occasions. My
frequent interactions with one of the salon owners on a weekly basis gave me an idea of
these salons’ immense popularity for small beauty treatments, such as ... I used to sit there
for 1-2 hours whenever I visited, which was usually when the number of customers would
be higher. The women customers, as young as 19 and as old as 55, were happy to talk to
me about my marital status, my family, and my views on Narwal, but as soon as I tried
to talk to them about films or television or even mobile phones, they hesitated and cited
reasons to go back home. Taking notes on film-consumption in parlours was a long and
low-yielding process in the first three weeks. Females under the age of 25 were the first
to open up about their choice of devices to engage with films. In the presence of middle-
aged women, my young participants and I often exchanged phone numbers. Eventually,
my interactions with young and middle-aged women became more focused on the
availability of media technology, sartorial tastes, family celebrations, and so on. Older
women (55+) were few and I was unsuccessful in forging a stronger bond with them at
the parlours. My interactions with them were more fruitful inside their homes or at
celebrations in the village such as wedding rituals.

While the beauty parlour was a place where women avoided spending more time than
absolutely necessary, there were other spaces which were considered acceptable and

27
completely normal for women to talk to each other at length. Public places including
grocery stores, outside their children’s school premises, outside the houses of
neighbouring households, and tailoring boutiques were a few such spaces where women
could be seen in groups talking to each other every day as part of their routine. Of these,
clothing boutiques or tailors’ homes provided a particularly useful, closed safe space
where I could interact with women, who were happy to talk to me while working. The
customers, also females, became accustomed to my presence after a few instances of
seeing me enter the house of one of the tailors. In the first week of my stay in Narwal, I
was introduced to an elderly female tailor, Durga Devi (69) who worked from home. She
also provided training in stitching and knitting to young girls and women from in and
around the village. This was a household with five women residing in it at all times and
several others who visited as students or clientele. Durga Devi kindly offered to host me
during the afternoons whenever I wanted to come back, which would be in the September
of the following year. My interactions with the women of her house were helpful for me
in understanding the importance of ‘safe spaces’ for women to discuss their everyday
issues around household woes, their future plans for their children, their space for
relaying news about upcoming weddings and childbirths, their insecurities about the
increasingly unsafe environment for women in the country in general, and sometimes just
to share their nostalgia for a pre-modernised era. Another female tailor’s (40) shop, the
front half of which functioned as a general store, was where I met a young bride-to-be
who had come there to get her bridal blouse stitched.

Tailoring boutiques and beauty parlours were valuable not only to understand women’s
varying tastes and trends in clothing and beauty services, but also to observe the media
technology and film forms they preferred. As long as the topic of their domestic and
marital lives was avoided, women under the age of 50 were willing to share their
experiences and, in return, advise me on ways to please my future husband and my in-
laws. Women over 50 were wary of my presence at such places and always asked
questions about my marital status, my connection with Narwal, my location there and my
ancestral house in Narwal. Some women in this age-group who responded positively to
my communication attempts, denied they themselves liked films and only spoke of other

28
women who liked films, saying that I should be going to them (Unse baat karke dekho,
shayad kuch mile).24

1.3.6 Interactions in schools and computer learning centre

Narwal’s educational institutions are attended not only by its residents but also those from
neighbouring villages, as I mentioned earlier. The primary and secondary schools in
Narwal had an almost all-female teaching staff aged between 18-30. A lot of these women
were pursuing their own graduation/post-graduation degree through distance-learning,
but they were encouraged by their families to teach children in these schools. The average
income of these young teachers was between 1500-2500 Rupees (£17-28) per month.
However, in one of the all-girls secondary schools, there were more experienced female
teachers between 35-50 years who travelled all the way from Kanpur and nearby small
towns to teach in Narwal. I visited five schools (two all-girls’ and three co-educational)
out of the six in the village. My motivation for visiting schools was not only to interact
with the women teaching there but also with those whose children studied there. As the
staff had an extremely hectic schedule at the school, I devised group activities for the
children to keep them occupied while completing their learning targets. I offered my
assistance in discussing teaching methodologies and curriculum and provided them with
a few books standardised by the education-board that the school was affiliated to. I also
carried gifts to be given as prizes for ‘best behaviour’, ‘creativity’, and ‘punctuality’,
among others. This helped the teachers and they were able to spare a total of 2-3 hours
every week to talk to me. I had obtained authorisation and guidance from the headmaster
of the school, a young man in his early thirties, who kindly permitted me to carry on my
interactions with the staff as a group or on a one-to-one basis. It was, however, not so
easy to secure time with the mothers of children under the age of 12 who came to school
to pick them up. Those women not only had to rush home early to feed their children, but
also had to start preparing for dinner and finish pending household chores. The best I
could do was to be there and introduce myself, and once they started seeing me
frequently, some of them kindly invited me for a cup of tea to their houses. That is where
my conversations with them took place.

24 Translation: Try and talk to them, maybe you will find something

29
One of my interlocutors (Poonam, 50) informed me of the only computer learning centre
in Narwal where both males and females attended classes. This institute had been
operational since 2010, with 30 to 40 students at any given time in a single batch. For
every three females, there were two boys. The proud head of the centre (29) told me:

There have been several computer institutes before (Bahut hue hain), but they all got shut down
due to various reasons…Maybe people trust my work-experience, given that I worked in various
cities across India (bade sheher la anubhav), or maybe they just trust me to provide a safe learning
environment for their daughters.

I spent six afternoons interacting with three female students who studied at Insight
Computer Classes, two from Narwal, and one from a nearby village. As I gathered from
our interactions, the primary reason for them to join these classes was a hope for gainful
future employment. The interactions here were closely monitored by the owner of the
institute who probably wanted to ensure the safety and well-being of his students, or just
wanted to know what they were saying about the institute. My interactions were limited
to ten minutes each with three young women. However, I later visited those young
women in the last three weeks and had tea in their homes. This is where they probably
felt at ease and shared what they liked to do with the computers beyond preparing for
their course tests.25

1.3.7 Attending weddings, festivals and family celebrations

Weddings, festivals and family celebrations were invaluable opportunities to expand my

network by meeting women in conducive environments. They were also particularly
useful to understand what made an event at Narwal successful and whether the popularity
of Hindi films had an influence on the way in which those events were celebrated.

The second family that I lived with was invited to the wedding of one of Narwal’s
residents. They politely insisted that I must go with them for the celebration as well as be
involved in pre-wedding celebrations too. I was happy to attend the pre-wedding rituals
and helped the bride’s friends finalise their attires and music playlist for the wedding day.
Participating in the preparations gave me an insight into the influence that Hindi films
have on the music that is played at celebrations, as I discuss in chapter four. One of the

25 See section 3.3 for a detailed description of my interactions with the owner and the students of the computer centre

30
two weddings I attended was of people who were village residents but whose parents
decided to book the wedding venue outside the village in a small town on the way to
Kanpur, to celebrate the alliance with ‘great pomp and show’ to satisfy the groom’s
family.26 From music and dance to fashion, most aspects of the celebrations were
evidence of filmic influences in some way, and chapter four specifically engages with
empirical illustrations of this. The second wedding was more modest in comparison. The
main holy wedding ritual was organised at a nearby temple, followed by a simple feast
at the house of their neighbour who had a big courtyard. There was no loud music or
dance on the day of this wedding. I draw comparisons between them in chapter four.

During my stay in Narwal, I witnessed five days’ long festivities on the occasion of
Ganesh Mahotsav (meaning: the Ganesh mega-fest), or as it is known more popularly in
the country, Ganesh Chaturthi. I also observed and participated in celebrating Karwa
Chauth and Diwali.27 Celebration of Hindu festivals such as Holi, Diwali and Karwa
Chauth too reflected filmic influences. Interactions with and interviews of my
participants indicated that some of the rituals in these festivals were introduced or re-
shaped by mainstream Hindi films, television serials, and big cities. I discuss these in
detail in chapter four.

1.3.8 The semi-structured interviews

I conducted 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews during the last three weeks of my

fieldwork. The purpose of this was threefold: (i) to validate the data from my field notes,
(ii) to fill any gaps in my understanding of my participants’ film use, and (iii) to enable
me to pursue issues that I observed from my participants’ individual stories. I designed
the questionnaire in such a way that some of the questions were re-phrased and presented
in a different wording at the end.28 The rationale for this was that once the participants
moved past their initial hesitation about being interviewees, they might be willing to

26 As is the norm in several parts of India, the scale of the wedding was determined by the economic status of the
bride’s family. The expenditure was decided by the groom’s family background, his qualifications, and his income
level. The practice of dowry is widely prevalent here, under the garb of providing seed money for ‘the kind of life he
would be providing his new wife with’.
27 Karwa Chauth, a Hindu festival in which women fast without food and water for a day to pray for their husband’s
longevity
28 See Appendix (ii) for the points of discussion for the semi-structured interviews

31
answer the same questions in greater detail later. Each interview lasted from 30-60
minutes. The interviews started with information about their family background, their
relationship with their friends and other family members, access to media technology,
and ownership of technology. The later questions were about their film-use, such as their
preferences in actors/actresses, types (genres), fashion, and their idea of an ideal film for
them. Through the interviews, I was able to make notes on brief profiles of each of my
participants including their monthly expenditure on themselves for the purposes of
entertainment, clothing, mobile phone top-ups, and other personal expenses.

The responses revealed that the disposable income available to my participants for their
personal use ranged from 0 to 500 Rupees (£0-6) a month. The women I interviewed
travelled outside Narwal 4 to 5 times a year at the most for various purposes such as
weddings or medical treatments. Most interviewees lived in joint families, with 4 to 10
members living together on any given day. On a typical day, my participants had a
maximum of 1-2 hours of personal (leisure) time. I also asked my interviewees how they
celebrated their birthdays, for which I got upsetting reactions from most of them. They
spoke of celebrating birth anniversaries of their husbands, sons, brothers, and even
fathers, but not their own. However, amongst younger women, there were a few instances
of getting presents like clothing or jewellery and special feasts for the occasion. The
number of hours of usable electricity each day for accessing television or other electronic
devices during daytime is usually only 3 to 4, and most households do not have a power
backup facility. Although it is not unheard of to have small household inverters or
generators now, it is still a luxury for the majority and uncommon among my
participants.29

Since my method of data collection was primarily participant observation, there were
several other interactions that would qualify as unstructured in-depth interviews.
However, the function of semi-structured encounters was to verify whether my previous
observations and unstructured interactions yielded different results than personal
interviews, where the questions about my participants and their film-use were more
direct.30

29 Class and age-specific data from the interviews are interspersed within my analysis.
30 See Appendix (ii)

32
1.4 Methodological challenges
Ethnographic methods of participant observation and in-depth interviews helped me meet
my research goals. My field notes, once I was back in London for analysis, seemed
erratic, unpredictable and chaotic, but writing my experiences in a descriptive
ethnographic style helped me organise, analyse and signpost my data. The whole process
of going to the field, collecting the data, organising and analysing it, was marked by
methodological challenges that I reflect on in this section. These include gaining access
to village women, unreliable statistics, ethical considerations, field note taking, the small
scale of the study, and implications of me being an ‘outsider’ (urban, studying abroad,
non-resident) as well as ‘insider’ (ancestral roots, middle-class north Indian family,
familiar with dialect).

1.4.1 Gaining access to village women

Gaining access to women in a gendered and hierarchical class and caste society was
challenging as “unlike experimental researchers, ethnographers typically have limited
control over who enters the field of observation” (Murphy and Dingwall 2001: 342).
During the day, I only got limited time to interact with women as they had household
work and I could only find small slots of time to talk to them. I could not go to the city
to watch films in the theatre with any of my participants as their families did not allow
that. The men were sceptical about what I was going to tell or ask the women in their
families and whether I was extracting private information from them. I obtained verbal
consent from men of varying age groups to be able to talk to their female family members
and children. This reluctance on the part of the male fraternity also came from the
patriarchal need of control over women’s lives. As Susan Wadley remarked about the
observed social order in a village in Uttar Pradesh more than two decades earlier, “a
woman must be controlled. But whether that control should come from her husband (or
father or brother), as normative statements claim, or from her own sense of right is
debatable” (1994:38). She described the various ways in which this took place in the rural
social setting, but the primary ways that I observed during my fieldwork were (i) control
through containment (veiling, restricted movement and participation of women in public
and private spaces) and (ii) control through silencing (referring to norms for conduct that
mandated how and when a woman could speak freely) (1994:55).

33
Several men who did not know about me suspected I was a government official visiting
the village for an inspection. Some of them thought I was working for an NGO in Delhi
probably associated with ‘Mahila Kalyan’ (women’s empowerment), which made them
suspicious of me. As one of my participants told me in a later week, “My husband thought
you were an NGO worker who had come to our house to ask about my reproductive
health (zaccha-baccha adhikari) or possible domestic violence (maar-peet)”. As the
weeks passed by, the word spread about my research and the kind of interactions I was
having with the women in the village. By the fourth week I noted that a few men
themselves ensured a separate seating place inside the house for me to talk to the women.
In the first 3-4 weeks, our conversations were mostly about how grateful and satisfied
my participants were with their lives and that their days were occupied by the household
duties, children, husbands, and in some cases, cattle. As one of my participants (42)
shared, “We have home, family and our neighbours, why would we go anywhere else?
(Kahin aur jaake kya karna hai)”. It was only after the fifth week that their discontent
with various things started to show in our discussions. It was the younger women under
the age of 30 who started sharing their dissatisfaction with me, long before the older ones
did. It may have been because they were closer to my age and felt that I might empathise.
By the end of my fieldwork, some of the elders had started calling me bitti or beta, both
of which are words of endearment for addressing a young one. Ironically, although
engaging with film was still an activity that was not encouraged for women, the men
found it acceptable for me to talk to the women about it. As a male staff member (35) at
one of the village schools said, “Iske baare mein poochhke kya karengi aap (what will
you do with this information anyway)”. Once the men and the village elders were
convinced that I was ‘researching on films’, they were not too bothered to limit our
interactions. This may have been because they thought there is ‘nothing to be said about
it’ or that ‘information about women’s film consumption in a village’ will not lead to any
substantial knowledge-building.

Additionally, a major limitation of my study was lack of access to the women who were
economically the weakest in the village. For instance, women working at the Ganesh
Seva Ashram as weavers (daily wage earners) only earned about 50 Rupees (£0.57) a day.
As mentioned earlier, the Ganesh Seva Ashram is a small Khadi cloth manufacturing unit
located in Narwal.31 The legacy of ‘self-sufficiency’ and the government’s policy

31 See section 1.1.2

34
encouraging Khadi has ensured the continuing existence of the Ashram. However, the
women who worked here shared their aspiration for a self-reliant life where they could
use their skills to make more money than they currently do. Most of these women either
came from broken families, were widows, or had alcoholic husbands, often with little or
no other means of support. They did not seem particularly happy with my presence in the
Ashram. This was understandable, given that my presence meant incurring an opportunity
cost for them. A woman, perhaps in her 50s, even politely suggested that it was my
responsibility, as someone educated and well-off, to ‘give back to my own people’ in
some way. She added, “If I sit and spend time conversing with you, from where will my
food come?” I felt that my presence in the ashram was unwanted and maybe even
exploitative. The proverbial dilemma of a social researcher became real for me as I came
to terms with the harsh everyday realities of my participants. These women were self-
reliant, hardworking, and often the sole breadwinners in their households. Carrying out
fieldwork in this setting ideally called for more time and preparedness to compensate in
a fruitful or sustainable way for the long-term benefits to participants. It would have also
allowed for an analysis that gave a detailed and accurate account of women’s film
consumption based on their caste. Caste struggles often also coincide with class struggles
in India (Desai, 1969:38) even now, especially in rural areas, and gaining access to the
households of women from so-called lower castes proved to be extremely difficult. None
of my interlocutors believed that those women would have anything to say on the topic
of film consumption (woh bechari kya kahengi), and the other two who did not dismiss
the idea expressed that I might offend those women by asking questions on films, internet
and phones when their household was still struggling to get two square meals a day
(Khane ko paise nahi hain, film phone net pe kaise jawaab dengi). Additionally, within
two weeks of starting my fieldwork, I realised that some of my interlocutors only took
me to places they wanted me to go to, and my agency was somewhat undermined.
Therefore, I started going straight to the houses of the women with other women who I
knew but made sure that the same person never accompanied me more than twice to any
place.

When I approached women from extremely poor households or those belonging to the
so-called lower castes, there was a discomfort between us. This may have been partly
because some of them knew who I was staying with and approaching them with or
without a chaperone yielded unfruitful interactions. If I went with someone, their social

35
position in the village affected these women’s perception of me. If I went without
anybody, that would be considered strange and intrusive by men and women. One of my
interviewees for the in-depth interviews belonged to Prajapati caste (the pottery
makers).32 She taught at a local secondary school in Narwal and was in the third year of
her BA degree. She told me during the interview that her older brother works in Kanpur
and he wanted her to finish her BA degree. She shared that her household did not have a
television or laptop and the only mobile phone in the house belonged to her father. The
discomfort was tangible between us and I got the sense that I probably embarrassed her
by asking about films, internet, and phones, when she did not have those resources yet.
She shook her head ‘no’ to most of my questions on disposable income, her favourite
actor, her ideal film, and so on. All she said after a few minutes of conversation was,
“Hamare ghar mein kisiko shauk nahi hai (no one in my family is keen [on films])”.
Maybe the discomfort was less due to lack of resources and more because of our class
and caste power imbalance. Maybe the power imbalance was created not only by my own
background but also due to my other social associations in the village. Maybe she was
just not interested. I could not say for sure the reason for her hesitation, so I wished her
good luck and our interaction was cut short. More time in the village could have helped
me to carry out a study specifically among the lower-caste low-income households in the
village. This was not the only challenge that the rural power structures gave rise to.

1.4.2 Power relation between researcher and participants

George E. Marcus described some of the methodological challenges of ethnography in

his book, ‘Ethnography through thick and thin’ (1998). In the context of ethical issues in
ethnographic research, he said:

“The inequality of power relations, weighted in favour of the anthropologist, can no longer be
presumed in this world of multi-sited ethnography. The fieldworker often deals with subjects who
share his own broadly middle-class identity and fears, in which case unspoken power issues in the
relationship become far more ambiguous than they would have been in past anthropological
research.”

(Marcus, 1998:121)

32 Belonging to the Scheduled Caste category

36
I faced a similar issue in my research. Up until the 1990s in Narwal, the notion of a person
from a metropolitan city or outside India evoked awe and people wanted to elevate their
social standing in the village by associating themselves with the ‘outsiders’. This
observation held true in my experience as a child visiting this and other areas in UP. News
of anyone coming from outside the village spread quickly across the community along
with an intense curiosity about their motivations. My fieldwork visit indicated that
although there was curiosity among some of my college-going participants, it was more
to do with learning about my experiences in the UK than putting me on a higher social
pedestal. They were cognizant of the similarities and differences between us during all
our interactions and often expressed their desire to pursue work or higher education in
cities. As such, it was difficult to ascertain the power equation that existed between my
participants and myself, which changed with each interaction. On one hand, owing to my
background (caste, class and education), I possessed higher social capital (Bourdieu,
1986) in that space. On the other hand, I was in a weaker position due to my need for
their time and resources, and my sudden and strange request for spending time in their
homes. For instance, sometimes participants or their family members asked me how I
managed living on my own in a foreign land and whether I was living in a hostel. Their
curiosity did not reflect any awe, and they empathised with some of the issues I had faced,
such as lack of safety, sexism, and familial responsibilities. The familiarity and empathy
in this case proved to be a point of solidarity among us. However, my caste remained a
privilege and the fact that I had immediate family who grew up in the countryside gave
me advantages; had some higher middle-class urban researcher been to Narwal, I am not
sure whether she/he would have been given such kind invitations to live in people’s
houses.

1.4.3 Unreliable statistics:

My research would have benefitted from quantitative data about Narwal and the lack of
sources for these was a crippling obstacle. During my analysis, it proved extremely
challenging for me to ground my arguments due to unreliable statistical data for the
following:

• Total number of households

37
• Number of people in each household

• Income distribution

• Number of women involved in local administration

• Exact number of films distributed through ‘computer shops’ in Narwal

• Precise incomes and sources of the poorest of women (for e.g., women working at
the Seva Ashram or women belonging to so-called lower castes)

• Media infrastructure (broadband/internet providers, telecom towers, number of

mobile phones and connections, exact number of television sets in Narwal)

I visited the Block Development Office (BDO) for records of demographics, occupation,
incomes, number of households, pucca houses, caste- and class-based occupational data,
and so on. After waiting for half a day, the BDO’s assistant dictated the figures from his
records registers and I noted them down. The obtained data would have been sufficient,
reliable and timely had I been carrying out my research across the whole revenue village.
The information was incomplete as it was impossible to isolate Narwal’s data from the
cluster of neighbouring villages. Women’s reproductive and health data from the
Aanganwadis was reliable and detailed, but not relevant to answer my primary research
question about film-use. My research additionally relied on informal and unofficial
sources such as the cable installer, shopkeepers, computer-shop owner, principal of a
local primary school, and so on.

1.4.4 Scale and generalisability of the study

Lack of credible data affected the generalisability of my study. Additionally, due to my

difficulty in gaining access to the village women, the method of sampling became random
(sampling) by default. Also, relying on interlocutors and my participants to introduce me
to potential respondents meant a curb on my agency to choose a more representative
sample. Despite interacting with more than 80 women in a village of 3000 people, I was
unable to find women strategically based on sociological classifications such as age,
class, and caste. Although I have drawn some conclusions on film-use by women of
varying ages and classes, they are based on individual stories of my participants and my
observations. In this sense it is perhaps best thought of as a pilot study.

38
Time constraints were also a huge disadvantage for this research. By the time I expanded
my network and started having productive interactions, it was time to wrap up the
fieldwork. Having more time to do this research would have meant not just more women
as my participants but also having a more representative sample whose analysis would
yield results that were more generalisable for different age and income groups.

1.4.5 Confidentiality and ethical concerns

During my research, I was privy to some intense and distressing recollections by women
about their lives, wreaking irrevocable changes in my ways of seeing. The issue of safety
in general and the risk of disturbing their family relations led me to make a choice of
keeping their identities anonymous. My study takes into account the right to privacy and
safety of the women I met. I changed the names of my participants in this thesis and have
avoided describing any unpleasant experiences that can identify the person, so as to avoid
threats to their psychological well-being. Since the subject matter of my research in
general did not pose any grave danger to my participants, most of them agreed to let me
divulge details such as their family structure, their profession, disposable income, and so
on. I avoided private or intrusive questions on issues such as their relationships with their
spouses and older family members. For instance, one of the women at one of the
educational institutions (40) shared with me in the last week of my field visit, that she
wanted to get away from the joint family to live only with her husband, as the other family
members did not treat her well (achha vyavhaar nahi karte). She further confessed that
she was subjected to emotional and sexual abuse [details omitted] by two of her family
members, and she was afraid of telling her husband about it, fearing a rift between him
and the abusers, or worse, abandonment. She was seeking teaching opportunities in the
nearby cities without the knowledge of other family members so that she could convince
her husband to move out. She asked for my help in drafting a letter for her job application.
In any other circumstance, this would have been an uncomplicated decision for me.
However, my assistance could harm her if anyone found out that I had been helping her,
she would be in trouble. I drafted two application letters for her, printed them out, and
gave her the hard copies discreetly. It was interactions like these that I found challenging
because of the ethical dilemmas they posed. They did, however, provide me with
glimpses of the power structures within which my participants lived.

39
Another ethical concern that may have inflected my participants’ responses was their
perception of my research motivation. Whenever I explained the objectives of my
research, I was hardly taken seriously as a PhD student who was studying a waste (faltu)
topic like films. I realised that my topic evoked a generally underwhelming response from
men. For middle-aged and young women, my topic was badhiya (great, nice). However,
there were a lot of questions from men and women following the introduction of my topic
before the start of each new interaction. Everyone wanted to know ‘which subject was
my PhD in’. I tried to explain it as a mixture of media studies and anthropology, but that
either led to more questions or sudden disinterest. It was easier for me to say, from the
second week onwards, that I was writing a book on Narwal and its women. I introduced
myself as a researcher based in London, studying media and its role in the society. This
was acceptable for everyone after the initial scepticism for a few weeks, especially as my
background information spread within the community, that my mother spent the first 19
years of life here. Hence, it became a matter of great pride that Narwal was about to be
highlighted on the world map by someone.

My agency as a researcher in the field differed from one participant to another. There
were various discursive categories within which I found myself to be positioned, in the
eyes of my participants as well as interlocutors. It was not just those of the Self/Other,
Rural/Urban, Insider/Outsider (Parmeswaran, 2001:69), but also of the so-called
Upper/Lower caste and Researcher/Participant. Implications of carrying out research in
a cultural setting that was partly familiar had its own challenges and I had to balance my
position in alignment with my participant’s perception of me during our interactions. For
instance, while talking to a 65-year-old woman with an extremely critical view of her
daughter-in-law, I felt uneasy about what she was saying and uncertain about the mixed
messages I was receiving from her about me participating in that conversation. While
talking to certain participants, I felt as if they were prepared for what I was going to talk
to them about. This may have been a result of interpersonal networks of my participants
in the village. After a month, I had to proceed slower and had to carefully tailor my
conversations according to the person I was going to talk to. Patricia and Roger Jeffery’s
experience of their discussions with rural Indian women was precisely what I went
through during my research too: “Aligning ourselves with one person’s critique would
almost inevitably put us out of alignment with other people’s” (1996:21). If I heard what
men had to say, the women appeared to be lazy and nagging. If I listened to the young

40
women, I would be inclined to become critical of the older family members. If I lent an
ear to older women, all I would hear is how filmi habits are destroying the young women
living in the village. In none of the cases was I openly defiant of my participants’ views.
Mostly, I listened to all, but had to rely more on my own observations than my
interactions.

1.4.6 Field note taking and informed consent

The most tedious yet significant task was taking copious amounts of field notes. To
optimise my time in collecting data, I used the feature of audio recording on my phone.
This method proved to be particularly helpful as I recorded my observations in my own
voice immediately after an interaction with a participant in their toilets or bathrooms. It
seemed distracting for me and uncomfortable for my participants when I was taking notes
on paper while speaking to them, and I was scared that I may forget the details in between
my interactions and note-taking, as I did in the first three weeks. This method proved to
be useful for field visits requiring extensive notetaking, and it ensured that I documented
even the minutest of details. Hence, my focus could completely be on the dynamics of
the interaction.33 For the interviews, I used printed questionnaires that I filled out after
each session. My field notes, audio-recordings and data from the in-depth interviews
provided the data for this research.

I secured oral consent from my participants and interlocutors, as making them sign a
written consent form would have unsettled them. My earlier research work in 2011 in
another village in UP made me aware that a written consent form did not invite trust from
participants. If I distributed consent forms, the information they revealed ‘could be used
for anything’, and no one was ready for that. I explained the purpose of my research and
told them their names would be changed or they could even choose to tell me false names.
Whilst I could not conceal my interest in knowing about members of their family and
everyday lives, films as a topic of discussion eased them into interacting with me. All my
participants were aware that I was taking notes of what they were telling me and one of

33 An excerpt of my field notes on an audio-note I made after my session with a participant can be referred to in
appendix (i). It includes a vivid description of the relevant elements. The purpose of documenting this profile is to
describe how I communicated and connected with the participants. Profiling and descriptions formed most of my field
notes.

41
them (60) made me show her my field diary. They were not comfortable with a live
recording, so I made the audio notes myself once the interactions were over. In my
interactions, I kept mentioning casually at times that any insights from them will be
valuable for my research. The purpose was to maintain an informed consent throughout
our conversations and to encourage them to talk freely without thinking about how their
responses were going to be relevant for my study.

Conclusion
I started this chapter with an introduction of how women in rural north India still find it
difficult to share their relationship with Hindi films openly. In a country that is such a
significant part of the global film industry, producing the world’s largest number of films
every year, women film-users in this north Indian village are still largely non-viewers of
mainstream Hindi cinema, even though their lives are dominated by films in many ways.
I provide a brief background of this paradox and highlight the reasons for film
consumption being seen as a transgressive activity for women. I explain how the rural
spaces in India offer a unique set of features which make it a significant location for
studying the role of cinema in everyday life. I then moved on to contextualise this by
outlining what I mean by ‘rural’ in this study and why Narwal is an appropriate case
study. Next, I provided a historical background of Narwal and explained why it was
considered to be the promised land of social, cultural and political change since the Indian
independence struggle. Subsequently, I delineated my research aims and the questions
that drove this thesis. My study provides a snapshot of women as film consumers in a
rural space in India and describes their varied and ‘textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011)
experiences of consuming Hindi film content.

In the second part of this chapter, I reflected on my methodology and its challenges. I
described the research procedure and reflected on aspects of my fieldwork such as staying
with the residents, gaining access to women, watching films with my participants, visiting
beauty parlours, interacting with female staff in educational institutions, attending
celebrations, and conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews. Next, I reflected on the
challenges faced during and after my fieldwork such as unreliable statistics, difficulty of
access to women, and power relations between researcher and participants. I also
discussed the scale and generalisability of this study as I interacted with 80 women, but

42
the sample was not representative due to lack of comparable number of participants in
each category of age and class. Further, I concluded the section by addressing ethical
concerns such as confidentiality, informed verbal consent, and disclosure of my purpose
of data collection in Narwal to my participants. Finally, I outlined the techniques used
for taking field notes and recording interview data.

Chapter two is a survey of the literature which I begin by reviewing existing scholarship
on ethnographic work on Indian media audiences. I highlight ethnographic studies carried
out on the use of mass media in India and go on to critique how some of them used
methodologies that were insensitive to local cultures, thus presenting a thin description
of the context. I then critique audience studies on India that lack any kind of audience
research or fieldwork (see Stadtler, 2005). Since my participants as audiences cannot be
categorised as film viewers, I move on to define the scope of audiencehood for my study.
Subsequently, I briefly examine various approaches to audience research and argue for
an inclusive narrative of audiencehood that goes beyond filmgoing and viewership,
specifically in a non-urban context. Next I discuss the contribution of anthropology to
media studies, and more specifically, to my research, which I situate in the field of media
anthropology. Finally, I introduce the theoretical paradigm of everyday resistance and
how I use James C. Scott’s theorisation of ‘hidden transcripts’ (1985) as a way of
everyday resistance by my participants. I re-engage with this concept in chapter six after
introducing it here.

In the third chapter, I discuss the ways in which women in Narwal seek the use of
available media technology to engage with Hindi film content. The aim of this chapter is
to describe the availability and usage of various devices by women of varying age groups
and classes. Here, I also review the use of the same device by different women to access
different kinds of preferred film content. I begin by focusing on television sets in
households, and subsequently discuss the use of laptops and personal computers. The
chapter also describes the popularity of ‘computer shops’ and a computer learning
institute in Narwal, which are two places housing computers outside the households.
Finally, I discuss the use of radio, newspaper, and mobile phones that various women use
to relate to Hindi film. This chapter shows that women’s use of media technology might
be an appropriate example of acquiring social capital (Bourdieu, 1986). I argue that Hindi
film is often used by them to distinguish themselves socially within the village.

43
The fourth chapter elaborates on the above argument and continues to establish the
presence of a strong Hindi film culture in the village. Here, I discuss the various Hindi
film forms that exist in the village. In third chapter, I had only introduced the devices
which my participants use, but in the fourth one, I discuss the extratextual film forms that
exist beyond the use of devices and newspapers, such as film-related images on everyday
objects, film-branded merchandise, and filmic influences on festival and wedding rituals.
Using examples, I elaborate on how films are not only present in textual fragments
(videos, songs, trailers), but also have indirect influence on rural popular culture.

Chapter five takes the discussion forward by exploring the nature of the relationship
between women in Narwal and Hindi cinema. The significance of this chapter lies in its
analysis of the meanings of the word filmi. I explore the various connotations of this word
that repeatedly came up in my interactions with my participants. Women of different age
groups and classes used this word to refer to various aspects of their everyday lives.
However, despite multiple connotations, I show that a common thread holds all these
meanings together. This chapter looks at what women of various age groups think about
their everyday lives in comparison to the world of Hindi cinema. I discuss what this
relationship implies and how it compares with their use of television. I argue that
everything filmi lies outside the realm of everyday experience for my participants,
whereas television-related consumption is considered as mundane in comparison.

Having established the nature of the relationship between Hindi films and my
participants, chapter six discusses the social implication of this relationship at village
level. It starts by explaining the everyday norms that govern women’s use of Hindi films
and moves on to explain why and how this is changing. The primary question that drives
this chapter is: Why are women breaking everyday social codes to engage with films?
The chapter explores the role of Hindi films in a long moment of social change that the
village is going through. It highlights the forms of everyday resistance through which my
participants are challenging the status quo, thereby bringing into question the existing
gender power structures. I argue that talking about something contentious (films), behind
the backs of the people who clearly hold a higher social position than my participants –
both within the household and at the village level – indicates an undercurrent of ‘hidden
transcripts’ (Scott, 1985) among women within the village.

44
 2
A review of literature

2.1 Introduction
Learning of my participants’ individual stories, hearing brief episodes from their
everyday lives, of their fears, burden of expectations, and negotiations, required me to be
physically present at the sites of their everyday experiences. However, participant
observation and ethnographic methods would mean nothing if the data could not be
organised in relation to the existing scholarship. The need for this study stemmed from
gaps that I identified among studies in different academic areas such as ethnographies of
Indian audiences, audience studies, and studies on rural women in north India. This
chapter highlights those gaps, identifies the main criticisms of existing studies and, thus,
defines the scope, boundaries and workings of this thesis. The writing style I chose for
this thesis aims to present women’s individual agency in consuming film, locating this in
their personal and family networks, and in the social structure of their time. Patricia
Jefferey and Roger Jefferey, who studied the everyday lives of women in rural North
India in the early 1990s, suggested that ‘an individual’s story or a brief episode can
highlight some common features of village life in north India’ (1996:12). They argued
that this style of writing ‘enables us to focus on the ambiguities that surrounded women’s
views of their situations’ (ibid.).

This is the first study to focus on the consumption of films by women in rural north India.
There is little recent scholarship on rural Hindi film consumers, and I had to draw on
perspectives from related areas of research such as audience studies, anthropology,

45
sociology, gender studies, and studies on rural India, which are mentioned later in this
chapter. My study can be categorised as belonging to a number of different (but
sometimes overlapping) areas of research. These include: (i) audience reception, (ii)
gender and communication, (iii) rural communication, and (iv) the anthropology of
media. The literature that I review and use does not belong to a single research canon but
to a mix of all of the above. However, there are two insights from this study that uniquely
contribute to this interdisciplinary body of knowledge. First, my study establishes women
in Narwal as Hindi film audiences despite their limited or negligible viewership of these
films. Second, I show the way in which women’s film use distinguishes them socially
from other Hindi film audience groups. I argue that women in a rural setting such as
Narwal are an audience group that have a unique set of features due to which they cannot
be categorised as conventional filmgoers, and that this film consumption means more to
them than being ‘just’ entertainment or enjoyable deviations from their everyday lives.

In the first section of this chapter, I explain the rationale behind categorising my
participants as a Hindi film audience. Here I discuss various approaches used by audience
researchers and argue for the need for an inclusive narrative of audiencehood that
includes audience groups like my participants, who are audiences of Hindi film despite
being part of a film culture that is essentially beyond film viewership. The next section
of this chapter addresses questions such as: What has been the focus of the research
efforts so far in the context of Indian media audiences, and more specifically non-urban
audiences? What were their main shortcomings and how can I address those gaps in
knowledge? Which methodology among the ones used was the most relevant for me, and
why? This section introduces previous ethnographic research works on television or film
audiences in India. I also examine, in this section, previous studies that investigated the
role of factors such as gender, age and class in media consumption, which helped me to
address my research objectives. In the third section, I situate this audience group in the
field of media anthropology. Here, I highlight the anthropological turn in media studies
and outline the contribution of ethnography and ethnographic methods in my study. I
present a case in favour of audience ethnographies or media ethnographies, as they have
come to be known. Finally, for a theoretical understanding of my participants’ film use,
I use the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ to explain all the moments of social change
that I witnessed in the village. Here I introduce the main theoretical paradigm that ties
together the diverse film-related experiences of women in Narwal – the notion of

46
everyday resistance and ‘hidden transcripts’ as theorised by James C. Scott (1985). I
engage with this later in chapter six, using real-life episodes of my participants’ lives, but
I introduce it first in this chapter to lay the theoretical groundwork for analysis of my
study’s key findings.

2.2 The Audience Complex

During my fieldwork recce in December 2015, I observed that women in Narwal almost
never watch films in cinema halls, and yet they avidly consume films through what
Robert Allen has described as ‘textually disintegrated’ modes (Allen, 2011:43-44), as I
discuss in the chapter three34 Before describing them as a film audience, as opposed to
involuntary and unintentional consumers of an existing Hindi film culture, I analyse and
compare various narratives of audiencehood. In the following section I examine a few
relevant perspectives in audience studies and define the scope of audiencehood for my
research.

2.2.1 Audiencehood beyond filmgoing and viewership

Studies on film and TV reception in India have largely presumed the audience to be
viewers and spectators (see Pfleiderer, 1985; Mankekar, 1993; Derné, 2000; Scrase,
2002; Rao, 2007; Srinivas, 2010). Lotte Hoek’s ethnographic study was situated in the
cinema halls of various provincial towns of Bangladesh, in which she noted, “It was
difficult to build relationships with individual spectators or to see how they valued other
films” (Hoek, 2010:50), and that there was more to cinema audiences than the “viewers’
complex intersectional identity” (also see Derné, 2000; Dickey, 2001; Srinivas, 2002).
She emphasised on how material conditions such as film distribution and projection play

34 With media production going transmedial (Jenkins, 2006), media consumption is also expected to develop “radically
heterogeneous ways in which meaning is constructed and contested in multiple everyday contexts of media use and
consumption” (Ang, 1996:4). An important clarification here is the difference between the consumption being
‘transmedial’ (Jenkins, 2006) and extratextual or ‘textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011). Transmediality refers to a
narrative being communicated through different media, such as a video game based on a film (in this case, the medium
is the focal element), and textual disintegration means having to experience a media production in its various elements,
such as watching a complete film, or just watching its music video (in this case, the ‘text’ or the ‘content’ is the centre
of the experience). For the purpose of this research, transmediality, which might seem relevant to someone studying
various media experiences, was not particularly useful.

47
an important role in audience studies (Hoek, 2010:51). Like the earlier ethnographic
studies I discussed in the section above, most of these studies were based on film-going
or film-viewing experiences in cinema halls. The dynamics of changing media
technology and constraints of an everyday rural setting made me look beyond
cinemagoing/filmgoing and look for a type of audience study that still could be termed
that. For instance, if I needed to find out ‘what my participants said’ and ‘what they did’,
the cerebral form of audience study seemed pertinent, i.e., an audience that read and
derived meanings from the film. However, when I wanted to find out ‘what they did not
say’, and ‘what they (probably) meant’, observing visceral aspects of film reception
seemed more appropriate.

Studies of film exhibition practices require an update in what is now known as the post-
cinema era, owing to changes in technology and the corresponding increased
consumption of films as a textually disintegrated phenomenon. Robert C. Allen,
examining his daughter’s film consumption in a cosmopolitan context, wrote: “My
daughter’s generation understands cinema as a textually disintegrated phenomenon
experienced through multiple and unpredictably proliferating sites and modalities. For
her, the experience of cinema has always been decentred and fissiparous” (Allen,
2011:44). Although his observation was in a modern, urban context, the ‘textually
disintegrated’ or rather, extratextual experience of film reception is what I have examined
in a gendered rural context. Women’s engagement with Hindi films in this village was
not only through the internet (video clips, songs, trailers, full-length feature films),
television (full-length features, soap operas having a high film content, as I describe in
chapters three and five), smartphones, radio, and newspaper supplements (comprising
entertainment sections and show-timings in the nearest city-theatre), but also through
various sites having filmic influences, such as in the beauty parlours, mobile
confectionary carts, in juice shops, among others. Even Allen’s ‘textually disintegrated’
lens (2011) could not completely explain the existing film culture which my participants
experience in their everyday lives. Participants who were seeking to use films actively to
further their interests (for example, to learn choreography or to stay updated with trends),
were going beyond film-viewership and using their film engagement for everyday
purposes. In his study, Kirk Johnson (2001) noted that “rural Indians actively seek out
and use television for a variety of both personal and social endeavours” (Johnson,
2001:166) but even in his study, the only form of consumption by the users of television

48
in the two villages was on-screen viewership. My study went further than earlier studies
by focussing on participants who cannot be termed as a conventional audience group and
yet have a strong and complex relationship with films.

In the context of my research, it was also crucial to find out whether my participants
identified themselves as a Hindi film audience or not. The only words I heard during my
interactions to describe an audience was darshak, which literally means a ‘viewer’ or
‘spectator’.35 Even the participants who were evidently engaging with films actively in
their everyday lives, but not watching them, did not identify with the word, and thus, I
realised that I needed to define the scope of their audiencehood in this study.

2.2.2 Audience as an unstructured abstraction

Contextualising the silent film genre in South India, Stephen Hughes (2011a) argued that
“as an object of enquiry, film audiences will always be circumscribed by indeterminacy”
(Hughes, 2011a:295) and when speaking of film audiences, “we can therefore only refer
to abstract and constructed social categories, which should not be confused with the
empirical reality of those who actually attend films” (ibid.). He drew on Robert C. Allen
and Douglas Gomery (1985), who noted, “The ‘audience’ for movies in any sociological
or historical sense are really only an abstraction generated by the researcher” (Allen and
Gomery, 1985:156), and that “film audiences are never present as a totality, but only in
geographically dispersed, unique and fleeting social events” (Hughes, 2011a:32). This
conception of audience pulled together all the other definitions and was particularly
useful in developing my ideas.

The negligible film viewership, the extra-textual film consumption, and a prominent rural
film culture were examined to explore the boundaries of ‘audiencehood’ in my research,
with a temporal focus. As James Clifford noted, “‘Cultures’ do not hold still for their
portraits. Attempts to make them do so always involve simplification and exclusion,
selection of a temporal focus, the construction of a self-other relationship, and the
imposition or negotiation of a power relationship” (Clifford, 1986:10). Ien Ang too,
added to Clifford’s argument, “The same thing happens to the social world of actual
audiences, I argue, when ‘television audience’ is conceptualised as a taxonomic

35 The Hindi translation for ‘audience’ is dependent on the form that is being consumed, i.e., the word is shrota is for
listener, darshak is for viewer, and prekshak is for observer/onlooker/viewer/attendee

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collective, holding still for its portrait” (Ang, 1991:41). I extend this to my study wherein
I have presented the observed picture of women’s film consumption in Narwal as a
snapshot of a moment in time. In addition to a temporal focus, I took into account the
contingent nature of my participants’ day-to-day lives, which is what put into context
their act of film consumption.

2.2.3 Need for an inclusive narrative of Audiencehood

Elizabeth Bird’s book, ‘The Audience in Everyday Life’ (2003), dealt with discourses
within media ethnography. It criticised the tradition of audience research relying too
heavily on reception studies based on text. She saw these as “inadequate in capturing the
kaleidoscopic quality of our media culture (Bird, 2003:4)”. Further, she noted, “If we
cannot define an audience, is it effectively impossible to study it?” (ibid.) Adding to this
line of inquiry, Sonia Livingstone raised two pertinent questions: (i) “Is the audience a
unified group or a collection of diverse, sometimes marginal subgroups?” (Livingstone,
1998b:10), and (ii) “Is the viewer a consumer or citizen?” (ibid.) These were key
questions that led me to think about choosing my group of participants, based on their
class, occupation, and age. However, due to constraints in gaining access to potential
participants, I could not have perfectly representative sample sizes in all the above
categories.

Examining the role of Hindi film in the lives of these women as a ‘snapshot of a moment
in time’ was a challenge due to limited time for fieldwork. In compiling and analysing
my ethnographic data, Livingstone’s observation was a useful starting point, “Audience
research could usefully conceive of audiences in terms of the relationship between media
and people (rather than audience as a kind of social grouping), and that this relationship
could usefully be analysed at both macro and micro levels” (Livingstone, 1998b:18).
Considering the scope of my research, I only dealt with the micro-politics of women’s
film consumption in their day-to-day lives. Livingstone’s line of questioning pacified my
apprehension of not being able to make generalised claims about women in other rural
areas in India, as she asked, “Why do qualitative researchers even wish to make claims,
when supposedly the focus is on the identification of certain practices, within certain
contexts, rather than on trends, differences or generalities?” (Livingstone, 1998b:15) This
aligned well with Silverstone’s argument that, “audiences are a social and cultural object

50
within the complex reality of everyday life... (which are) embedded both in the macro-
environment of political economy and in the micro-world of domestic and daily
existence” (Silverstone, 1990:174). This line of inquiry prompted the first round of
analysis for my study where I studied how my participants use film references to talk
about their everyday lives. In presenting my research, I started by explaining the ‘context
of consumption’, followed by an analysis of the ‘act of consumption’, and then proceeded
to understand the ‘production of meaning’ (McGuigan, 2010). Thus, audiencehood in this
case solely relied on the ‘act of consumption’. Reception studies have established that
‘audiences are plural in their decodings, that their cultural context matters and that they
do not always agree with textual analysis” (Livingstone, 1998b:4). In other words, “the
audience has become visible, theoretically, empirically and politically, having been
previously marginalised and devalued within media theory” (ibid.).

Bird suggested the need “both for studying ‘the audience’ as real people, and for looking
‘beyond the audience’ toward a richer ethnographic understanding of life in a mediated
world” (Bird, 2003:20). This followed Livingstone’s line of reasoning which also calls
for an agenda that ‘connects audience research with actual production/texts/contexts”
(Livingstone, 1998b:5). To address this gap, it was crucial for my study “to contextualise
and to draw connections between media/audience and the larger culture” (Bird, 2003:5).

Highlighting gaps in the scholarship on audience studies required engaging with different
theoretical perspectives. Pertti Alasuutari, in his book ‘Rethinking the media audience:
The new agenda’ (1999), explained that “the objective [of audience studies] is to get a
grasp of our contemporary ‘media culture’, particularly as it can be seen in the role of the
media in everyday life” (1999:6), but as Livingstone cautioned us, “a single narrative
makes it difficult to attend to the intellectual relations” (Livingstone, 1998a:6) between
various theoretical frameworks of audience research. I agree with Livingstone’s
cautionary observation that “audience research faces significant issues concerning the
relations between marginal and dominant groups, between textual structures and
audience understandings, between local knowledge and ideological processes, for all of
which a diversity of theory is essential” (ibid.). However, due to the focus and scope of
my study, I set myself a far more modest task of only engaging with narratives of
audiencehood as non-viewers or as an abstraction. A more laborious task would have
been to engage in a discussion about various narratives of audiencehood and how I can
examine my data in the light of those. This realisation reaffirmed the need for an inclusive

51
narrative because as Ien Ang reminds us, “The identities of actual audiences are
inherently unstable, they are dynamic and variable formations of people whose cultural
and psychological boundaries are essentially uncertain” (Ang, 1991:40). Shaun Moores,
too, in his book ‘Interpreting Audiences’ (1993) conformed to the idea that “The
conditions and boundaries of audiencehood are inherently unstable” (Moores, 1993:2).
He went on to propose a plurality of audiences – “consisting of disparate groups
categorised according to their reception of various media and/or by their social and
cultural positioning” (ibid.).

In reconceptualising this framework for my research, it was clear to me that “the audience
no longer represents simply an ‘object of study’, a reality ‘out there’” (Ang, 1996:4). I
drew on the concept of the “audience as a construct which addresses relations between
people and media in context at a number of interlinked analytic levels” (Livingstone,
1998b:15). By doing this, as Livingstone suggested herself, several problems were
resolved, such as studying their reception of film in the context of their everyday lives,
employing a gendered approach to their film consumption, and examining the everyday
negotiations they performed in order to consume more film.

Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers’s article on ‘revisiting research on audience’s filmic
and cinematic experiences’ (2018) discussed important shifts in the paradigm of
reception studies. They point out:

It is probably not very productive to draw a hard line between studying filmic experiences, or
audience’s reception of, and engagement with (particular types of) film(s), on the one hand, and
research on cinematic experiences on the other hand. But it is precisely the latter type of
audience’s engagements with the cultural institution of cinema that recently received much
attention, more in particular in relation to the public’s encounter with the place where movies
are/were consumed and with the overall social experience of cinema-going.

(Biltereyst and Meers, 2018:22)

Since the 1980s, film reception studies have been increasingly influenced by “various
theoretical paradigms, methodological strands and with input from different disciplines,
such as cultural studies, cognitive psychology, film history, media studies and feminist
film theory” (Biltereyst and Meers, 2018:36). Drawing from cultural studies and media
studies helped me look at various film-related experiences of my participants by
analysing not just their reception but also seemingly smaller details of film-accessing

52
strategies and the influence of community and my participants’ interpersonal networks.
As Biltereyst and Meers described, film consumption for my participants “was a
significant social routine, strongly inspired by community identity formation, class and
social distinction” (2018:36). This was only possible through a multidisciplinary
approach. This was also helpful in identifying and studying power relations of my
participants with the rest of the community, and I address this in chapter six. It will be
useful at this point to situate my study in the context of earlier studies on Indian media
audiences, as I do in the following section.

2.3 Previous ethnographic work on Indian audiences

Previously published research on Indian film and television audiences has discussed
themes such as Indian-ness (Derné, 2000; a study of filmgoing of the working class men),
womanhood (Mankekar, 1993; television watching by urban middle class women),
masculinity (Derné, 2000), poverty (Rao, 2007; middle class men and women as
Bollywood audiences in a semi-urban town), marginalisation, urban and rural identities
(Pfleiderer, 1985; group-discussions of working class and peasants in ten Indian villages),
notions of morality (Pfleiderer, 1985; Derné, 2000; Mankekar, 1993), ‘habituees’
(Srinivas, 2002; filmgoing culture of an urban middle class) among others. These works
largely followed ethnographic research methods such as participant observation, in-depth
interviews, and long-term fieldwork, and focus-group discussions, which helped me think
about the gaps and advantages of using these methods.

More than three decades on, Lothar Lutze and Beatrix Pfleiderer’s book, The Hindi Film:
Agent and re-agent of cultural change (1985), remains a seminal work on the Indian rural
audience of Hindi films. In their fieldwork in ten Indian villages, they conducted group
discussions with village residents after screening the film Do Raaste (1969). On
analysing the behaviour and responses of their participants to this film, Pfleiderer noted
that “films propagate manners of behaviour which are unknown in the village and which
cannot be integrated into the village; i.e., they must remain dysfunctional” (Pfleiderer,
1985:77). She pointed out that in comparison to the West, there was no medium that
could ‘teach’ audiences the empathy which people need in the modern age (1985:76).
She wrote:

53
 In the West, films helped people to learn the kind of empathy which they need in the modern age.
Films also projected the roles which they might have to play and, according to Lerner, clarified
the opinions for which they might possibly have to use…[..]…For the villagers with whom we
conducted the group discussions, it was obvious that this teacher was not yet available.

She explains her comment further:

Up-till now, there has been no reason to integrate flexibility into village role behaviour. On the
contrary, this is a luxury which cannot be afforded and for which there is no use. Furthermore, no
other means of communication is available to present the villagers with empathic model
behaviour. The ideologies that feed the daily consciousness are drawn from such traditional
sources as the Ramayana. Behaviour is instilled and evaluated in the light of such sources. While
in the West, all of the various categories of novels had presented and taught empathic behaviour
long before films appeared, a literary genre of this type and for this purpose was not in use in the
villages. For this reason, it can be assumed that social empathy cannot belong to the repertoire of
the villagers we met.

(Pfleiderer, 1985:75-76)

Her observations, or assumptions, drawing on Appadurai’s argument (1988), informed

that “by not looking to their (natives’/people’s) histories, we have denied these people
the same capacity for movement, travel and geographical interaction that Westerners take
for granted” (Abu-Lughod, 1993:11). It was not only Pfleiderer’s own lack of empathy
but also her lack of knowledge about the region which informed her analysis. The range
of popular Hindi literary works that span this region have frequently dealt with themes
of social complexities and empathy for over a century now (for example, native novelists
and storywriters like Premchand, Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’, and Sri Lal Sukla among
others), although of course these would not be read by Pfleiderer’s illiterate villagers.36
Pfleiderer also observed that “the villagers, because of insufficient empathetic
competence, cannot place themselves into others’ roles (in the sense of “If I were you”).
For this reason, roles which are offered (sic) to them, e.g., in films, are greeted with
reactions which run the range from rejection to aggressive denial” (Pfleiderer, 1985:77).

36 Premchand (1880-1936), Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’ (1921-1977), and Sri Lal Sukla (1925-2011) were noted novelists
and authors from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Their works depicted the rural life in India from the point of view of a
native. Their themes of socio-economic injustice and political failures in Indian villages dealt with the local customs,
the colloquial terms, the sites of resistance, the household structures, power relations, and the problem of the caste
system that is still prevalent. Their stories are still widely read by people in this region and although they are from
another era, these stories still resonate with the local sentiment, especially when it comes to issues of representation of
Indian ‘rural-ness’.

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Once again, these statements reflect a failed attempt of the scholar to create a
representation of a group’s lived experience. Further, it did not take into account the
possible reasons for the rejection of the films’ content by the participants. This had
consequences on their findings, and I illustrate my point in the next section.

Recent films that depict small-town or rural spaces have lacked a representation of the
lived reality of people like my participants. A few examples are Dabangg (2010), Gangs
of Wasseypur (2012, Part 1 & 2), Gulaab Gang (2014), Omkara (2006), and Matru ki
Bijlee ka Mandola (2013), among numerous others. For my master’s dissertation in 2011
(an audience study of representation of rural poverty in Bollywood), my male participants
from rural spaces discussed how they were perceived to be perpetually buried in the
‘traditional lifestyle’ by these films. They shared that, in reality, they often chose to
ignore their own representation on-screen as they found it to be highly glamorised and
stylised (Charusmita, 2015). My point here is that if a particular audience group (women
of Narwal in my case) was unable to relate to the representation of themselves and their
friends/family, it would have been inappropriate for me to interpret their reactions as
‘orthodox’ or ‘requiring a teaching of modernisation’ as suggested in Pfleiderer’s work
(1985). This is in tune with Derné’s findings (2000) in which men were aware of and
showed understanding towards the often-complex position of the characters (for example,
in conjugal and familial relationships). Steve Derné’s seminal work, Movies, masculinity
and modernity (2000), studied working-class men’s filmgoing in two North Indian cities,
Dehradun and Banaras, and examined notions of masculinity among his filmgoing
participants. He studied how men enjoy (or not) watching narratives dealing with family,
sexual relationships, gender relations, and the problem of Westernisation. It is notable
that the two studies, Pfleiderer and Lutze’s, and Derné’s, took place more than a decade
apart – and more than twenty years ago now – but their significant findings paved the
way for my present-day study of film reception by a non-urban audience.

When I talk of films in my analysis, I refer to mainstream Hindi films released after 2005
(ten years before I started fieldwork). The characters of villains/antagonists/adversaries
that the mainstream Hindi cinema has been producing in recent films are starkly different
from the films of the 1970s and 1980s, which were based on a more rigid contrast between
the rural and the urban, dealing with rural to urban migrations (Ganti, 2004; Rao, 2007),

55
and with narratives where ‘villains’ were mostly urban and (therefore) evil.37 The anti-
heroes of today are full of nuances which invoke audience empathy for the characters.
Fieldwork for my MA study revealed that, in comparison with the earlier studies, rural
viewers then (in 2011) were more receptive to ‘realistic’ content than those described in
Pfleiderer’s (1985) or Derné’s (2000) studies.38 This observation may have been the
result of a long gap between my study and theirs, or because my group discussions in
2011 were almost all male (Charusmita, 2015). This certainly required further study.
However, drawing on my previous argument on the issue of representation, it is
significant to note the difference between the participants rejecting representations of
themselves and their acceptance of the more nuanced characterisation of the protagonists
in these recent films. A present-day understanding of rural women’s responses to Hindi
films was necessary to contextualise women’s preferences in relation to their current
social position in the rural community.

Purnima Mankekar’s ethnography of middle-class urban women’s television-viewing in

New Delhi (1993) highlighted various discourses on womanhood that emerged during
her interactions. A consequent observation was the notion of ‘Indian womanhood’ that
emerged from her discussions with a woman and her mother in their household while
discussing Sita (from the Ramayana) and Draupadi (from the Mahabharata). Although
she clarified that the “notions of Indian Womanhood are not static” (Mankekar,
1993:560), she observed, based on her fieldwork, that “Ideal Indian Womanhood is
constructed in terms of values deemed fundamentally womanly, essentially Indian:
modesty, patience, and, above all, a strong sense of duty toward the family, the
community, and the nation” (1993:552). In her work, Mankekar discussed several
seemingly simple interactions between middle- and lower-middle-class women who
watched television at home. Her analytical approach and the presentation of her findings
represented thorough ethnographic work and informed my own process of analysing my
participant’s interactions.

37 There were still plenty of films of village life in these decades, as well as ongoing reruns of films like Mother India
(1957), where the villain was clearly rural. However, I intend to point out that the protagonists in recent films have
been multi-layered and not as decisive about ‘morality’ as in the films of the 1970s, 80s or the 90s.
38 By realistic here, I refer to the dystopian, non-melodramatic content that has become a prominent part of realistic
Hindi films post 2000, similar to the satire that my case study was (Peepli Live, 2010)

56
Before commencing fieldwork, I had hypothesised that viewing films in 2015 would be
much easier for today’s village women in comparison to those Pfleiderer had observed:
“Women, especially, are rarely or never taken to the movies. Men might go once in a
while, before coming home from the market” (1985:59). Although women in Narwal are
accessing film through various media now, their participation at collective spaces of
viewing, such as film theatres, is still negligible. In 1980, in a critical case study of
Darauli Gram Panchayat, Siwan District, Bihar, Sachidanand Mishra had touched on the
subject of rural ‘cine-goers’. Darauli is a small village situated on the border of U.P. and
Bihar and at the time of Mishra’s study it was a small village with minimal infrastructure.
He took a sample size of 600 respondents and found that 200 of these had never been to
see any film in their entire lives (Mishra, 1980:54). These studies were helpful in
sketching the film consumption patterns of villages in North India: both Pfleiderer (1985)
and Mishra (1980) confirmed that women’s film-viewing was negligible. More than two
decades on, Shakuntala Rao’s (2007) ethnography of film reception among non-elite
working-and middle-class Indian audiences in a midsized city (in Punjab, North India)
suggested that there was a paradigm shift in how people view films in India. Although
Rao’s study was carried out in a city, she defined her audience group as non-elite lower
middle class. My study examines if things had changed in the rural settings too, i.e., to
see if Pfleiderer’s claim that watching a film is a part of urban/industrial culture, and that
it has no roots or takers in the villages (1985:59), required updating.39

Derné’s ethnography of men’s filmgoing in two north Indian cities discussed ‘alternative
ways of Indian thinking’ (Derné, 2000:166-167). The term referred to the ways in which
viewership of popular Hindi cinema challenged the dominant hierarchy and male
dominance among his participants, and yet did “not necessarily resolve them”
(2000:167). Alternate ways of Indian thinking (ibid.) referred to an increased focus on
the diversity of his participants’ emotional experiences after watching films, and yet
Derné argued that “they do not suggest that the emphasis on equality and individualism
had gotten the upper hand” (2000:167). In comparison to Pfleiderer’s study, Derné’s
study was more nuanced and he showed that his participants, although all men, seemed

39 Although Rao’s study (2007) was carried out in a city, she defined her audience group as non-elite lower middle
class.

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much more appreciative of complex themes and issues of gender. From analysis of both
the studies, it was inconclusive whether or not women were able to negotiate with
patriarchal norms in the current times as a result of their experiences as a film consumer.
Through my study I was able to address this gap by showing how women were being
enabled by their film consumption to break everyday rules that govern them. Here I wish
to clarify that it is not primarily the content of the film, but the act of consuming it that is
transgressive in nature.

The need to investigate film consumption practices, and not only film-viewing, is more
pressing now than ever before, owing to multifarious modalities. Graeme Turner, in his
book Film as Social Practice (2006, fourth edition), discussed the socio-cultural aspect
of the cinema and said, “the act of ‘going out’ is itself intrinsic to the event of cinema-
going” (Turner, 2006:146). Lotte Hoek, in her article ‘Film Projection and the Cinema
Audience in Bangladesh’, said, “The nature of the active audience was thus related to the
possibilities offered by technology and circumstance of exhibition. To understand cinema
audiences, in Bangladesh and elsewhere, practices of exhibition need to be investigated”
(2010:61). Exhibition spaces, filmgoing companions, age, technology, among other
factors, became important parameters for my study. In 1980, in his study of Darauli,
Sachidanand Mishra revealed that the 3:1 ratio (of filmgoers vs. non-filmgoers) was
skewed in favour of the younger generation which was much more in contact with the
urban world, as verified by the studies carried out by Turner (2006) and Elizabeth Bird
(2003). Shakuntala Banaji, in her book (2006) on young audiences of Hindi films in India
and the UK, agreed with Derné’s (2000) and Mankekar’s (1999) studies:

In their view, the immediate context of viewing – namely the companions with whom one attends
a film showing or watches a programme, the location and type of theatre or the position of the
television in the type of living room – is central to the experience of Hindi film or television texts
and might influence, alter or even shape entirely an interpretation of a textual message or
representation.

(Banaji, 2006:32)

The effect of the modality of film consumption on my participants is explained in

chapters three and five. In these chapters, I have gone beyond reading my participants’
interpretation of film as a text and established that the act of their consumption through
a particular mode has implications for and because of the context of their consumption.

58
As Lotte Hoek alerted the scholars of cinema in South Asia “to the possibilities that the
blanket term “popular cinema” may hide a very diverse and theoretically challenging
domain of cinematic practices” (Hoek, 2010:61), the meaning of rural women’s love for
films has far-reaching and transformative consequences, as I show in chapter six. The
social churning that Narwal village is going through cannot be studied in a linear
transition to ‘modernity’, which itself is a loaded concept. I have only been able to study
the changes that reflect my participants’ evolving film consumption, and the film
practices that are, in turn, affecting their everyday life. Additionally, Derné’s claim that
“the extent of Indians’ film-going is one indication of the appeal of modern lifestyles”
(Derné, 2000:19) seemed vague but may have been accurate in terms of male participants
at the time of his study. My findings have indicated that the degree of women’s
engagement with films was not an indication of how far urban or wealthy lifestyles
appealed to them. Their desires, after a point, were limited by their everyday lives. In
other words, it cannot be concluded based on my research alone whether their film use
was indicative of a desire to have an urban/wealthy lifestyle, owing to their diverse
experiences and realities.

I also found that it is not only the ‘modern lifestyles’ but also filmic images of the rural
from which my participants often find themselves to be removed or misrepresented that
alienated them, as was also the case in the context of my MA study (Charusmita, 2015).
This finding was in line with Shakuntala Rao’s central argument (2007) about her non-
elite participants’ growing resentment towards contemporary Hindi cinema for its
ignorance of people like themselves (Rao, 2007). Her study showed how strongly non-
elite audiences living in a North Indian small town reacted to urbanised and glamourised
films. When films like Dhoom 3 (2013) and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), which
depicted luxurious settings and exotic locations outside India, faced criticism from Rao’s
participants, it was hardly a revelation. However, her study showed that films
like Swades (2004), that dealt with the nostalgia of a Non-Resident Indian for his native
village, were also somewhat alienating for her participants who had relatives living
abroad. As one of the respondents from her study put it, “Maybe some Indians like those
from IIT [Indian Institute of Technology, an elite engineering school] are living like Shah
Rukh Khan’s [character] in Swades, driving that car, living in that house, or working for
NASA. But my sister is not living like that. She works as a janitor at the New Jersey
airport” (Rao, 2007:68). Such responses from Rao’s participants highlight the divide that

59
exists between the representations of people on- and off-screen and how the non-urban
audiences increasingly feel alienated from contemporary Hindi film images.

Sara Dickey’s ethnographic monograph about cinema and the urban poor in South India
(1993) argued that the filmgoers of Madurai were not passive recipients of a dominant
ideology but were constantly negotiating their film viewing experience in the context of
their ‘everyday’ lives, including family, relationships, among other aspects. Her ‘thick
description’ (Geertz, 1973) of her extended ethnographic fieldwork in a foreign land was
largely sympathetic towards her participants. Dickey’s study provided an analytical
standpoint for my own research as she emphasised the sociological meaning that the
urban poor’s filmgoing held. She contended that the films provided a pleasurable escape
from the contradictions and conflicts of the lives of the Tamil urban poor that derived
“from [their] roots in real-life social and psychological stresses and from the soothing of
those stresses through melodramatic crisis resolution” (Dickey, 1993:175). Her analysis
was partly informed by her textual analyses of the films that her participants were
watching and discussing as viewers and filmgoers. My study aims to take this notion of
audiences and expand it to incorporate my participants who are not conventional viewers
but operate within and engage with a thriving film culture in rural north India.

Lakshmi Srinivas (2010) carried out yet another important piece of ethnographic work in
Bangalore (a metropolitan city in Southern India) on how urban space and culture shape
the cinema experience for both moviegoers and the film business. In 2016, she published
House Full where she addressed the questions of reception and the connections filmgoing
practices had with other local traditions (Srinivas, 2016). The significant finding from
her studies was her central argument of an ‘active’ audience as opposed to a silent or an
imagined abstraction, and that the filmgoing experience in India is starkly different from
filmgoing in the West. Both of her studies, heavy on ethnographic detail, shaped my own
understanding of how to deploy ethnographic fieldwork for a reception study.
Additionally, the role of space and existing local culture in shaping cinema experience
was a tenet that helped me think about how my participants’ everyday lives influenced
the ways in which they discussed Hindi film.

In the words of Tejaswini Ganti, who spent about two decades on her fieldwork on
filmmakers and producers in Bollywood, “Ethnography, however, is not just about
interviewing people, but is centrally about paying attention to what Malinowski (1922)
referred to as the ‘Imponderabilia of everyday life’, which is best achieved through long

60
term sustained participant-observation” (Ganti, 2014:17). But even today ethnographic
investigations initiate debates that ‘tend to just limit themselves to an Anglo-American
perspective’ (Drotner, 2006:1). This call for de-westernizing audience reception
(Drotner, 2006) was seconded by Hoek, following her fieldwork on cinema reception in
Bangladesh. She argued that (in the context of South Asia) studying cinema audiences
“requires a theoretical approach that can understand the collective without reducing it to
a mass, and a methodology that does not only rely on presence and interviews but can
also approach absence, silence and collective forms of affect” (Hoek, 2010:61). All of
the above studies served as guides to how to achieve this objective of de-westernization
and to capture the nuances of local context. These studies led me to observe more keenly
and look out for acts and gestures, instead of only relying on my participants’ responses
in our conversations. Women of varying age groups and classes had different body
languages, and some were more silent than others. Familiarising myself with my
participants’ everyday lives was instrumental in decoding their silences and in identifying
people who could validate my observations about those participants.

In his study of television audiences carried out in two isolated hill villages in Western
Maharashtra in 2001, Kirk Johnson pointed out that the “culture emerges from the myriad
decisions made by intelligent individuals within the constraints of their social contexts”
(2001:148). This argument was useful for analysing studies on rural vs urban media
cultures. The contrast between the media preferences of the two groups should not only
be attributed to the ‘the intelligent individuals’ who can exercise choice in everyday life,
but also to the ‘constraints of their social contexts’ (ibid.). Johnson’s argument was based
on television-viewing, while my study is concerned with the film consumption
preferences of a rural group and requires the contextualisation of the social, economic
and/or political constraints that shape their choices.

Timothy J. Scrase, in his ethnography of middle-class television viewing in West Bengal

between 1998 and 2000, argued that “although admittedly entertaining, television
generally is perceived to have no cultural virtue except for the educational programmes
and documentaries, current affairs and news which are broadcast” (Scrase, 2002:332).
This was in disagreement with other ethnographic works on television (Mankekar, 1993
and Jain, 2010). Further, Johnson also observed that his participants in the villages “watch
television to discover new lifestyles, validate ideas, beliefs and aspirations and find
answers to questions that have ramifications both locally and regionally” (Johnson,

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2001:166). He further claimed that “rural Indians actively seek out and use television for
a variety of both personal and social endeavours” (ibid.). Both of these studies illustrate
that India is a country with diverse rural audience cultures and there is scope for further
work on media audiences in other rural cultures of India, and more significantly, on
differences between television and film audiences. This is another gap that I address in
chapter five, where I draw a comparison between television and film consumption by my
participants.

These ethnographic works were certainly not exhaustive, but they were instrumental in
guiding my study. My study required a certain level of immersion into my participants’
everyday lives in order to understand their ‘absence, silence and collective forms of
affect’ (Hoek, 2010:161). The following section focuses on the most prominent gap that
I found in some of the existing reception studies and how I address it through my own
work.

2.3.1 A Voice Silenced: A critique of audience reception studies of Hindi films

In several ethnographic studies that I examined, the participants’ reactions were

manipulated or taken for granted by the researchers, thereby making their conclusions
problematic. Some of the others that claimed to be audience studies lacked any primary
research at all. For example, amongst Pfleiderer’s team of researchers was Anil Saari
(1945-2005), a journalist, poet, dramatist, and one of the earliest film critics in India. In
‘Critic’s Notes’, his chapter in Pfleiderer’s book, he wrote about the three different levels
of reactions of the village spectators to a song in the 1969 film, Do Raste (Raj Khosla).
Through parallel cuts, the song juxtaposed a cabaret-dance with scenes of the serious
illness of the matriarch of a joint family. The levels described by Saari were: (i) a strong
and intense reaction to the bikini-clad cabaret dancers, (ii) sadness and mourning at the
family tragedy and (iii) a reaction to the ‘totality of the cinematic arrangement conceived
by the filmmakers’ (1985:48) and to the ‘sophistication of the juxtaposition apart from
their specifically independent reactions to the sexuality of the cabaret dance and sorrow
about the dying mother’ (ibid.). This last finding seemed methodologically problematic
to me for two reasons. First, what was the act that made him perceive that, apart from the
mournful reaction to the tragedy and intense reaction to the erotic images, there was an
‘independent’ reaction to the sophisticated juxtaposition and the totality of the song

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sequence? There is evidence to prove the first two reactions, but there is no ‘action by
the viewers’ to show how his participants felt about the totality of the cinematic
arrangement. These kinds of extrapolations can pose problems for ethnographic analysis.
The second problem was that during data collection by Saari, there were photographers
with the researching team present at the site, and the viewers were completely aware of
that. As I noticed during my fieldwork, the presence of cameras and filming personnel
can inflect the ethnographic results, especially among participants who are not used to
being filmed in their everyday lives. Consider this extract by Saari:

However, since he became the focus of the team’s photographers, he gradually quieted (sic) down
out of self-consciousness (As soon as Beatrix came and sat near him, another villager shouted out
to him, teasingly, about her photographic interest in him). This, plus the fact that the film’s
thematic surface changes so completely, made this villager around thirty-five years of age change
his personality completely. The second half of the film he watched quietly and intently, only
exchanging a comment with his neighbours now and then.

(Saari, 1985:50)

The young man in question was one of the spectators described to be having a visibly
active response since the start of the screening. Apart from the observation that the film’s
narrative turned serious in its second half, the reason for his change of reaction was also,
as Saari informed us, due to the female researcher’s (who also happened to be Caucasian)
sudden proximity to the male participant. For anyone who has had any connection with
the Indian rural context, this act could (must) have had an adverse effect on their primary
data collection. It is not the act that distorted the data, but the lack of acknowledgement
of its inflection on the fieldwork that posed a real problem. Further, such an act during a
screening, which was already being recorded and photographed, might also have been
unwelcomed by village elders and women.

Another of Saari’s recorded observations was, “The money-lender in the film evoked the
expected identification and mocking laughter, but they seemed to accept the money-
lender’s desire, and scheme, to rape the young girl of the joint family, Gita” (Saari,
1985:49). This observation did not take into account the fact that audience reactions to
such incidents in the films might or might not be vocal or physical at that moment.
Additionally, in the presence of cameras at the screening and lack of evidence of their
actual reaction to those scenes, Saari’s conclusions seem to be not only misrepresentative
but also presumptuous. It is not only important to re-emphasise the ‘recorded and

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photographed’ nature of this screening but also the researchers’ ignoring of the silences
and internal thought processes of the viewers. I argue here that not all reactions can be
understood by only being physically present at the screening. There has to be a continued
long-term presence of the researcher at the site and a knowledge of behaviours and
attitudes of the participants.

In comparison to Pfleiderer’s study, Mankekar’s (1993) methodology of living in

participants’ households and interacting with them on a daily basis seemed more
appropriate for my research. Mankekar illustrated her arguments by observations based
on the conversations inside the households between the family members. Learning from
this, during my field recce, I listed the various sites where I could observe and understand
my participants, such as agricultural fields, schools, beauty parlours, tailoring shops,
women’s community healthcare centres (Aanganwadis), among others. Grave issues like
the aforementioned audience reactions to the rape of a young girl need multiple
opportunities of discussion in order to evoke any sort of response from participants.
During my stay in Narwal, there were certain instances of reluctance and hesitation, and
these kinds of reactions informed and shaped my analysis.

The behaviour of Saari’s viewers/participants, as described by him, was quite

‘indisciplined’. In his own words:

From time to time the older men would tire of the movie and turn away from it...One of them kept
walking around while another often turned his back to the screen... They would constantly distract
themselves from the movie to talk with each other or exchange comments.

(ibid.)

This description of an ‘indisciplined audience’ lacked knowledge of local film-viewing

practices. The act of watching a three-hour film was not an act of commitment for this
kind of audience and instead of noting down what film-viewing meant for his
participants, the researcher chose to impose his own contempt for their behaviour, which
I have demonstrated through a few excerpts from his chapter in Pfleiderer’s book, in the
next section. It is also likely that his participants in the village engaged with other forms
of entertainment, including traditional forms, in the same way, which could have been a
significant observation to document. My study addressed this by going beyond collective

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screenings (without excluding them) to include the silences and the ‘unsaid’ reactions of
my participants instead of alluding to misplaced notions about their psyche.

Pfleiderer’s own account of the group discussions was, arguably, crude and rather
simplistic. One of the interviewers in her study (Lutze or Saari; it was unclear in the text),
followed up an earlier question, “Is what I am saying right because I am saying it, or
because you really think that way?” (Pfleiderer, 1985:67) and the group answered, “We
also feel that way” (ibid.). Questions like these not only could have distorted the
responses of the participants, but also ultimately produced a banal reporting of the entire
setting. In another example, when asked about ‘the Muslim neighbour’s friendship (in
the film), we (researchers) were assured that there is no such thing as religious enmity’
(Pfleiderer, 1985:66). For such questions the researchers ought to have dug deeper,
perhaps by observing their unease, confidence, silences, or a delay in response time. For
instance, in their work on gender and kinship in north India more than two decades ago,
Raheja and Gold showed that village women sometimes challenged the ‘cultural
discourse encoding female subordination’ by inculcating resistance found in folk songs
and stories into their everyday lives (1994:29). Their in-depth research also discussed
instances where women used ‘submission and silence as conscious strategies of self-
representation’ when it was advantageous to do so (1994:11). My main critique of
reception studies such as Pfleiderer’s is the lack of understanding of their participants’
context and circumstances when discussing concepts like empathy, which would have
required them to carry out much more detailed research. In all of the above examples, the
voice of the participants (including not only verbal responses but also body language,
discomfort, silences, and internal murmurs, among others) seems to have been
overlooked. A systematic silence over such ethnographic nuances is present throughout
Pfleiderer’s and Saari’s analysis, along with a lack of sociological understanding of the
local culture. This feels uncomfortable for the readers and does not fulfil the purpose of
bringing the participants’ culture to life. An understanding of the norms of gender
segregation in the region was necessary, such as maintaining no close proximity between
women and men during the screening, the flouting of which can create discomfort. To
illustrate my point, here is another example (an extract from the interview):

“Did you see the whole film?”

“Yes, we saw it, but don’t remember it, everything has been forgotten.”

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 “You forget things in villages?”

“One forgets things after such a long time.”

“Did you like it?”

“Everybody liked it.”

(A woman respondent as quoted in Pfleiderer, 1985:71)

Neither the interviewer, nor the participant, shows any signs of interest in the
conversation. This disinterest is not acknowledged or analysed inside the findings
section. I agree with Clifford Geertz, that “understanding a people’s culture exposes their
normalness without reducing their particularity. It renders them accessible: setting them
in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity” (1973:14), and Pfleiderer’s
approach towards her interviewees seems almost coercive. Consider the following
extract:

The interviewer was insistent because he felt that Masterji (a village elder) should see the reason
for the cabaret dancer’s presentation:

(so, he asked) “But listen, it also had a moral”.

Masterji, however, was not interested in the moral which was behind the showing of the belly
dancer and replied indignantly.

(Pfleiderer, 1985:73)

In the above, there is not only an apparent disdain for the respondent’s view, but also a
complete disconnect between the two. Such patronizing remarks are likely to have
antagonised the participants and defeated the objective of their research. There are
repeated references to this elderly gentleman ‘Masterji’ in the text and none of them
indicate any empathy with the local hierarchy and culture. It is evident that the researchers
seemed acutely aware of their own elite cultural background and clearly imposed their
beliefs, thus warping the production of meaning by the viewers. Despite drawbacks, the
strength of the above study lies in its on-ground data collection covering ten villages in
India, thereby presenting the readers with first-of-its-kind primary data.

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Another fundamental gap in existing reception studies in India is due to a lack of audience
investigation or fieldwork research. One such example is a paper by Florian Stadtler titled
‘Cultural Connections: "Lagaan" and Its Audience Responses’ (2005). Although it is
rigorous in its treatment of the film’s text and the global appeal of the Hindi film industry,
it engaged inconsequentially with the subject of its title, ‘The Audience Responses’.
Stadtler said, “The success of Lagaan with a wide variety of audiences, be it the poor
man in Bihar as much as the NRI yuppie in London, Singapore or New York, and non-
Asian audiences all over the world is interesting” (Stadtler, 2005:519), and that there was
a ‘shift in the taste of Western audiences’ (ibid.). These claims were presumably based
on the box-office figures, but there was no supportive statistical evidence or audience
response.

Interestingly, a call for new approaches to audience research was also seconded by the
producer of the above-mentioned film Lagaan (2001) - Aamir Khan. He is one of the
most prominent actors in the Hindi film industry and an immensely successful filmmaker.
During my interview with him for a previous study (Charusmita, 2015), he criticised the
box-office approach to suffice as a measurement for audience engagement, as it is a
complex process heavily inflected by technicalities of distribution and media projections.
He cited examples of the TRP (television ratings) and box-office ratings as being
inadequate to paint a picture of audience reception. In other words, box-office statistics
make for a ‘necessary’ condition, but not a ‘sufficient’ one, when studying audiences.
Understandably, for industrial purposes, the viewers’ responses cannot be studied for
every film with in-depth interviews and fieldwork, but as a researcher it becomes crucial
to look at the factors influencing people’s film practices. Geertz’ argument pertaining to
cultural analysis will prove useful in addressing the criticisms mentioned above. He
argued, “Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses,
and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the
Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape” (Geertz, 1973:20). This
is an arduous exercise but was most effective in a place like Narwal where I could not
expect extroverted or direct responses to my questions. Thus, the analysis of ‘audience
responses’ in an audience reception study can only be achieved through primary data
collection. In the case of my study, I drew from an ethnographic methodology, and in the
next section, I discuss the approaches that helped me situate my study in the field of
media anthropology.

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2.3 From Geertz’s ‘Thick Description’ to the Anthropology of
Media
In his seminal book, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Clifford Geertz presented an
anthropological analysis of culture:

Culture, here, is not cults and customs, but the structures of meaning through which men give
shape to their experience; and politics is not coups and constitutions, but one of the principal
arenas in which such structures publicly unfold.

(Geertz, 1973:312)

He defined ‘cultural meaning’ as the conceptual structures individuals use to construe

experience (Geertz, 1973:313):

We begin with our own interpretations of what our informants are up to, or think they are up to,
and then systematize those – the line between (Moroccan) culture as a natural fact and (Moroccan)
culture as a theoretical entity tends to get blurred.

(Geertz, 1973:15)

Geertz’s ‘Thick Description’ claimed to ensure a rigorous analysis simultaneously

alongside ‘ethnographic writing’. As Raymond Madden said much later on, “while we
might identify ethnographic description and analysis and interpretation as separate
events, they must never be divorced from each other in the writing of ethnography”
(Madden, 2010:161). Madden saw critical potential in the strategy of describing the
‘being there’ experience. He saw it “not as a weakness in ethnographic representations
but as a potential strength” (Madden, 2010:160). Geertz decried the tendency of most
ethnographic works to be ‘merely evocative’ (Geertz, 1973:312). Traditional
anthropological literature aimed to establish the importance of the ‘thick description’
approach, and I agree with this assessment. However, I wish to clarify that my study
borrows its theoretical perspectives from various fields such as media studies, sociology,
and the more recent one, media anthropology. Therefore, despite the fact that
anthropology has been ignored by earlier media researchers (Dayan and Katz, 1992),
‘armchair anthropology’ (Pickering, 1984) seems quite old-fashioned now and needs to

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be re-visited with a ‘more (and more rigorous) examination of anthropological theory in
media research, not less’ (Couldry, 2005:60). Theoretical debates in media anthropology
are becoming more complex as scholars now argue that mechanically applying the
concepts of anthropology to media phenomena will not explain a cultural problem that
needs to be understood (see Coman, 2005). The appropriation of old forms of
anthropology gave rise to important questions in my mind: To what extent can my
analysis be generalised in terms of geography, culture, history, and politics? Is long-
duration fieldwork-based ethnography the only method to adapt when carrying out
studies of anthropology of media? What is the difference between Ethnography and
Ethnographic work? Consider the following suggestion by Coman (2005) that helped me
address the above questions during my analysis:

The re-invention of anthropology must take into account two essentially congruent processes: a)
changing the object of study; anthropology is no longer the science of the exotic, but of multiple
otherness built by the researcher through the intellectual techniques of de-familiarisation;
anthropology investigates the various mechanisms through which meaning is created and
negotiated in the nexus which links the local with the global, the present with the past; b) the
disappearance of the traditional forms of scientific authority; the basic pillars of anthropological
vision (Otherness, Sameness, Culture, etc.), subject to the process of self-reflection, no longer
have a substantial character, are no longer objects per se, but processes.

(Coman, 2005:18)

I discuss next the value of anthropological inputs in my study of rural women as film
audiences in order to I justify my field of study and its significance in the current context.

2.3.1 The anthropological turn

Stephen Hughes, in his article ‘Media Anthropology and the Problem of Audience
Reception’, noted that “in focusing on media audiences and reception, anthropologists
have been a part of a larger critical interrogation of these issues within media and cultural
studies over the last several decades” (Hughes, 2011b:288). Antonio La Pastina also
made a strong case for situating media research within traditional anthropology. He
argued that the ethnography of ‘audiences’ needs to be “repositioned as a fieldwork-
based, long-term practice of data collection and analysis” (La Pastina, 2005:139). He
added that “This practice allows researchers to attain a greater level of understanding of
the community studies and maintain self-reflexivity and respect toward those they are

69
attempting to understand within the everyday life of the community” (ibid.). It is
important here to note that although La Pastina called for a long-term practice of data
collection, I was limited by scope, duration and resources during my research. I optimised
my familiarity with the everyday culture in Narwal, which I had developed over a period
of two decades, and this proved instrumental in offsetting the short duration of my
fieldwork (see Bird, 2003 and Alasuutari, 1999). According to Coman and Rothenbuhler,
“valuable interpretive accounts can be based on relatively small periods of observation,
focusing on media texts as much as people and activities” (2005:3). They also noted that
“if the ethnographic goals are achieved, the research activity is itself legitimately
ethnographic - whether or not it fulfils all the requirements of the classical ethnographic
field experience” (ibid.). For my research, I did not solely rely on ‘thick description’ as
my methodological tool, and therefore, I do not claim this study to be ‘an ethnography’
but an ethnographic project.40

In an earlier section of this chapter I examined a few ethnographic case studies of Indian
media. In support of the value that I assign to my familiarity with Narwal’s culture, I
emphasise that Mankekar’s (1993) and Rao’s (2007) studies differed from Derné’s
(2000), Pfleiderer’s (1985), and Dickey’s (1995), as the former two were much more
familiar with the culture than the latter three. There was no strenuous travel to faraway
lands, and the languages and rituals too, were familiar. This element of familiarity saved
them from the anthropological challenge of cultural translation. I agree with Geertz here
that, “understanding a people’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their
particularity” (Geertz, 1973:14), and this by no means was achievable without an element
of familiarity and, even better, an element of ‘native-ness’.

Sara Dickey also built a case for using anthropological approaches in media studies, and
she noted, “as anthropologists, we approach the field of mass media studies at a time
when it raises issues we are very well prepared to take on using our methods and
theoretical perspectives” (Dickey, 1997:454). Despite this, as Coman cautioned us:

Several representatives of media studies have applied concepts such as myth, rite, religion, sacred,
magic or liminality to interpret various texts and contexts of the production of significations in
mass media. Their enterprises, exotic in rapport with the main trends in media studies, have been
totally ignored by anthropologists

40 See section 1.3 for a detailed description of the methodology

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 (2005:8)

The methodological concerns of my study were discussed in greater detail in the previous
chapter, but it is important to discuss a methodological criticism that emerged from the
literature in cultural studies (especially ethnographic work). This criticism was the
tendency of the ethnographer to “stretch the definition of ethnography to cover almost
any effort to collect extended accounts of people’s beliefs, responses and experiences”
(Murdock, 1997:184). Murdock denounced this practice and argued that characteristic
ethnographic techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups, diaries, among other
methods, “can offer a solid basis for creative interpretation but…cannot provide thick
descriptions” (ibid.). Elizabeth Bird went on to criticise this line of reasoning and said:

As any anthropologist knows, ethnography has also long encompassed a range of methods that
supplement or even replace classic fieldwork, and that may perfectly legitimately be used to study
media reception – especially if combined with a broader analysis of cultural context.

(Bird, 2003:7)

She argued that “many media ethnographers are studying cultural phenomena with which
they are already familiar as participants, and there is a variety of techniques that build on
this familiarity” (Bird, 2003:7). This was in agreement with Alasuutari’s suggestion that
in such studies, the “fieldwork has actually started years before” (Alasuutari, 1999:8),
and this allows the “native researcher to focus attention on phenomena that are already
quite familiar, whether the context is India (Parmeswaran, 1999; Mankekar, 1999) or the
United States” (Bird, 2003:7). This was particularly useful for my study as my fieldwork
could be supported by my earlier visits to Narwal as a child and a young adult, and my
familiarity with the everyday culture helped me to validate and explain my findings
better.

The above arguments of Alasuutari (1999) and Bird (2003) can be further analysed in
light of what George E. Marcus (1998) observed. He said that despite the existence of
well-established research techniques to account for history, change, and political
economy, “ethnographers of an interpretive bent – more interested in problems of cultural
meaning than in social action – have not generally represented the ways in which closely
observed cultural worlds are embedded in larger, more impersonal systems” (Marcus,

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1986:166). He further argued that these ethnographers had not portrayed “the role of these
worlds in the sort of events and processes that make history, so to speak, perhaps because
ethnography as description has never particularly been ambitious in this way” (ibid.).
This debate was centred on the considerations of situating the fieldwork data in a context,
and extrapolation of that context into ‘something broader’. As Clifford Geertz noted,
“each study struggles to draw broad generalizations out of special instances, to penetrate
deeply enough into detail to discover something more than detail” (Geertz, 1973:313).

Michael Fischer called for a ‘renewed beginning’ in 1986, and his observation still holds
relevance in the mapping of current challenges in ethnography: “Cultural criticism that
operates dialectically among possible cultural and ethnic identifications is one important
direction in which the current ferment about ethnography seems to lead” (Fischer,
1986:233). Furthermore, he suggested that if this was true, then “finding a context for
ethnographic projects in the provocative literature on modern ethnicity can only enhance
their critical potential” (ibid.). An analysis that was to fulfil this challenge posed by
Fischer required a conscious choice of contextualising the ‘emergent’ rather than the ‘pre-
conceived’, i.e. contextualisation was ideally required to be an objective act on the part
of the ethnographer. Therefore, in the case of my participants, where studying the ‘self-
awareness’ as women living in a rural area was crucial, the critical potential of the study
was also contingent on the act of contextualisation. In the process of contextualising the
everyday use of film by my participants, anthropological perspectives were instrumental
in sketching the social structures of power within which they lived and negotiated their
experiences, and I discuss them later in this chapter. However, I wish to narrow down the
discussion to approaches that helped me in addressing the issue of ‘optimistic celebration
of audience’ (Gibson, 2000:256) in ethnographic research.

Timothy A. Gibson, in his article ‘Notes Towards the Critical Ethnography of Media
Audiences’, criticised the cultural populism of some audience researchers such as Fiske
(1986 and 1990), and drew on Budd, Entman, and Steinman’s argument (1990):

The problem with this optimistic celebration of audience (as well as subcultural) power,
opposition, and resistance is that Fiske seems to argue that “we don’t need to worry about people
watching several hours of TV a day, consuming its images, ads, and values. People are already
critical, active viewers and listeners, not cultural dopes manipulated by the media” (1990:170).

(Gibson, 2000:256)

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I agree with Gibson that “active viewing is, by itself, not political resistance: (2000:256)
and, in my study, I have been careful to theorise this emerging, yet weak, dissent by
women in order to gain access to technology through which they can consume media,
and more specifically, Hindi film. Finally, he argues:

What such a singular focus on the freedoms of reception and consumption leaves out…is an
understanding of the complex social, economic, and political determinants that shape both the
moment of reception and the political efficacy of the meanings generated through text/audience
interactions.

(2000:257)

Thus, the ethnographic approach was useful in not only understanding the audience
context in depth but also prepared me to be careful of exaggerating any deviations in the
everyday as revolutionary acts. I was also mindful of not claiming my work to be ‘an
ethnography’, as I mentioned earlier. The reason for this was lack of long-term fieldwork
which would have helped me tease out the ‘informal logic of everyday life’ (Radway,
1986:100) from a dense, thick description of various groups living in the village. Keeping
this cautionary difference in mind, Shaun Moores, who I mentioned earlier in the context
of a narrative of audiencehood, still argued in favour of some reception studies being
called proper ethnographies. He wrote about reception studies using ethnographic
methods such as in-depth interviews and participant observations:

It is true they are not based on extensive fieldwork in distant lands, but they do share some of the
same general intentions as anthropological research. There may be a similar concern, for instance,
with questions of meaning and social context – and with charting the ‘situational embeddedness’
of cultural practices (see Marcus and Fischer, 1986); Silverstone, 1990). If the means of
investigation are not always identical, then the aims of inquiry can be. I ought to make it explicit,
though, that I am advocating an ethnographic perspective of a certain kind – one which is
committed to critically analysing culture as well as describing it.

(Moores, 1993:4)

In the methodology I used, both data collection and analysis, I relied on the above concern
to guide and prepare me. However, once I collated every observation and response, I
started to see a few transgressions by my participants that seemed to be motivated by
their fondness for Hindi films. There were some instances of questioning the status quo
that were not direct consequences of their film use. I was not able to point my finger at

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how these two were related and which theoretical paradigm could help me understand
and explain this. Power relations were apparent and clear, in terms of gender, age and
class, but the dissent did not seem strong enough to call it a powerful and organised
women’s resistive effort. This was until I ‘read across various disciplines’ till I identified
a paradigm that I could adopt and use to explain the findings of my study. Before
discussing that in the next section on my theoretical framework, I briefly outline my
thought processes in analysing my ethnographic data.

2.3.2 The landscape of ‘Meaning’: Analysing ethnographic data

Of all the perspectives, if there was one that I would use to summarise my whole
discussion, it would be Geertz’s call for understanding the link and the balance between
writing on ‘culture’ and ‘politics’. He noted that, “What the attempt to link politics and
culture needs is a less breathless view of the former and a less aesthetic view of the latter”
(Geertz, 1973:311). In my study, forms of women’s everyday resistance, therefore,
cannot be seen as being driven by Hindi films, or being revolutionary in nature in their
current form. What I learnt is that women’s film consumption in this village is indeed
political, but I have refrained from assigning it more power than it currently has. Writing
about the film culture in Narwal was not as colourful an exercise such as describing an
ongoing film festival. It was written about after months of finding small, seemingly
unconnected bits of filmic influences and tying them together.

The main question when I began my analysis was this: How do I make sense of my
observations and other ethnographic data? What kind of ‘meanings’ will emerge from
this data? Will the analysis address the ‘meanings’ of films for my participants? Or will
it examine the ‘meanings’ of what my participants tell me? What kind of ‘meaning’ was
this going to be? Are they just guesses that are assessed and verified? Most importantly,
does the virtue of being empirical in nature prematurely close our understanding of
‘meaning’? Raymond Madden’s reasoning lies at the heart of this line of questioning. He
noted that “It is in the systematic and repetitious revisiting of ethnographic data that we
find meaning” (Madden, 2010:155). In my research, the only definition of meaning I have
considered is the one I explain below.

A major challenge in analysing my data can best be explained by Clifford and Marcus:
“In essence and at the limit of anthropological accounts one can consider an ego-centric

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and fictional staging of a subjective experience, dominated by ideological illusions”
(Clifford and Marcus, 1986; also see Fischer, 2003; Marcus and Fischer, 1986). My
research was focused on deriving meaning out of my observations by connecting the
ideas about my participants’ self-articulated relationships with the media, their micro-
level resistances within social relationships, and conformity to community norms, as
previously mentioned, thus strengthening the anthropological approach of my analysis.
Their social networks, family organisation, income distributions, lived experiences of
power relations (in terms of gender, caste and/ or religion), and age-based responses were
sociological considerations that helped my analysis. Thus, for explaining the articulations
of my participants, both sociological and anthropological factors needed to be examined.
‘Articulation’ as a notion (Slack, 1996) referred to bringing together ideas “related with
the social and political practices through which they are mediated on specific occasions,
placing attention firmly on the circumstances, purposes, and consequences of mediation”
(Hobart, 2002:380). Geertz’s ‘articulation’ was defined more as an end result and less as
a starting point (as in Hobart, 2002). He said, “Behaviour must be attended to, and with
some exactness, because it is through the flow of behaviour – or, more precisely, social
action – that cultural forms find articulation” (Geertz, 1973:17). In other words,
articulation meant stringing together ideas on socio-political practices based on one’s
own multiple positions as a social being and voicing them. It depended on how a person
used his/ her language, other people, speech, and social practices to develop an idea. My
study rests on the assumption that this act of ‘articulation’ was a step which marked the
point from where ‘meaning’ was derived. I must mention here that ‘making meaning’ is
far from being a linear process. In all possibility, it is anything but linear.

Before moving on to explain the meaning-making using my data, I would like to draw
upon two arguments. The first one is by Bronislaw Malinowski, arguably the most
influential anthropologist of the 20th century, who propounded that the goal of the
ethnography is to “grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision
of his world” (Malinowski, 1922:25). And for the second one, I quote a relatively recent
study by Kirk Johnson. He suggested that the ethnographic objectives (in the context of
his research) were achievable “by delving into the microcosm of village India and
exploring real people’s lives through their own words” (Johnson, 2001:148). Both these
views are widely held by classical anthropologists across the world, but this process of
studying people’s lives through their own points of view is, according to me, impossible

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to achieve in the absolute sense. However, owing to a framework informed by the above
discussions I attempt to explain how I arrived at my conclusions (or ‘meanings’) from
the data that I gathered. The first level was (a) making meaning (by the participants) and
the second was (b) making meaning of making meaning (by the researcher). To explain
further, the first lens accounted for (i) my participants’ everyday life, (ii) their actions,
articulations, and negotiations within households and in the village, (iii) their silences
around older family members, (iv) their communication within their own interpersonal
networks, and so on. The second lens then looked at aspects such as (i) the influence of
the community on my participants, (ii) the structures of power that governed them, (iii)
the family structures within which they lived, (iv) the efforts of the state to enable or
discourage their media consumption, (v) the nature of film distribution in the village, and
so on. The meanings thus derived completed my understanding of their responses and
attitudes.

After conducting this primary-level analysis using various, sometimes unconventional

methods, I used the notion of everyday resistance, as conceived by James C. Scott in
1985, to understand the implications of it theoretically.41

2.4 Theoretical framework: Examining ‘everyday resistance’

There were multiple analytical frameworks working together to situate my fieldwork data
in an appropriate context. However, I still needed a more accurate theoretical
understanding of what could be said about my participants’ film use, to try and explain
all the moments of social change that I witnessed. I was able to explain almost all of my
empirical findings with illustrations in the following chapters, with a few exceptions,
through the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ as introduced by James C. Scott more than
three decades ago. I engage with the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ and ‘hidden
transcripts’ (Scott, 1985) using examples from my fieldwork in chapter six, but I signal
it here briefly to explain what it stands for and how it helped in identifying the social
structures of power in the village.

41 See chapter five for my analysis (‘unconventional method’) of the word filmi whose significations I examined in
order to understand what my participants think when they use the word in their everyday lives.

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Substantiating the field of resistance studies helps us understand the multi-faceted nature
of power better. The women I met during my fieldwork were not confrontational or
revolutionary in their day-to-day lives, but I did observe numerous moments where they
subtly undermined the powers that governed them. These moments were generally hidden
from the gaze of the powerful and were personal and, most often, not openly accurately
articulated. The empirical richness proved to be illustrating various forms of negotiation
and forms of resistance by my participants, as I show in chapter six. This form of
resistance was also “done in a regular way, occasionally politically intended but typically
habitual or semi-conscious” (Vinthagen and Johansson, 2013:37). Scott showed that
certain types of behaviour by people constrained in the face of power amount to more
than just deviations or difference from their everyday lives. His primary contribution to
the theorisation of ‘everyday resistance’ (1985) was that he used the phrase
interchangeably with ‘infrapolitics’, thus putting the subaltern at the forefront of political
system by enhancing our understanding of the word ‘politics’. However, when talking of
women of Narwal as subaltern, we must take into account that women have long-term
stakes in the patriarchal systems (Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996).42 This was also discussed in
Raheja’s and Gold’s work on women in rural Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where they
explained at length the ways in which their participants sometimes adhered to patriarchal
standards to advance their own interests (1994). Hence, there was a need to study each
example, each act of ‘deviation’, carefully and examine if there is a power dynamic at
play. One of the forms of everyday resistance - established ways of behaving and
speaking by actors away from the face of power and, thus, undermining it - was what
Scott called ‘hidden transcripts’ in his book Domination and the Arts of Resistance
(1990). Although Scott had earlier used the concept of everyday resistance in the context
of factory workers and peasants, he clarified that it was “not a peasant monopoly” (Scott,
1989:52), but something that existed among all types of subaltern groups (Scott, 1990).
Stellan Vinthagen and Anna Johansson questioned the existing research in resistance
studies and cautioned us that “resistance runs the risk of being able to marginalize,
exclude and silence different articulations of resistance; especially when only some
intentions are counted as legitimate” (Vinthagen and Johansson, 2013:38). Their criticism
brought into question the studies that considered emotions and personal needs as
irrelevant if they were for a ‘non-political goal’, irrespective of whether they undermined

42 I discuss it in detail in chapter six

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power relations (ibid.). They argued that certain political intentions and consciousness
are privileged and “it is as if expecting all resistance to express “politics” in the same
way as researchers, regimes, national and educated elites and intellectuals” (2013:38). I
am in agreement with their assessment that how we include or exclude the resistance of
others is key to studying this form of resistance. The guiding principle for identification
of acts of everyday resistance in my study was this: “conceptualizing and analyzing
everyday resistance begins with a double identification of something as being part of the
everyday, and that part as being an expression of resistance to power” (Vinthagen and
Johansson, 2013:10).

Scott’s own understanding of everyday resistance was neither unchallenged (see Gupta,
2001; Howe, 1998; Field, 1994; Gutmann, 1993; Kelly, 1992; Tilly, 1991), nor was it the
only conception. He was criticised for overemphasising the role of this kind of resistance
and for applying a strong division between dominants and subalterns (O’Hanlon, 1988).
Vinthagen and Johansson’s critique was that “Scott gives resistance and the agents too
many independent abilities – a kind of autonomous or even isolated position” (Vinthagen
and Johansson, 2013:15). My work addressed this by seeing resistance and its actors (my
participants), ‘in a relation to power throughout the analysis’, as also suggested by
Vinthagen and Johansson (ibid.). Most other critiques of Scott’s work were directed
towards the way in which he had engaged with ‘subordinates’, rather than peasants or
factory-owners, which were not of immediate relevance to my study.

I wish to close the discussion about the framework here, which I will re-engage with
using my field experiences in chapter six. However, Scott’s understanding was the closest
to explaining and analysing my participants’ uncommon, unexpected, and often not-so-
impactful behaviour which was fuelled by their enthusiasm for Hindi films. I felt it
needed to be born in mind as the next chapters are read.

Conclusion
The literature mapping discussed in this review is not exhaustive but is broadly the
underpinning for my research. In this chapter, I not only wanted to restrict myself to
discussing relevant debates in the field but also wanted to explain how and why I used
the various theoretical paradigms to understand, analyse and present my data. In
conclusion, I make three major points below.

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First, there is a growing complexity in the notion of audiencehood that continues even
three decades after Fischer’s observation that, “Not much ethnography yet exists that
fulfils the anthropological promise of a fully bifocal cultural criticism. Or rather, what
exists was drafted with less sophisticated audiences in mind than exist today [1986] on
all the continents of our common earth” (1986:233). Stephen Hughes noted this rise of
scholarship which was devoted to “providing a comprehensive overview and scholarly
review of the literature on the topic of audiences” (Hughes, 2011b:293).43 Currently,
there are countless books, articles, reviews on audience studies and we need a review of
those reviews in order to make sense of this overcrowded field (ibid.). Hughes expressed
“serious doubts as to whether the untidy history of audience studies will ever fit neatly
into a seamless progressive and comprehensive narrative overview” and posed questions
on the contribution of an anthropological approach to these issues (ibid.).

Second, media ethnography, as a field, makes several promises that can be fulfilled by
keeping intact the primary goals of classic anthropological fieldwork. Mary Hancock, in
her paper ‘Festivity and Popular Memory in Southern India’, illustrated some of the ways
by which “localities are produced through the articulation of local and translocal objects,
institutions and images” (2001:20). Studies that are undertaking fieldwork are
increasingly adopting methods that are fulfilling ethnographic goals without strict
adherence to the long-term fieldwork spanning years, and my prior familiarity with the
setting helped to fulfil those goals to a large extent.

Finally, I presented a detailed account of the theoretical paradigms that informed my

analysis such as the conception of cultural meanings, the process of meaning-making,
and contextualisation using both sociological and anthropological elements. I then
introduced the main theoretical framework that I used for understanding the on-ground
politics of film consumption by my participants and its social significance. This
framework was only signalled here in this chapter, and I will engage with it with much
more rigour in my final analysis chapter.44

43 Also see (Abercrombie and Longhurst, 1998; Alasuutari, 1999; Ang, 1996; McQuail, 1997a; McQuail, 1997b;
Moores, 1993; Morley, 1992; Ross and Nightingale, 2003; Ruddock, 2001)
44 See chapter six

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The next chapter introduces the film culture in the village and more specifically discusses
the available devices and technology that my participants choose to use to access Hindi
film.

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 3
Accessing Film:
Devices in use by women in Narwal

3.1 Introduction
At the heart of this chapter lies the assumption that media practices are never universal,
and neither are the ideas and values that accompany any specific form of media
consumption by any specific set of people. Marshall McLuhan’s catchphrase ‘the
medium is the message’ (1964) is relevant in understanding how modes of film
consumption by my participants contribute to the context of their use of film. As
McLuhan put it, the medium is the message because “it is the medium that shapes and
controls the scale and form of human association and action” (McLuhan, 1964:9). In
other words, it is the character of the medium that determines its potency or effect – its
message (Federman, 2004). Narwal is a space lacking a ‘filmgoing’ culture due to the
absence of cinema theatres, and yet it enjoys a thriving film culture. Various technologies
and media forms that women in Narwal use to access Hindi film are telling of their social
relation with it. These social relations inform us of how one medium can potentially be
more instrumental in popularising one kind of film content rather than another.
Problematising McLuhan’s phrase is not my intent here, as it is not able to explain the
everyday film consumption without the use of technology/devices, thereby leaving out a
significant aspect of my study.

The aim of this chapter is to assess how the media technologies available in Narwal are
making Hindi film accessible to my participants. This chapter argues that the experience

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of using different devices and media is instrumental in shaping women’s preferences to
access their favoured film content. It is an introduction to Narwal’s film culture, but it
certainly is not an exhaustive description of the ways in which the Hindi film manifests
itself in the village. Hindi film is also present outside the technological realm in Narwal,
in forms such as images on everyday objects, sites of celebrations and festivities, and
sartorial sense, and I discuss those in the next chapter. I begin this one by providing an
overview of television in the village and the film forms this offers to my participants.
Next, I move on to describe how computers and the internet are used by my participants
of varying age groups. Further, I discuss the use of mobile phones by women for personal
communication and accessing a variety of content, including Hindi films. The final
section sheds light on the use of other media such as radio, newspapers, and magazine
supplements for film consumption.

3.2 Television
Television occupies a special place in any household in Narwal. It was the first thing that
I noticed upon entering a home. One would know of its presence immediately as the
television set is usually situated in the most decorated corner of the living room (drawing
room). Other items of decoration, such as showpieces and flower vases, accompany the
setting created for placing a television set. This was true for almost every household that
I visited in Narwal, barring a few where the only proper room was a bedroom that also
acted as the living room, and therefore, the only available space to place the device.
Television was the most talked-about medium of entertainment in my interactions with
my participants during the fieldwork.

Studies on television viewership in rural India have largely argued that the medium has
had ‘modernising’ influences on people living in villages (Malik, 1989; Johnson, 2001;
Jensen and Oster, 2009). Some studies go as far as to suggest that television’s
modernising impact (Johnson, 2001) has led to a significant decrease in domestic
violence towards women and an increase in their autonomy (Jensen and Oster, 2009).
Although my observations did find connections between public service broadcasting
channels in India and the modernising agenda of the State, it is beyond the scope of my
study to examine the relationship between television, in general, and ideas of modernity.
I rest my study on the assumption that modernity, in the context of my research, is not

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necessarily a forward march, but a rather erratic social movement of groups of people
who are substantially influenced by media consumption, along with other socio-
economic and political forces. Further, these studies linking television with modernity
failed to explain the privilege of access to television and other forms of media, that my
participants often did not have.

Early on in my fieldwork, I realised that television was an absolutely acceptable topic for
discussion. Talking about it with my participants felt like talking about their routine life.
I guessed from my interactions about television whether or not my participants had TV
sets at home. The discussions on TV were so common that it felt appalling to ask if they
had a set in their homes or were watching it elsewhere. However, I visited three houses
where television had never been a part of the household. Two of these were because of
financial constraints and one was because an ‘earlier tv set was broken and the family did
not want to buy a new one as it would be a distraction for school-going children in their
house’. In the final three weeks of my fieldwork, I conducted 20 in-depth interviews with
women of varying age groups and classes. I did not have any questions directly pertaining
to their caste, except their real surnames, which could be verified later for this
information.45 Their responses did give me an idea of their disposable incomes and their
family structures, along with the media devices that they owned and used. The frequency
of their television viewing ranged from a few hours a day to a few times a month. Women
of all age groups, who had access to a television set, enjoyed watching television
whenever they could get a chance. Erratic electricity and joint family set-ups did not
make for a conducive television viewing environment.46 Among the 20 women, there
were three who did not own a television or laptops at home. The younger women,
between the ages of 18 and 30, preferred watching television with either minimal
company or with other female family members, whereas interviewees above the age of
30 regarded television-viewing largely as a family activity. In terms of preferred content,
soap operas (women aged 18-55), devotional shows (aged 50 and above), music-based
programming (aged 18-22), news, and films (different forms popular across all age
groups) were the most popular answers.47 In my interviews, whenever I introduced
questions on content, viewing with family, preference for timings, and more, there was

45 However, that data was too little to carry out an analysis of media consumption by women of various castes.
46 I illustrate and explain this issue in the later chapters
47 I explain the various Hindi film influences in television later in this section as well as the next chapter

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variation in the responses of the interviewees. However, there was one common response
among them all. According to my interviewees, men and children in their families did
not have a set timing for TV viewing, because it was understood that if men and children
were at home, the control of the television set would remain with them, and not women.
Hence, even in a household where women were equal or more in number than the men,
television was never a personal medium for women unless men and children were away.

As a personalised experience, television served as a source of fashion trends, an

association with Bollywood actors, a source of entertainment and hard news, a lifestyle
model, and a luxurious experience in some cases. As a collective activity, television-
viewing only referred to watching TV with family members, apart from rare instances of
watching it with female neighbours, relatives, or friends. While staying with some of the
families, I was part of both collective and individual viewings, where the individual
viewing did not mean only one person but a personalised experience with one or two
other like-minded family members. For instance, two sisters watching a television drama
together would show very different reactions than when watching it with the entire
family, and it is closer to the phenomenon of watching it alone due to the absence of
hierarchical boundaries with each other. It was taken for granted that male family
members are entitled to their ‘own time to watch television’. For women, collective
viewing would largely translate into giving company to their husbands, children, and in-
laws while the latter watched television. During such sessions, women lacked the control
or ‘ownership’ of the television that they enjoyed otherwise, when watching it
individually or with their friends, sisters and mothers.

Conversations with my participants were also indicative of the relationship that they share
with everyday television-viewing. Manju, a 25-year-old tailor who works part-time from
her home, said:

I do not go out to get the top-up (voucher) for Tata Sky at home, but I do know that it is very
expensive – we pay 280 Rupees for 20 days for our TV package. I like to watch TV when I am at
home working in the afternoon, but most of the times, there is no electricity then. It is frustrating
because that money goes to waste, but I still manage to watch my favourite shows, owing to repeat
telecasts, despite gaps. The ‘company people’ [dish tv companies] are looting us because they
know we love films and television.

Without looking up from her sewing machine, she added:

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 Of course! This is the only source of entertainment that I enjoy every day. Once my children come
back from school, or my husband comes back in the evening, I do not get to spend time watching
television. Even my mobile phone is mostly operated by my four-year-old son. What will I do the
whole day without television?

I probed further, “So who is your favourite television actor/actress?”, to which she
responded, “No one in particular, I watch television shows and they mostly all seem
similar. But I like Pragya from Kumkum Bhagya (a television series from 2014)...[..]...I
can easily recognise film stars. They are different. I like Salman Khan”. Her response
was telling of the different perceptions which television and film actors have in the
imagination of my participants. The middle-aged women aged 40-60 were also more
interested in knowing about the film stars than television actors. This was revealed when
I referred to soap opera actors by their names and none of them was recognised by their
real-life identities by my participants. This was not the case with Hindi film actors. This
gave me a hint of how Hindi films loom larger in the imaginative spaces of these women
as compared to television, and I must discuss here the influence of Hindi film on
television content, which my participants consume so regularly.48

Daily soap operas, the most popular form of television entertainment among women in
Narwal, carry a considerable proportion of film-related content. The commercially
successful and popular Hindi films frequently lend their titles to television soap operas
which, in turn, aim to capitalise on the popularity of such films using either the same title,
theme or even storyline. For instance, Jodha Akbar (Ashutosh Gowariker, 2008), a period
drama, was a film whose title and sub-plot was later on adopted by television producer
Ekta Kapoor for Zee TV network in 2013. One could argue that, given it was a period
drama, it should not be surprising to have the same characters and theme as real-life
people on whom the film was based. However, given the various historical documents
that were available for the television producers to draw their plot on, this TV drama’s
sub-plot was largely in line with that of the film. Moreover, as one of my participants,
Vineeta (29), a homemaker, shared while watching an episode of the Jodha Akbar series:

48 See chapter five for my illustration of this point and an overall argument on how films lie outside the quotidian while
television remains mundane

85
 I had watched the film when it released, and when this television show came out, I knew I had to
see it, because I had really liked the film. Hrithik Roshan was much better than this actor in the
television show.49

There have been several other television series that followed suit, such as Pardes mein
hai mera dil (2016, inspired by Subhash Ghai’s 1997 film Pardes), Peshwa Bajirao
(2017, cashing in on the popularity of the 2015 film Bajirao Mastani), Jamai Raja (2014,
inspired by its 1990 namesake Jamai Raja), Brahmarakhshas (2016, inspired from the
2002 fantasy film Jaani Dushman), Badho Bahu (2016, loosely based on the 2015 film
Dum Laga ke Haisha), and Naagin (2015, a fantasy show inspired from the 1986 cult
film Nagina, starring Sridevi), to name a few. Furthermore, they emulate fashion and
lifestyle trends from Hindi films and in some cases, like the ones mentioned above, they
are instrumental in keeping those trends sustained in popular memory in urban as well as
non-urban areas. From the drapes of sarees to styles of applying sindoor, the television
often popularises film-fashion among my participants.50 As Vineeta (29) said:

I sometimes use my red lipstick instead of the sindoor powder when I go out to the city. Actresses
in the television wear it like that and I find it easier to apply and trendier but cannot wear it that
way when I am living here (in Narwal).

These are only a few examples to substantiate my point that a large number of Indian
television soaps capitalise on cultural memories of Hindi film songs, fan-base, fashion,
plots, and phrases, to gain audience.

There is not only a synergy but also collaborative interdependence between the Hindi
film industry and television production in India. The trend of filmmakers, actors, and
actresses being part of numerous notable television series, in a few or all of their episodes,
represents a concerted marketing effort to combine the popularity of cinema with the
widespread reach of television. Occasionally, directors, actors and actresses approach
television producers asking to feature on their shows to promote their films. Conversely,
television producers are keen on inviting them onto their sets in order to publicise their

49 I shed more light on filmic presence in television with examples in chapter five. In section 5.3, I briefly draw
comparisons between the actors in television series and Hindi films, in terms of shows having the same titles or themes,
drawing on the interactions with my participants
50 The Sindoor is a vermillion-coloured powder traditionally applied in the middle of the hair-partition of a woman
who is married. This is a Hindu tradition.

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shows as well as capitalise on the enormous fan bases of film stars to attract audiences.
Widely watched television series such as Comedy Nights with Kapil (2013) and Taarak
Mehta ka Ooltah Chashma (2008) are examples of the same phenomenon. As Sugandha
(38), a staff member at a primary school, shared, “My husband loves Comedy Nights with
Kapil, but I watch it with him only when someone I like is featured in an episode, like
Ajay Devgn or Deepika Padukone”.

Adding to the filmic influence on Indian television are music-based shows and dedicated
television channels that broadcast popular Hindi film content (such as Zoom TV, B4U
Music and 9XM). These include songs, trailers, videos, interviews, talk-shows, on-
demand music shows, and film-related tabloid content such as the popular show, Koffee
with Karan, hosted by filmmaker/actor Karan Johar. Even 24x7 news channels feature
segments based on the latest Hindi films. There have also been instances of famous film
stars hosting or judging television shows in the last two decades such as Kaun Banega
Crorepati (2000-2014, an Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, hosted by
legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan and then the famous Shah Rukh Khan), Satyamev
Jayate (2012, a talk show addressing social issues, hosted by eminent actor/producer
Aamir Khan), Khatron ke khiladi (2008, based on American Fear Factor, hosted by
‘superstar’ Akshay Kumar and then by actor Arjun Kapoor), Bigg Boss (2006, follows
the format of Big Brother, hosted by arguably the most adored Indian film actor Salman
Khan), Guinness World Record: Ab Todega India (hosted by famed actress Preity Zinta),
celebrated actress Madhuri Dixit as a judge on the dance show Jhalak Dikkhla Ja (2006,
the Indian version of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing), actress Malaika Arora Khan as a
judge on several dance shows, renowned actors Hrithik Roshan and Juhi Chawla as part
of similar dance show formats, to name a few. The shows ride on the popularity of these
film personalities who bring the glamour and popularity of Hindi films to television with
their own popular film-dialogues, dance moves, gestures, songs, and more, thus making
their way into the homes of people who have hardly ever stepped inside a film theatre.

Television, as I mentioned earlier, is the most widely used medium among women, and
my fieldwork showed that my participants use it for getting closer to the world of Hindi
cinema in particularly interesting ways. Digital consumption on smartphones, and the use
of the internet in general, is still largely restricted to women between the ages of 18 and
30, and, therefore, television has retained its popularity due to ease of access and less
dependency on technological expertise for users. Thus, as I observed, watching television

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in such a scenario became a direct as well as an indirect mode of consumption of Hindi
film.51 It could also be considered as strategised marketing of Hindi films in some cases,
as for many of my participants, TV was the first source of any film-related material. I do
not, however, claim that there is no viewership of full-length feature films at all.
Watching films is still a part of television viewing in Narwal, but for women, watching
features is either restricted to Sundays or to occasions when their household work permits
them to spare a few hours at a stretch, which is rare. Film-based television content,
however, allows them to feel associated with the world of Hindi cinema. As these shows
or segments do not usually require more than 30 minutes of viewing at a stretch, they are
more popular than full-length Hindi films. I illustrate this point below.

One of the houses in Narwal shared a wall with a beauty parlour that was owned by the
lady of the house herself. This arrangement made it easy for Suman (40), the owner, to
shuttle between home and work throughout the day. Inside her parlour, I saw posters of
Hindi film actresses in bridal lehengas and sarees. The boxes and cartons in which
jewellery and cosmetics were displayed also had printed images of Hindi film actresses.
Although all of these materials were sourced from shops in the city, it was Suman’s
decision to select and place them in her parlour. The interiors of any beauty parlour in
Narwal, and numerous ones in India, look like this with similar filmic images, but my
field interactions showed that these posters were used to distinguish their parlours from
others’ by the owners themselves. In Suman’s parlour, next to a poster of actresses in
ethnic wear (lehengas) was an old laminated and framed image of the Hindu Goddess
Durga (Figure 01).

51 By ‘Hindi film’, I refer to different kinds of content based on Hindi films, including the full feature film

88
Figure 3.1 A poster in a beauty parlour in Narwal (©Charusmita)

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Curious about its placement, I commented, “That seems an interesting place to put up
Durgaji’s photo”. She seemed amused at my remark and said, “This is the most visible
wall of my small parlour. This is the first view that my customers see when they enter. I
could only think of this place for both Durgaji as well as these posters”. She shared that
she chose these posters because the displayed actresses were most popular in the 1980s
to early 2000s when, according to her:

The women were still in control of their fashion. They had grace and elegance...Look at how the
times have changed. Films and television are distorting the meaning of fashion. As more and more
people are becoming richer, they are emulating the fashion and style as shown in films and
television. They all look the same now. Just like each other.

Seeing my slightly bemused look, she explained:

If someone is wealthy, they will not go for the old-style filmi fashion. These days young married
women have kore haath (wrists devoid of jewellery). There is no one following the tradition. Look
at all these women in television, kisiko pehchaan hi nahi paogi, ki shadi ho gayi hai ki nahi
(meaning: you will often not be able to recognise by their minimalistic makeup if they are even
married).52

Suman shared that as she did not have time to watch TV during the daytime, she used to
get up at 4:30 am every day and watch repeated telecasts of TV dramas. She added that
this was not because she was interested in the content or the storyline, but she did it to
update herself with the latest trends in make-up, hairstyling, and clothing. Her daughter,
who was also present there at the time of our interaction, said, “You know you can watch
bits of it during weekends or maybe a few times a week if that is your purpose. There is
no need to wake up each morning and watch it before you start making breakfast”. Suman
immediately asked her to go to the kitchen to wash the utensils, thus dismissing her
daughter from the room. Whether it was the convenient timing that made Suman choose
early morning telecasts or the content, it was apparent from her sudden dismissive tone
towards her daughter that for Suman, there was more to television viewing than just
observing fashion trends. In her case, one could also hypothesise that the timing she chose
to watch TV every day indicated her desire to do so when no one was around. There were
other slots during the day when there was electricity and she could have chosen to watch

52 See chapter five for a detailed analysis of all the things that my participants indicated to when they used the word
filmi (film-related)

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it then, but perhaps it would either not telecast her favourite show, or maybe she did not
want anyone to know what she was watching. I did not pursue the conversation further
as I understood that she did not want to give out more details than she already had.

Television’s role has been diverse in this village ever since it was introduced here. For
some, it used to be a status symbol, but now is just as regular as any other piece of
furniture and serves as a medium of uninterrupted entertainment, but only for men. For
women, its use is still constrained, but much more frequent than other forms of media
such as mobile phones and laptops.

3.3 Laptops and personal computers

A large number of families falling within the higher income band have at least one laptop
in their house.53 Out of the twenty women I interviewed, nine had at least one laptop in
their household. Amongst those nine, two did not have television in their homes.
Although this sample set was not representative of the whole village, i.e., the proportion
of laptops to the number of households was not the same as my interviewees’, it was
evident from my four-month-long stay that the use of laptops and digital technology was
certainly on the rise.

Film consumption through digital means is gaining popularity among my participants

given the erratic power supply that leads to television consumption being unreliable.
Young participants whose family members could afford to own laptops were starting to
divert their attention to digital technologies, and, as my interaction with a 20-year-old,
Surili, revealed, sometimes members in a household agreed to set different time slots to
access computers at home. In some cases, even when there was no objection to the kind
of content the women were consuming, their preferred timing became an obstacle. The
advantage with digital devices was that my participants could personalise their film-use
according to the time slots that they got with the device. For instance, watching music
videos, video clips, reading/watching actors’ interviews, and so on, could be consumed
whenever time and circumstances would allow. Thus, with laptops and computers, the
‘textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011) film consumption experience has become a
desirable choice for my participants.

53 These are families where the average family income is above Rupees 25,000 a month

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Families that can afford new television sets without much difficulty in Narwal are trying
to save their money to invest in laptops instead, as it is ‘better than television’ and also
‘more useful’, specifically in households with people under the age of 30.54 The laptop,
thus, is increasingly becoming an ‘investment’ for families in Narwal, whereas buying a
television set is considered as an ‘expenditure’. However, laptops are still bought
primarily for men or young boys rather than women.55 As I narrowed my focus down to
women users, only a handful of my participants owned a laptop or had access to it within
their households. The computers were mostly operated and used by male family members
and transferring or downloading any content would be mediated by them. This
gatekeeping was not an unpleasant or loud display, rather it was an understood and unsaid
element of everyone’s routine which was largely unquestioned. However, a few
enthusiastic young women I met had knowledge of how to operate a laptop and were
allowed to use it at home. Neeta, aged 21, who taught sewing and knitting to young
women in Narwal, brought her uncle’s laptop to a film screening that I had organised at
the ITI. Her brother had pre-loaded the film Pink (2016) on it, and she had already
watched it. She told me, “I thought you may need another laptop for the screening, so I
borrowed my uncle’s”. When I saw the film already on the desktop, I appreciated her
thoughtfulness. She said, “Bhaiya (older brother) had got it downloaded. I have already
watched it. I also know how to transfer from his pen drive to uncle’s laptop, but he usually
does it himself. I wanted to get some more movies on the laptop today but then I would
have to tell him the reason. Abhi toh aapke bol kar le aaye (I got it now stating you as an
excuse/reason)”. Neeta’s family ‘trusted her’ and knew that she would not ‘misuse the
laptop’, she shared.

It was common for young women to gather functional knowledge of laptops by watching
and observing, but not by practicing themselves. This was one of the instances where I
witnessed the digital divide between men and women in that space. Moreover, the
common assumption among the people was that women cannot skilfully use digital
technology, unless supervised by men. Although this notion is something I have also
observed in the urban realm, its manifestations were different in a village. Neeta told me

54 See chapter one for estimates of income population in the village. Families with annual income of 1,20,000 can
easily afford a television (the middle-income group in Narwal), but they try to save up to invest in laptops, which they
consider to be a ‘better investment’ than television, due to its value beyond the entertainment as well
55 I elaborate on this in chapter six

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she did not dare to learn the laptop by hit-and-trial method as her brother had said that
she will ‘break’ or ‘spoil’ the device. Neeta’s example was not an isolated one. Women,
irrespective of age, talked of being scared of using laptops. The design, size, and cost of
the laptop were factors that made this device more precious than the other media devices.
It was deeply etched in the minds of my participants that if the device does not function
properly after they use it, it will be too great a cost, economically and emotionally, and
so they generally refrained from using it. Husbands, sons, brothers, and uncles often
managed to damage laptops, or even other devices, but they were not subjected to the
same systematic guilt.56 I suggest that barriers such as these that exist around women’s
use of media technology highlight an under-researched territory between women’s access
to digital technology and their actual everyday use of it. This point leads me to discuss
the avenues through which computers and digital technology could be accessed outside
the households.

3.3.1 The village ‘Computer Shop’

Unlike ‘cyber cafes’ in Indian cities, where there are individual cabins with desktop
computers for individual customer use, separated by wooden or fibre planks, there was
no space for women in Narwal to access computers privately in exchange for payment.
There was a total of five ‘computer shops’ (Dukaan) where people visited for their
everyday requirements such as downloading, printing, or transferring documents or
media content. It is only with specific motives that women visited these shops in Narwal,
unlike men for whom these shops, like many other public spaces in the village, were sites
to socialise. Young men and teenaged boys frequented these shops to buy films and music
as files on their USB sticks, SD cards, or MicroSD cards. Women either did not visit
these shops or went there just to get important documents printed. All forms, circulars
and other documents were printed out by bhaiyyaji (a reference to the shop operator who
was the only one allowed to operate the computers). I visited one of these shops myself
and had a brief conversation with the young man who managed it. I use his responses in
a few of the later chapters to contextualise women’s film-viewing experiences at home
and how they are mediated by men in many ways.57 In researching on the distribution

56 I discuss such differential barriers faced by women to access media technology in detail in chapter six
57 Chapters four and six

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and consumption of film music in a rural setting, I found Deo and Duggal’s study useful
(2017), and they wrote that their participants “recounted visits every alternate day to the
village square to buy new song folders” (2017:43) where “vendors offered music as
folders of digital audio/video files and customers sought music of their choice for uploads
on the memory card of their mobile phones” (Deo and Duggal, 2017:46). The ‘download
vendors’ described in the aforementioned study are, in most ways described, same as the
computer shop owner I met in Narwal, as such men “acquired specialized literacies in
converting audio and video from larger file sizes to smaller ones…‘preparing files for the
phone’” (Deo and Duggal, 2017:49). This particular film and music distribution system
in the village, as I observed and discussed, is best summarised by Deo and Duggal below:

Digitalization and its sale via SD memory cards for mobile phones had enforced a quantitative
approach to music as data. For download vendors, the popular unit of measurement was the
gigabyte – or the GB. They sold a range of music and media in digital audio and video file formats
including mp3, mp4, 3gp and avi – not as songs or albums but as folders counted in gigabytes.

(2017:48)

In the final two weeks of my fieldwork, I explored two upcoming urban-style cyber cafes,
but my participants doubted if they would regularly get to visit those. As Neha, a 22-
year-old primary school teacher, shared, “Many of my female friends do not even know
what a cyber cafe is, but all of them know about the computer shop”. She added, “Sheher
jaisa mahaul toh yahan nahi milega cafes ka... (meaning: you will not find an urban
cyber-cafe-like environment here [in the village])”. I probed, “If many women start to go
there, won’t things change after some time?”. Neha responded, “Maybe. But I will
probably not feel right (ajeeb lagega) sitting with strange boys in that small place...and
that too, while they are ‘watching the internet’”. After interacting with a few middle-aged
mothers of young daughters (e.g., Poonam, 50), I was slightly hopeful about women’s
use of the upcoming cyber cafes, as these were women who wanted their daughters to
make use of such shops but never had suitable infrastructure to avail of it. In my
experience as a field researcher, it was not a common practice for women to fraternize
with other men in a setting like that of a cybercafé at the time, whereas the same place
acted as a space for young men in the village to mingle with each other. However, there
were small yet possibly significant changes that were imminent, and I will elaborate on
Poonam’s example in the next section to illustrate the same.

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3.3.2 Women and computer education

Spaces like the computer shops, perfectly attuned to existing socio-cultural and gender
norms in the village, often effectively but not explicitly excluded the presence of women.
Even within households, women had to go through various stages to be able to use
technology as they pleased. How then, in such a scenario, were some women learning to
use computer technology in Narwal? Poonam, a 50-year-old homemaker and a mother,
shared:

At Insight Computer Classes [in Narwal], they have an arrangement (vyavastha) where one or two
students get one computer to use. My daughter goes to NIT, which is a smaller computer centre,
but they only have one computer for all their students to work on.

Poonam’s daughter (21) holds a diploma in Information Technology, and Poonam was
confident of her landing a lucrative job in the future. I requested Poonam if her daughter,
Meena, could give me a tour of her computer learning centre. Owing to her degree, Meena
was adept at using digital technology, in addition to being well-versed with YouTube and
U-Torrent. She not only downloaded and transferred preferred films in her phone, but
also obliged her friends occasionally by transferring their favourite films, songs or videos
to their phones. Since there were a few other young women like Meena who had working
knowledge of computers, it was certainly not rare in the village for them to share content
among themselves. Meena’s example indicated one of the various ways in which women
work around the existing system to access film content. I asked Meena, “What if your
mother comes to know about this? Will she say something?” to which she responded:

She already knows. I am not doing anything wrong, and she knows it. She likes films
too…[..]…We don’t talk about it with each other, but I can see how happy she is if I tell her stories
of the films I watch…[..]…Men think women cannot go to the shop and get the films transferred.
They are right, because we will do it ourselves.

Meena’s statement hinted that watching films, especially by getting them pre-loaded by
going to a computer shop, was a transgressive act. She was aware of it. This is one of the

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several examples that I discuss in chapter six to argue that women’s negotiations around
their film consumption are acts of everyday resistance in the face of power.58

As suggested by Poonam, I visited the largest computer institute in Narwal, called

‘Insight Computer Classes’. My objective was to learn about the courses offered at these
institutes and the women participating in them. Avinash, a young man aged 29 who ran
the institute, told me:

There have been several computer institutes before, but they all got shut down due to various
reasons…Maybe people trust my work-experience, given that I worked in various cities across
India, or maybe they just trust me to provide a safe learning environment for their daughters.

Avinash shared that he did not want to be tied down by a job that did not give him
satisfaction. He graduated in computer science, and after working for a couple of years
in cities, he started his own computer training institute in Narwal, where he is originally
from. He also owned a small photo studio and two large-sized music speakers that he
loaned out for weddings and other celebrations within the village. The tuition-fee for the
offered computer course was INR 300 a month (USD 4.21). Avinash conducted the
classes at two levels – Basics (Microsoft Word and elementary usage of internet), and
Photoshop and Corel-draw classes for aspiring graphic designers. His demeanour was
professional and composed. His clothing and body language were quite urbane, including
the way he spoke about his life in Narwal. Avinash shared that the young women who
came to learn computers at his institute were generally more focused on their studies than
the men. He added with a hint of pride:

I make sure cyber literacy is part of the internet basics curriculum. This is not a city, things are
different here. Girls are more susceptible to bad-mouthing and stigmas. So, in the world of
internet, learning computer for girls can be tricky. I keep giving friendly warnings and
explanations about social media’s negative effects. I tell them that they may add their close family
members online, whom they personally know, but not strangers. Also, it is advisable not to upload
any pictures online. There are boys in my classes too, but I make sure ‘ki koi uunch-neech na ho’
(meaning: nothing untoward should happen on my watch).

As part of the cyber literacy, he focused on the fundamentals of Information Technology

such as (i) emails, including features such as ‘forgot your password’, ‘logging out’

58 Refer to chapter six for a detailed analysis of how women’s film use was questioning the status quo. Also see chapter
five, section nine for examples of instances of young women discussing films

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immediately after one uses their email ID, ‘managing security questions’; (ii) browsing
the internet, including Google search with appropriate keyword usage and checking the
authenticity of a website; and (iii) suspicious pop-ups, which he warned them about. He
also advised them on how to explain undesirable pop-ups to family members who might
feel shocked, scandalised or outraged at unwarranted content on household devices. As
Avinash put it, “I do not want any of my students to be ‘scared’ of the internet, especially
girls”. Men like Avinash seemed to enable young women in Narwal to develop their
communication and technological skills, thus strengthening women’s own acts of
everyday negotiations around their media consumption. I draw on this example again in
chapter six where I discuss the role of men in enabling women’s movement away from
everyday power structures.

In my interactions with female students at the institute, I observed that the primary reason
for them to join these classes was a hope for gainful employment. As Surili (20) said,
“My mother and father said that I should join computer classes. They want me to get a
good job”. I asked, “So what work do you plan to do after your course is over? Are you
planning to find a job outside Narwal?” She was quiet for a few seconds, and then said:

No, I do not think my family members will let me go. They want me to learn computers, but I
have not thought about what job I am expected to take up once I finish here. My brother went to
the city after his course from NIT institute, but my parents will not let me go out.

I added, “But maybe you could start something here…say another computer institute for
girls? What do you like the most about these classes?” She said:

I enjoy the time I get to spend on the computer in class. I download Bollywood songs when Sir is
not in the class. My friend and I are very fond of Hindi songs, especially the latest ones. She
knows how to download them, and I am on a lookout for sir for when he might come into the
classroom.

Surili’s friend Binti (19) interjected, “No didi! We do not do this often, it was just twice,
and it will not happen again”. She rolled her eyes at Surili. I understood that she was
afraid and unsure of my proximity with her teacher and wondered if I might possibly
share this with him, which in turn might have spelt trouble for them. I just smiled and
said, “If that helps you in learning about the internet more, then it surely should be a part
of your learning, right?” They smiled awkwardly and nodded in agreement. All of the

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girls I interacted with at the institute were the first females in their families to pursue a
formal computer education. Only one of them had a laptop at home on which she
practiced her coursework and occasionally downloaded film music with the assistance of
her younger brother. Some of the other institute girls often visited her house to ‘practice
and learn’ using computers and that was where, as Surili said mockingly, ‘the real
learning happens’ (sahi mayne mein seekhte hain). Binti clarified, “We strictly follow the
coursework didi. My brother knows everything, and he will come to know if we use the
computer for purposes other than practising Microsoft Word. Surili ‘toh kuch bhi bolti
hai’ (meaning: Surili is just saying anything”). As I stood up to go out, I heard them
arguing amongst themselves in low voices. This was one of the many examples that
indicated it was still men who were largely in control of women’s media use, and yet
women often managed to manoeuvre their way into fulfilling, although incompletely,
their desire to experience the pleasure of film or its music. This idea, however, was not
openly admitted by Binti, who seemed to be fiercely protective of the solidarity that
existed among her friends. Surili shared with me later during the week that at the request
of ‘some students’, they were promised to be taught how to access music and videos on
the internet, as part of their curriculum set by Avinash. She looked more relieved than
happy, having shared with me that crucial piece of information about their little
adventures.

Women’s use of laptops and desktop computers was not regular or common but, as an
observer, it was useful to study this in comparison to their television viewing as well as
their relationship with mobile phones. Laptops were more expensive than mobile phones
as well television, and for a woman, using them required more confidence and courage
than skill. The use of computers also revealed stark differences in the way young and
middle-aged women thought about technology.59

Television might still be the most popular medium amongst the residents of Narwal, but
it no longer enjoyed the social tag of an ultimate status symbol, as shown by my examples
of computer-use above. The digital technology was not limited to computers. The use of
mobile phones by women of different age groups revealed similarities as well as
differences. The availability of mobile technology to access film-related content has

59 I draw conclusions based on these differences in chapters five and six. The objective of this section is only to
highlight the use of computer technology available to women to access film-related content

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enabled several new phenomena, such as the use of apps and the internet. I introduce the
popularity of mobile phones in the following section, but, as with the above sections, I
will come back to the examples and significance of its usage in the following chapters.

3.4 Mobile phones

Mobile phones are not new to the communications infrastructure in rural India. The news
reports and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO, Govt. of India) data from recent
years showed an extremely optimistic view of ownership of mobile phones in rural India.
According to a news report, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO, Govt. of
India) data (2015) revealed:

People of rural India spend 25.33% of their income on the use of mobile phones and
telephones…The rural-urban gap has closed when it comes to communication services, with
people living in rural villages spending about 25.33% of their budget on mobiles, while urban
families are marginally ahead at 26.33%.

(Kumar, 2016)

Low-cost access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is a necessary

condition to boost the digital revolution in rural spaces but not necessarily a sufficient
one. The above data is aligned with the fact that the mobile phone is the easiest way to
get online for people who cannot afford laptops or desktop computers. Additionally, with
dropping smartphone costs due to rising competition, older phones in every household
were increasingly being replaced by smartphones, and in most households the mobile
phone was the only means to access the internet. Sirpa Tenhunen, whose study was based
on the significance of phone-use by women in ten villages in West Bengal, India,
presented a nuanced picture that attested to a change that was taking place in those
women’s inter-personal relationships. She noted that “women in different parts of India
have experienced the opportunity to use mobile phones as a major asset although, in
comparison to men, their access to mobile telephony tends to be more restricted”
(Tenhunen, 2014:157). Assa Doron also observed how mobile phones were mediating
social relationships in the city of Banaras and argued that phones were reaffirming
dominant norms in households by limiting the use of phones by young women (2012).
Jukka Jouhki argued along similar lines in the context of rural Tamil Nadu (South India)

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and said that men used phones more actively and freely than women (2013). These studies
largely argued that mobile phones were facilitating change in rural India. However, as Jo
Tacchi et al reminded us, “they must be understood within their everyday uses and
settings, in order to understand the range of ways in which they contribute to social
spaces, and what part they play in social and economic meaning-making” (Tacchi, Kathi,
and Crawford 2012). For this research, I looked at the use of mobile phones by women
for the purpose of consuming film or other entertainment, along with their use for
communication within the village. Growing up in Delhi, I observed women often being
told by the men that they do not need the new technology because after all, “what are
they really going to do with it?”. This belief, as I witnessed in Narwal, has largely become
an unquestioned rhetoric, and hardly any woman, young or old, told me otherwise, with
the exception of Meena, who I mentioned earlier. Aditi Deo and Vebhuti Duggar’s study
(2017) on use of mobile phones for consumption of Hindi film music had participants
from a small village named Tejgadh village in Gujarat (western India), and their
experience was similar to my own in northern India; they wrote, “Often in our fieldwork,
we observed, the mobile phone’s role for listening to music (individually and sociably)
took over its communicative function” (Deo and Duggal, 2017:43). This kind of
consumption of film music (songs, ringtones, song videos) is what I focus on in section
4.3. Here, I will explain the use of mobile use of women in Narwal, as I observed it.

Most of the women, young, middle-aged, or old, did not own smartphones, and the ones
who did were almost all under the age of forty. Within families, this meant that women
would get the older phone and the males would get to use the new one. Sometimes,
fortunately for the women receiving it, the older phone was also a smartphone. Almost
all of these women paid for the internet on their phones monthly, and the average usage
was 1-2 GB. A small portion of the savings by the women of the house, Sanchaya Dhan
(meaning: savings), was often spent on internet data packs. This was mostly for using the
social media messenger app, WhatsApp, and in the case of younger women, film-related
apps such as Filmora.60 The smartphone brands popular amongst the women users were
Micromax, Intex, Lava, Karbonn, Asus, Samsung and lately, the telecom market
disruptor, Reliance Jio.

60 In Narwal, WhatsApp is widely used for sharing videos, pictures, political messaging, and humorous content via
audio. I discuss this in the next chapter

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Mobile phones without smart features were common among women family members
whose husbands had smartphones that replaced those old phone models. All the women
I met, with the exception of two, had at least one mobile phone in their household, usually
owned by male members. My participants appreciated the usefulness and ease of mobile
phones and were mostly grateful to their menfolk for ‘permitting’ them to use it and for
providing them with bits of technological know-how. My participants did not have their
phones in their hand or nearby most of the time during the day. Rather than being a
portable handheld device, it had an allocated place where they usually kept it safely along
with the phone’s charger. It was not apparent in my interactions with any participant
whether or not she owned a phone. The fact that I had to explicitly ask if they owned a
phone hinted at their handling of the device, which was, for the lack of a better word,
‘careful’.

For my participants who owned a phone of any kind, it was their first ever ‘personal’
device, unlike males who not only owned phones but sometimes had laptops and TV sets
bought for them. The personal(ised) nature of mobile phones allowed women, via the
usage of its various technological features, to consume film content in different ways.
Cameras, touchscreen, internet and social media apps (WhatsApp and YouTube) were
some of the features through which my participants were able to engage with multiple
text formats on a single device. Vibha (32), who used to get her internet data pack
activated every month, complained of her phone becoming a ‘public property’ (jan-dhan)
in her house. She had two children aged 8 and 10, who used her smartphone to use
WhatsApp and share videos for few hours every day. Although they routinely transferred
films or film-videos to her phone for watching them, it proved advantageous to Vibha
too. She came to know about the latest film content through her children. At New Year’s
Eve, Vibha had enjoyed watching the recent Salman Khan film Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
(2015) on her phone’s screen with her son (8) and daughter (10). There was a regular
arrangement of sorts, that she would sometimes allow her children to ‘play’ with her
phone, and in exchange they would get the latest entertainment content stored on her
phone. Vibha’s children did not do it ‘for her’, but she benefitted from it since she enjoyed
watching/listening to videos, songs, or feature films. This arrangement came with a
downside as she was unable to use it as a ‘personal’ medium due to her phone being used
by others. She neither had the time to explore new content on her phone, nor the
inclination to actively download her preferred film content herself. Her children were

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well-versed with video-creating apps and games, along with elementary knowledge of
internet surfing. The lack of control over her phone and technological skills convinced
her that she would end up damaging the phone if she used it for anything other than
forwarding images and videos on Whatsapp. I observed that for my participants, access
to a smartphone was not the biggest obstacle, but it was its discouraged use and restricted
ownership that often destroyed their confidence to use it to full advantage.

For younger women below 25, using digital technology was not an experience that made
them feel helpless. Among a group of young women aged 19-21, I witnessed a collective
effort to gain access to smartphones, and, ultimately, to nurture their love for Hindi films.
Rehana, a 19-year-old participant, opened up to me about an ‘arrangement’ with three of
her friends. She shared that each of them had contributed an amount from their pocket
money to buy a Micromax smartphone, a device they owned jointly and that now
remained in rotational custody. Rehana told me, “We enjoy watching song videos on
YouTube and that is how we prepared a dance sequence for my elder sister’s wedding. I
have this phone for today”. I found this consistent with Madhupa Bakshi and Soumya
Sarkar’s comment:

The use of videos to promote the songs has been the most common and effective way for the past
couple of decades. The videos are now not only released on the television channels but also on
YouTube. The compounded effect of these forces set up the foundation of consumption

(2015:145)

Rehana chose to share this with me in the final week of spending time in Narwal and after
three months of knowing them. Just before this interaction, I had shown them some of
my own dance-videos on YouTube and had shared how I had not told my parents about
posting these online. This is when Rehana asked me, “How do we search for your videos
on YouTube?” These girls were evidently well-versed with the features of YouTube and
used it frequently. After showing Rehana a video of me dancing with my female friends
on a street in Delhi, I noticed a suppressed giggle. Next, I showed her an aerial-view
video of the South Bank in London on YouTube. Rehana recognised the imagery and
said:

We have not watched this particular video before but in so many Hindi films we see the same
view. I saw Namastey London (2007) and this video appears in a lot many movies. Things are not
as bad as you think.

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A few days later, I attended her sister’s wedding where her choreography was widely
appreciated. Her parents, along with the parents of her friends, did not know about the
smartphone, and these young women intended to keep it that way. This made me wonder:
Why are women breaking everyday rules to engage with films? In the course of my
research in Narwal, this was a unique occurrence, but I do not rule out the possibility of
other such latent networks in the village. Even if this was a one-off instance, it has the
potential of becoming known to other young women who might be looking for avenues
of ingress into the digital world and Hindi films. For now, Rehana’s friends were the only
ones who opened up to me about this. I asked her, “Do you think there are other people
who also might have bought a phone without the knowledge of family members? Would
it not be amazing if you got to know that other girls have this arrangement too?” She
appeared concerned, “No didi, it is best we do not try to find out. How will we find out
anyway? And what if they tell our mothers?” This closed the discussion for us. For a
moment, I felt that she regretted sharing this with me, and offered polite reassurance.

Another use of mobile phone technology that my participants enjoyed was the use of the
in-built camera. It did not require a technological skill and it was common for young and
middle-aged women to click and store their photographs in the phones that they used.
The reason I mention phone camera and not just camera can be illustrated by the
following example. I noticed a difference in the way my participants perceived a phone-
camera and a hand-held one, i.e., clicking photographs of my participants on mobile
phones turned out to be a different experience for me than using a DSLR camera. For the
first few weeks of my fieldwork, I carried around a Canon DSLR camera in my bag to
take some photographs. An hour into my interaction with a group of four young women,
I asked them if I could take their pictures. They readily obliged and started shifting to
change their positions so as to fit in the camera frame. I took my camera out, looked at
them, and instantly realised that the camera was a mistake. The four girls looked
uncomfortable, so I asked them if there is something wrong. One of them politely
requested, “Didi, phone se hi khich lijiye na” (meaning: let us just click a picture from
your phone). I experienced this unease with another set of young women. Following
interactions after a phone photography session, I tried to find the reason why my
participants were fine with their pictures on my phone but not on my camera. I understood
later that, blurred by routinisation, the phone cameras did not intimidate my participants

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posing for the photograph, but as soon as I took out a visibly heavy device, it represented
a ‘motive’. The use of a DSLR camera indicated a possibility that their photographs might
be used for a purpose unknown to them. As long as the photography was done through a
mobile phone, it was considered to be an ‘ordinary memory-keeping’ exercise. However,
this inference needed to be validated. During my interaction with a 52-year-old man, who
owned a photo studio in Narwal, I asked him about how his female customers reacted to
his camera, “Have you ever felt women customers being hesitant to pose in front of your
camera?”61 He looked puzzled and responded, “Why would they be? Of course, they are
not very talkative, but if they come all the way to the studio to get their photographs
clicked, it is a task for them to complete”. I understood that there was a permanence that
was associated with the photographs captured by the ‘big camera’. It dawned on me after
this conversation that my participants were perhaps unprepared when I took my camera
out to click their pictures. Since the only other place where such cameras were used were
the studios, it was helpful for me to confirm my notions. The ‘big photography camera’
required the person to pose and posing indicated the subject’s preparedness. As I
observed, phones were for personal use and hand-held cameras indicated a possible
public display of those photographs.62 It can also be seen as an act that is more deliberate
than taking photographs on the phone that occurs more randomly. Either way, I could not
gather more data to confirm the rationale for their different relationship with a DSLR
camera and a phone one.

All said, the investment in digitisation was still, as I observed, for the benefit of men and
women’s media use would be monitored. Research publications by NGOs and
international organisations such as BBC Media Action, among others, have explained
that mobile apps for rural women’s health, education and skills were being developed
and women in rural areas were benefitting from such ‘communication for development’
initiatives.63 However, as a researcher in Narwal I could not find a single woman using
any such mobile apps, and the initiatives are still few and sporadic across rural India. Any
social messaging that was done in Narwal was either through television, and particularly

61 I discuss my interaction with the studio owner in greater detail in section 4.2.2
62 I discuss later (section 4.4.2) how even the photography studios in Narwal were influenced by Hindi films, but how
this influence was different from yesteryear’s filmi studio photography as described in Christopher Pinney’s seminal
work, Artisan Camera: Studio Photography from Central India (2013).
63 One of such examples be accessed at – “Design thinking and health communication: learning from failure” (URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mediaactioninsight/entries/bbf66eff-b109-4f14-8cd9-8473442a7da9)

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by the Indian public broadcaster – Doordarshan, or through on-the-ground interaction.64
My point here is that women were not just ‘handed’ devices like mobile phones, they had
to find indirect avenues to get access to those. Men often dismissed conversations about
women’s media use, citing an ‘inability’ of females to use even the simplest of
technologies. Easily available low-priced smartphones were not a sufficient reason for
men to make the devices available to the women in their family. Kanchan, who had
recently turned 18, was adept at sewing and designing, and on occasion, stitched shirts,
blouses, and kurtas to hone her skills. Her mother Suman, who owned a beauty parlour
in the village, was present in the room when I had a lengthy conversation with Kanchan
one afternoon. Kanchan shared that she wanted to become someone ‘who designs and
stitches beautiful clothes’ and showed me some of her own designed clothes. I asked
Suman if she had any plans to send her daughter outside Narwal to pursue a career in
design. It was just then that Prakash, Kanchan’s 22-year-old brother, entered the room,
and I praised his sister in front of him. He greeted me and said that she does, indeed, has
a good knowledge of designing and stitching. I put forth a suggestion to him based on an
earlier conversation with his sister, “Do you think a camera-phone will be good for Kiran
to showcase her work to other people?” I could tell Prakash was not appreciative of the
idea. He sat down casually and said politely, “What does she need it for? This place is
unsafe. You never know who might be troubling her (Pata nahi kaun tang karne lage).
Moreover, it is a waste”. I nodded in agreement and added, “How about a phone with a
camera but without a SIM card? At least she can store photographs of the clothes she
stitches or keep the designs of her choice for reference?” He retorted:

I would rather buy her a cheap camera than a phone. My WhatsApp keeps beeping all day and I
get so disturbed. It is not that I cannot afford it, but I do not want her to get into trouble. Today
she is asking for phone, tomorrow she will tell me she wants internet. This has no end.

I did not probe further and just nodded in agreement. It was evidently a sensitive issue
for him to discuss the question of making technology available to his sister. The line that
stuck with me after this conversation was “today she is asking for phone, tomorrow she
will tell me she wants internet. This has no end”. For me, this summed up the intent of
those who disapproved of women’s media consumption. There were similar cases like

64 By social messaging I refer to public-service-based television shows and social advertisements

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Kanchan’s that I witnessed with other participants who were someone’s sisters,
daughters, or nieces. Even in the cases where brothers, sons and husbands did help
women, for instance, in transferring data onto women’s phones, they assumed the
responsibility of being the ‘mediators’ between women and the media. I witnessed this
dynamic in almost every household that I lived in, and I discuss women’s everyday
negotiations in the face of this moral panic in chapter six. Thus, women had to use mobile
phones strictly in accordance with the existing rules. There have been reported cases of
women being made to pay fines if they were seen using mobile phones in villages in the
same state as Narwal.65 In a situation like this, women had access to old, conventional
media forms, where their consumption was not monitored and it was perfectly acceptable
to consume film and other content through these – radio and newspapers. I explain their
relevance in the next section.

3.5 Radio and Newspapers

A medium that used to be immensely popular here but is steadily losing its place to
television and digital technology is radio. Radio is still popular among the urban audience
due to radio shows that cater specially to an urban lifestyle, but radio in villages, at least
in Narwal, was still either considered just a source of news, or a place to occasionally to
listen to music. The radio was usually used only when there was no other medium of
entertainment present.

Some of my participants had transistors in their homes, but they mostly hold novelty
value now. I observed a radio transistor in five houses out of all the ones I visited, and in
all except one, all devices needed repairs. There might have been transistors in other
homes too, but they were not kept in sight. The radio sets were generally to be seen in
the corners of the living rooms for ‘emergency purposes’, i.e., when all other media were
not being used for some reason. These devices were mostly covered with stickers and
dust. I captured some of them in my camera, and the photographs can be seen in figures
3.2, 3.2 and 3.4 below. The radio transistors I noticed looked old and, in comparison to
the latest laptops, television sets and mobile sets in a household, these looked almost toy-
like.

65 See chapter six, section two for a news report on this issue in May, 2017

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Figure 3.2 A radio transistor in a household (©Charusmita)

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Figure 3.3 Radio transistor in another household (©Charusmita)

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Figure 3.4 An old radio transistor used infrequently in a household (©Charusmita)

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There appeared to be a generational divide regarding women’s relationships with radio.
Four of my participants between the ages of 30 to 45 said that they used to listen to radio
on their phones till a few years back, but after the advent of internet and the ease of
accessing music on the phone, the radio feature in phones was hardly being used. Many
of my younger participants (aged 28 and below) confessed to listening to phone radios
even now to listen to the latest songs that were becoming popular. Neeta (21) shared that
she liked radio as it had readily available music on her brother’s phone without the hassle
of getting MP3s transferred on to USB sticks or SD cards, Additionally, with radio no
information could be stored on the device. However, I cannot say if this was also a reason
why some younger women liked listening to the radio sometimes.

The radio channels catering to Kanpur were also available in Narwal, but the signal was
not quite as clear. Radio’s presence, however, was still strong in contributing to the
ambience of village shops, where loud Hindi film music would be blaring out and one
could hear a different song every ten steps of walking through the local market. The only
music that played on the radio during the day was Hindi film music or devotional songs.
Hindi films’ melodies were certainly popularised by radio, thus also reaching those who
did not actively seek to listen to film music. Radio also regularly featured shows with
gossip on film stars and advertisements with film-inspired content, such as endorsements
by Hindi film actors, voice-overs, mimicry, interviews, film songs turned into
advertisement jingles, interviews with film personalities, retro film music, and other
snippets from the world of Hindi cinema.

The newspaper, on the other hand, is a staple in all households that can afford its cost. It
is not only for reading news on the nation, politics and important events. The most widely
circulated national dailies in Narwal were in Hindi – Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, and
Hindustan. These newspapers carried supplements on popular culture, fashion, lifestyle,
and films that both men and women enjoyed. Articles on film personalities, reviews of
upcoming films, film show timings in nearby cinema theatres in cities, and
advertisements featuring film stars, were common features of such supplements that also
published columns on relationship advice, daily predictions of zodiac signs, latest fashion
trends, and urban lifestyle trends. With the internet and television occupying centre stage
in people’s lives for the purpose of entertainment, discussions on newspaper supplements
did not provoke eager responses from my participants. However, once I started noticing
the presence of this medium in every house, I realised that it acts as a supplement to the

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forms of Hindi films in my participants’ lives, especially for women between the ages of
30-45. Another observation about the use of newspapers was that, compared to other
forms of media, newspapers were not frowned upon by men. I discuss the reasons for this
in chapter six, when I outline how women sometimes get to engage with Hindi films
through forms that do not seem to ‘bother’ the men.

Conclusion
The use of infrastructure for communications technology in Narwal is primarily inflected
by inconsistencies in gender and income/class distribution. In this chapter, I described
the media environment within which women make choices to engage with Hindi films. I
focussed on the availability of devices in the village and the ways in which they make
various film forms available to my participants. I also briefly introduced the issues around
ownership of media technology and mediation of women’s media use (which I discuss in
detail in chapter six). This chapter set the context for the following chapter, which
continues this discussion on the prevalent film culture in Narwal.

I make three points in this chapter. First, media practices are never universal. Each
woman’s preferred medium for engaging with Hindi film is different, yet there are broad
patterns that emerge with regard to the use of television, mobile phones, laptops,
newspapers, and radio. The influence of community and family norms is not the same on
the use of each medium for my participants. For instance, the use of the internet on
laptops and mobile phones is more closely monitored by men and elders in a family than
the use of newspapers or radio, and watching television is more acceptable if done
together with other family members, than alone. While I am unable to describe definitive
patterns according to the age of my participants, I have mentioned relevant information
about their preferences in relation to their age groups. My second point is that in a rural
sociocultural setting like Narwal, the availability of media technology does not
necessarily translate into its ownership by women, and their ownership does not
mandatorily lead to engagement. In other words, merely co-existing with this technology
does not imply an active engagement, and in some cases, it might even be used for further
subjugation owing to existing gender power relations. As I describe in later chapters,
moral panic around women’s film consumption might lead women to face ridicule,
prohibition and contempt within their family. The third point is that among the women,

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there was a respect for other females who could operate ‘complex devices’ such as
laptops and smartphones. Since operating digital devices required some form of ‘training’
or ‘smartness’ (hoshiyaari), it was considered a ‘qualification’ as opposed to watching
television. Possessing a working knowledge of computers also corresponded to a higher
status and ambition for women. This may have to do with the fact that learning to use
computers potentially leads to paid employment, which is usually the route followed by
the men. I see women’s media use becoming a balancing act in which social capital
(Bourdieu, 1986) is being acquired in the form of technological skills. It is a project in
itself to explore the ways and constraints within which women, especially under the age
of 25 are acquiring this social capital (Bourdieu, 1986). As Meena said, “When I watch
television, my mother chides me because she feels I am wasting my time. However, she
does not question me too much when I am using the laptop”.

Acquiring this form of capital within a short span of time also leads to a clash between
the admiration gathered and the ‘dreaded notion of becoming too modern’ (Poonam, 50).
In some of the households, women ‘becoming too modern’ meant that they were not fit
for a traditional society, and this would cause anxiety amongst parents who ‘let’ their
daughters ‘study too much’. This scenario can be seen to be changing rapidly amongst
women’s own networks, as I gathered from discussions with them. As Meena’s mother,
Poonam, said, “If they (females) do not learn about new things, their lives will be spent
like ours, going around in circles forever (chakkar lagate rahenge)”. However, in some
cases like Kiran’s, mothers were unequivocal about their daughters’ future. They had set
ideas about the kind of lives they wanted their daughters to lead, and if the daughters had
ambitions that radically contradicted the current status quo, they would not be able to
adjust with their new family after marriage. The majority of the views on female
education of the women I spoke to lay in between those of Suman and Poonam – and
sometimes this dilemma was reflected in their ambitions to educate their daughters. My
point here is that women’s media use was significantly inflected by their families,
educational levels, family income levels, and existing socio-cultural norms. The use of a
particular technology was also a function of the aforementioned aspects, affecting the
ways in which women accessed films and the specific elements of the Hindi film they
engaged the most with, such as songs, images, videos, film-based mobile apps, and so
on.

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My attempt to review the literature on women’s media consumption in an Indian village
yielded multiple results, from news reports and blogs on development communication,
to academic papers and non-academic opinion pieces, many describing how digital
campaigns and competitive tech-pricing, combined with greater access to mass media,
was ‘empowering women’ in rural areas. Many of these studies were quick to label any
change pertaining to women’s media use as ‘empowerment’. From my lived experience
of Narwal, and another village in North India, I argue that only ethnographic methods
can assess whether a newly acquired access to media technology is indeed uplifting
women’s social status or not. I mention this here to underline the importance of an even
deeper understanding of Indian villages, which are far from witnessing a linearity in
social transformations.

The next chapter discusses the forms in which the Hindi film manifests itself in the village
and what meaning that form holds for women in the village.

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 4
Locating the film:
Sites and forms of film content

4.1 Introduction
A more precise sense of the relationship between women and film consumption in Narwal
can be understood by examining the ways in which Hindi film manifests itself in their
everyday lives. This chapter goes beyond the use of devices and modes of consumption
and discusses the extratextual ways in which the Hindi film exists in the village. It gives
an account of a film culture that is characterised by elements of Hindi cinema beyond
full-length feature films — such as film music, merchandising, and images — through
which the Hindi film can be ‘located’ in Narwal. It is only through a mapping of all of
these interconnected forms that I could understand the nature of this audience group
(women in Narwal). In this chapter I argue that for my participants, film audiencehood
comprises a set of voluntary as well as involuntary social and individual practices through
which they relate to Hindi film and/or its extratextual forms.

4.2 Watching Hindi films - Shauk hai par kabhi poora nahi hua66
As discussed earlier, watching full-length feature films was not the most common way
of engaging with Hindi cinema for women in Narwal. Unlike urban areas where cinema

66 Translation: It (watching films) is a desire that never got fulfilled (one of my participants used this phrase, and this
was repeated by several other young and middle-aged women who I spoke to)

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viewership sets the tone for audiencehood, the rural setting limits people’s ability to view
films in theatres. For women, engagement with films almost completely depends on film
use outside of cinema theatres. In this section, I briefly outline what film viewership
means in the absence of cinema halls, looking at various audio-visual forms such as video
fragments of feature films, and film content on television.

4.2.1 Viewership in the absence of cinema halls

A few of my older participants, more than 60 years of age, shared personal experiences
of watching Hindi films in single-screen theatres while living in Indian cities in the 1970s
and 80s. These women had moved to Narwal after marriage and fondly recalled the days
when they used to enjoy watching films with their friends, siblings or husband. As I
observed during my field visit, the nearest cinema theatre was in Kanpur city, about 32
miles from Narwal, which was a considerable distance for anyone to commute for the
purpose of watching a film. Owing to financial as well as social constraints, women
hardly visited the city for this purpose. For my participants, deriving pleasure from
watching films would place them, according to older family and community members,
as non-conformist women who were audacious and seeking escape from their everyday
life. Such women would also be considered, by those who disapproved, as someone who
sought material comforts that were far beyond her means and needs.

A few kinds of Hindi films, however, lay outside the boundaries of this collective
understanding of films as materialistic temptation. Both patriotic films and family-
dramas promulgating ‘Indian family values’ were accepted in the minds and hearts of
people across classes and genders in Narwal. As Anamika (40), co-owner of a family-run
grocery shop, said, “Instilling family values should be the primary aim of a film. Films
these days are ‘derailing’ [path-bhrasht] the minds of our children, and now the
responsibility of getting them back on track (with the belief systems) should be on their
(filmmakers’) shoulders too”. I asked, “But do you not agree that times are changing, and
that the content should change accordingly too?”, to which she said, “Maybe. But since
when do films show reality [vaastvikta]? When have they ever shown reality? Some
children of today consider films as truth, so if they incorporate family values in films,
future generations will benefit”. Another participant, Nandita (52), said something in a
separate interaction which added to Anamika’s point, “Look at the movie Baghban

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(2003). Woh jitni baar aati hai tv par, hum utni baar thodi bahut dekhte hain aur usi
mein ro dete hain [meaning: Every time it is on TV, I watch parts of it (while doing
household chores) and even that much makes me cry]”. My observations were consistent
with my earlier experience of other rural settings that the notions of family-values and
morality were interconnected and quite strong in Narwal. The moral values depicted in a
film, thus, changed the way that the film was perceived by my participants. The
fundamental idea was that films adhering to the community’s moral standards [sanskaar]
fell into the bracket of ‘good’ films, while those showing otherwise were considered
undesirable for women-viewers.67 My participants used a number of words to refer to the
idea of a moral/social code such as sanskaar, sanskriti, and naitikta, among others
contingent on the context.

Exceptions to the above understanding were, in some cases, contingent upon the sites for
watching films. On visiting the nearest computer shop that sold downloaded movies on
USB sticks and SD cards, I noted the choice of films that were being bought by males to
be watched at home. Sometimes these films would also be seen by their women family
members on their laptops or phones. My presumption was that the women, since most of
these films were not ‘good’ ones, might not be watching these films (either due to
mediation by men or of their own accord), but I observed otherwise. The site of film-
viewing changed the rationale for selecting ‘watchable’ (dekhne layak) films for my
participants. In an intimate setting, without company, my participants were less conscious
of the fact that they might never be able to replicate the life shown in films. In other
words, the pleasures of watching films were much more than the satisfaction of being
able to relate to the lifestyle depicted in them. For instance, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
(2015), starring Salman Khan, was a widely popular film among my participants of all
age groups in Narwal. The storyline revolved around the themes of love, family, and
friendship, set in the context of a princely state in India, where the prince had an identical
look-alike who took over the reins in the absence of the prince himself. I screened this
film in a house where I stayed, where there were four women aged 19, 27, 35 and 71. The
youngest one was the daughter of my host, accompanied by her sisters-in-law, and
grandmother (the mother-in-law of the other two). One afternoon, when men and children
were away, we decided to watch the whole film on my laptop. Once the movie ended, all

67 This must be understood in relation to the notion of an ideal ‘moral universe’ (Thomas, 1995) in Hindi cinema. See
detailed discussion on transgression and compliance in the moral universe of the village in section 5.2.

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four praised the film and said that it was highly entertaining. I wanted to know specific
details about what they really thought of the film’s actors, plot, music, clothing, and other
aspects. During the screening, I observed different moments in the film when they smiled
or gave notable reactions. The oldest one, aged 71, was the most talkative of the four.
She described the royal palaces of the olden days in India every time an aerial view of
the palatial house of the protagonist was shown in the film. She stopped doing that once
she was told by her granddaughter not to spoil the viewing experience for others [“Dadi
ab dekhne bhi dijiye”]. The bahus (daughters-in-law) did not say much for the entire
duration of the screening, and their facial expressions indicated that watching a film in
present company was not the ideal film-viewing experience they imagined. Before the
film I had asked both of them if they wanted me to reschedule it, and they had said, “Nahi,
dekh lete hain, waise kahan dekhne ko milti hai humein filmein [meaning: No, let us
watch the film, for we hardly get to watch any films anyway]”. I had noticed their mother-
in-law cringe a little at their response, and this strained dynamic continued throughout
the screening. I realised that it would be too intrusive for me to get their reaction to the
film by involving them in a discussion with each other. The only time one of the
daughters-in-law reacted was during a song, “Bitti isi gaane pe toh thirakti hai din bhar”
[meaning: this is the song my daughter dances to all day]. The youngest of the four (the
daughter) had to go to teach at an after-school session at a nearby tuition centre after the
screening, and I decided to accompany her to her destination. Initiating a conversation, I
asked, “Maybe I chose the wrong time to show the film to all of you, as everyone is
generally busy at this time of the day”. She smiled politely and said:

That is not the problem, didi. The timing was fine. It is just that my grandmother does not like my
Bhabhis (meaning: her daughters-in-law) watching films. They are very slow and do everything
at their own pace. My grandmother wants everything to be done her way. Now they have stopped
watching television as well. I am surprised at how my grandmother even agreed to watch this with
everyone today. She does not usually sit with us to watch films.

I had organised the screening to examine reactions that emerged while watching the film,
but I later realised that it had turned out to be an incidence of appeasing the guest, who
in this case was me. I further inquired, “What about you? Does your grandmother not like
you watching films too?”, and she said, “No, she does not say anything to me, except that
I should spend more time taking care of my younger brother and father. I love films, but

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I do not watch them with everyone. I like to watch films alone”. I continued the
conversation, “Why is that?”, to which she responded:

...Maybe because I am afraid things will get awkward (ajeeb) if it is an ulti-seedhi (idiotic) film.68
I like Salman Khan and how nicely he treats Sonam Kapoor in the film, just like a princess. But
my mother and grandmother say that family films focus too much on boy-girl [romantic] stories.

Knowing the ‘type’ of films was taken seriously in Narwal, as I discuss in detail in section
5.4. If it was a family film, it ought not to include any awkward ‘new-age scenes with
love affairs’, and if it was a patriotic film, it should avoid focussing on anything other
than the struggles of an army man or the social issues faced by a common Indian man.
Any digression, even if contextual, was not appreciated widely in family viewings. I then
decided that screening films with family members present was not the best strategy to
explore or examine the film aspects that my participants liked, unless the setting was
arranged in a way where my participants did not have to worry about betraying any
emotions through facial expressions.

In another screening that I organised for 17 women, 12 were below the age of 30 and this
time none were related, in any way, to each other. I had hired a small projector and a
screen locally to be set up in a classroom at the ITI (Industrial Training Institute). I met
them and the interactions carried on for three consecutive days before the screening.
Initially I had planned on screening a family-drama film, but as I discussed a few potential
film titles with my participants at the ITI ahead of the screening, they dismissed each as
they had already seen those or heard about it and did not like the premise. They asked me
if I had a recent film that they had not watched. I suggested watching the film Pink (2016)
and all readily agreed. During the screening of Pink, which tells the story of three young
women and their lawsuit against a rapist, Madhu (42), a trainer at the ITI, expressed her
dislike of a few scenes in the film. The said scenes showed a young woman in New Delhi
being sexually assaulted by her own male friend. Madhu said:

68 Ulta Seedha in this context referred to depictions of conjugal romance in films

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 What is the point of such films? All they do is depress us and make us afraid of the world out
there. There is no saviour like Amitabh Bachchan in real life.69 I think we should watch a film that
entertains all of us as a family.

While other participants jumped out in defence of the choice of film after her reaction,
stating that they liked watching Amitabh Bachchan on screen and that the film was
‘good’, Madhu chose to go and sit at the back. She did not say a word afterwards and
avoided looking at the screen in the scenes where the protagonists in the film were
assaulted and humiliated. After the screening I went to speak to her separately. I
apologised as I thought she felt uncomfortable, and she shared:

I know this is an important film, and these things happen in reality, but I always believed watching
films should be an escape from reality, to a happy world where everything becomes ‘alright’ in
the end, but nothing is ever going to be ‘alright’ in my life.

After listening to what she later revealed about her circumstances, it was evident how
such films could serve as constant reminders of pain and helplessness for my
participants.70 The aspect that upset Madhu the most was that Pink depicted women who
were supposedly living a life of financial dignity and liberality in a big city. She asserted,
“If it can happen to them, it can happen to us living here in a socially rigid space. In fact,
it does. It is a cruel place [kroor samaaj]”. This was evident of how watching films
sometimes, instead of becoming cathartic, opened up old wounds for my participants and
reminded them of painful instances from their own lives. It was the theme of injustice,
sexual consent, and helplessness of the character that she related to the most. I also
observed that although my participants found film-viewing a pleasurable/cathartic
activity, they did not get to indulge in watching films as frequently as they would have
liked. For instance, Sapna (28) stitched clothes at her home as part-time work but when
asked about her livelihood, she preferred to be known as a housewife. She visited Kanpur
city once every fortnight with her husband for medical treatment but had only watched

69 Amitabh Bachchan is one of the most recognised faces of the Hindi film industry and is arguably the most popular
film star in India of all time. Bachchan also starred in the film Pink as the lawyer who fights the women’s case and
wins it.
70 I am unable to discuss the circumstances in this thesis due to ethical concerns

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film in a theatre once in her entire life. She had an extremely soft voice and a warm
personality, and she shared while we were having tea at her house one evening:

I love to watch films. I wish I could watch at least two films every week. I watch them sometimes
when there is opportunity. Mostly I watch them on television, but I would prefer watching them
on my phone. I love television dramas [Natak] too. I am learning how to watch films and TV
dramas on the internet. One day I tried to watch the film Raja Hindustani [1996] on the internet
on google just like my son does, but poora balance hi udd gaya [meaning: the whole talk-time
balance was finished]. Every time I try to watch something online, my phone is out of balance
within a few minutes. So, I have to watch it on television, but due to electricity issues and clash
of timing with other family members, I am not even able to do that.

This was a unique case where Sapna, who lived in a joint family of 11 members, was able
to fulfil her desire, to some extent, for watching films and soap operas despite constraints.
Any extravagant claims about viewership of films in an Indian village ought to be
tempered by the fact that watching a two-to-three-hour long film was a difficult feat to
be achieved by women living in this setting. Some participants considered gaining access
to a film as the end point of their cinematic journey, rather than a starting one. Further,
since women did not form the customer-base for the village computer shops that sold
film content on USB sticks, there was no attempt from their end to cater to the women’s
preferences. A young man who worked at a computer shop in Narwal showed me his
collection of downloaded films and Hindi film songs. In my interaction with him, I learnt
that since last two years his customers, almost all males, were increasingly gaining in-
home access to downloaded content and therefore, he was not getting as much business
as before. To improve this situation he had started to stock digital HD prints of ‘South
Indian films’ (mostly in Telugu) that were dubbed in Hindi, in addition to the Chinese
and Hollywood action films which were popular among men.71 There was no evidence
of women avoiding action films but, in our interactions, none of my participants said she
preferred an action film over other kinds of available types. Children, however, as I
observed, were highly entertained by action films and videos, irrespective of their gender.
There was a complete absence of shops specifically selling CD-ROMs or DVDs of films.

71 Telugu is a language spoken in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and the union territories of Puducherry
by the Telugu people

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It was only the computer shops selling content on cards and USB sticks that operated in
Narwal then. As the shop-owner told me:

Usually, it is the HD movies that are in demand. No one wants to watch films in the bad quality
‘cinema hall print’ anymore. They come to my shop for that. I sell five movies in HD print for 20
Rupees. It is mostly only young males who come to my shop for this purpose. For every 50 men,
there would roughly be 2 females coming to my shop.

Despite being available on portable gadgets, none of my participants watched films while
working or while running household errands. Although these devices could
conventionally be classified as media for personal use, they often became sites of
collective or family viewing, especially in the case of women.

4.2.2 Fragments of feature films: Videos in circulation

The material specificity of digital technology made it easier for everyone to access full
feature films, or part thereof, on portable devices. Since my participants did not often
watch full movies due to various constraints as I explained, they downloaded and shared
film-related videos, such as film scenes, songs, spoofs, and parodies. These videos were
forms of quick entertainment, and my participants watched and shared these as compared
to watching full features, thus preventing them from being labelled as kaamchor
(slacker/useless) who spends too much time watching films.

Film-related videos were not only shared on WhatsApp but were also transferred across
mobile phones through Bluetooth or as pre-loaded clips on the smartphones. These were
Hindi film videos ranging from high-definition clips of film scenes, songs, humorous or
parody video clips based on films, doctored/ edited film clips for political or social
messaging, gruesome and gory film clips, and some cut-away segments of Hollywood or
East Asian action films. People also shared non-film-related videos such as news videos,
viral social media clips, political speeches, interviews for political messaging, and social
advertisements.72

72 Most of the political content shared, such as local news items supplemented by unverified video clips, evidently
promoted by the ruling national party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and doubtless originated with the
party, as part of their party propaganda machine.

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Within households, children were either the primary media content providers or came
close to adult male members in doing so, especially for their mothers or grandmothers.
They acted as enablers for my participants, facilitating the use of phones for women to
watch or listen to their preferred video or song. Women also relied on their children to
download or transfer content on to their smartphones. Durga Devi (69), a tailor who
worked from home, shared her views on her grandson and granddaughter as (sometimes
unwarranted) media content facilitators:

I hate these maar-dhaad wali filmein [action/violence-based films]. My grandchildren keep

showing me things on phones and each time I refuse to see those, they start a graphic commentary
of the scenes to annoy me. They get these from the nearby computer shop, bhagwan jaane who
log kaahe daalte hain yeh sab phone mein [God knows why they sell this content on phones].

Children and teenagers of both genders, by virtue of being avid media consumers, also
acted as regulators or mediators for the women in their homes. As I saw in most
households, boy children watched films or videos first and then ‘carefully selected’ the
bits worth sharing with their mothers, sisters or grandmothers. Little girls and female
teenagers also watched and shared content on phones regularly, but they only consumed
the content that the males (adults or minors) downloaded/got transferred. Another
interesting use of film-related videos by my participants was when they used to visit each
other’s houses along with their children; they used to give their phones to the children
and the videos kept the children entertained while the women conversed at leisure. For
one reason or another, these videos occupied important spaces in their smartphones, and
in their lives.

Husbands, brothers, and sons too were mindful and aware of the film content that was
being consumed by various members in the house. They were the primary gatekeepers of
the film content that my participants consumed. Hence, the circulation of fragments of
feature films within the village was heavily influenced by the preferences of men, and
this is a significant characteristic of the prevalent film culture in a rural setting like
Narwal.

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4.2.3 Televised film consumption

Adding to previous discussion on the experience of watching television (section 3.2), I

will now explain the ways in which my participants consumed Hindi film on television.
For women like Sapna (28), watching films on television was preferred over watching
them on phones or laptops due to high cost of the internet data or the lack of knowledge
of how to manage the cost of internet on their personal devices. But for most of my
participants, it was the kinds of limitations on their television consumption that limited
their film viewership on it. Younger women (18-24) shared that they preferred individual
and personalised film consumption, such as watching films without elders present, using
film-based apps, and watching music videos of their choice on YouTube or offline.
Women over 25 preferred watching television dramas and film-based television shows
as these programmes had fixed timings and did not have a runtime of 2 to 3 hours.
Additionally, women who were married with families mostly did not get time with media
devices alone and had to consume most media content collectively with other family
members.

Although the kinds of content and subject matter in television dramas — soundtracks,
storylines, language, and sometimes even actors — were similar to Hindi films (chapter
three), watching television dramas did not subject my participants to as much moral
scrutiny as watching feature films. For instance, while I was at Sapna’s house watching
a television drama titled Saath Nibhana Saathiya (2010-still running; translation: ‘Stand
by me, my beloved’), her mother-in-law (65) said:

What they show in television dramas these days is real. This is exactly how daughters-in-law treat
their mother-in-law…The husband only listens to what his wife says. The world is a bad place,
and lots of bad things happen that need to be shown. I like television dramas more…but sometimes
they use scenes that are too long…with just a song playing in the background…and bekaar
[useless] love stories. Yeh sab filmon mein hota tha, ab yeh log tv par bhi dikhane lage hain [all
this used to happen only in films, now they have started showing this on television too].

Curious, I asked her, “So would you, in that case, also like films like Pink (I had narrated
the film’s plot to her earlier)?” She responded, “But the world is a bad place, and despite
the girls’ suffering, it will not evoke sympathy/pity (daya) in the minds of men. So, I do
not see the point of such films. It never helps”. I observed a difference in the way she
perceived television and film, and moreover, filmic content on television. The ‘reality’
of kitchen politics shown on television dramas was something that she related to, and

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therefore this theme was significant for her. However, she did not appreciate the love
stories’ sections of the dramas because she thought these were unnecessary and should
only be shown in films. This might have had two reasons. First, because dating and
relationships were still considered as the domain of films, and when shown on television,
romances either quickly culminated in marriage, with the family’s approval, or were
shown as a marital relationship between two characters who were flagbearers of tradition
and family values. Secondly, since TV soap operas were mostly watched with other
family members, even if they were all females, the collective understanding was this:
‘you are what you consume’, and it was seen to be common sense that the desires of a
woman corresponded with the content that she consumed, and how she consumed it.
Among my participants aged 60 and above, this rationale was how I observed them to be
judging other women consuming media content.

In contrast, the younger women were more appreciative of the film-inspired parts of
television dramas. This may have been partly due to their personalised and individualised
consumption that allowed them to engage with the content without external family
influence, but I could not generalise this reasoning across age groups. While watching
the period drama Jodha Akbar (2013-2015, with ongoing repeat telecasts) at the house of
one of my hosts, there was an intimate scene between the two protagonists on the
television screen. There were three people watching the episode, Manisha (10-years-old),
Priyamvada (her 35-year-old mother), and me. There was complete silence among all
three of us during the intimate scene, but I observed no discomfort or unease on
Priyamvada’s face. Once the show ended, I asked her, “Do you not think the television
dramas have become too filmi these days? They show anything on television these days
without lihaaz (consideration/ being mindful)”. She said shyly, “I do not find it odd.
Television mostly shows what films show. When in films they do not filter anything out,
this was going to happen to the nataks (dramas) too”. I was curious as to what her reaction
might have been if it were her family members sitting there, and so I asked, “Do you
prefer watching television alone, when no one is at home?” Without a change in her
expression, she said:

It does not really make a difference, unless you have a scene that the elders might not like. But I
feel that it is up to the makers to make whatever they want. If they are showing this, I do not mind
watching.

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I continued the conversation, “Would you say the same thing about films too?” and she
said, “Why not? Unless there is no one else at home, except maybe my sister. We used
to watch so many films together before I got married”. This was just another instance
where my participants engaged with films and television differently depending on their
age group and consumption preferences. It also indicated how Hindi films are considered
to be the trend-setters in entertainment and popular culture.73 Films were usually viewed
on television only on weekends by the whole family. Although Priyamvada and Sapna,
like several other participants, enjoyed those afternoons watching films with their
families, they wished that the TV channels would show such films on weekdays too, so
that they could watch them at leisure, as on weekends they hardly got to enjoy the films
with all the pending household work. On Sundays, it was just the incidence of the family
getting together to watch a film that they found satisfying. The consumption of Hindi
film through television, thus, went beyond viewing films. As mentioned earlier, there
were TV channels such as B4U Music and 9XM that predominantly broadcasted latest
Hindi film music, trailers of upcoming Hindi films, star interviews, artist profiles,
concerts and music chart rundowns, as well as video request shows. My participants
watch these for film-related news, music and celebrity gossip during late afternoons and
early evenings. I also discussed earlier how even the seemingly non-film-related TV
content, such as daily soap operas, was heavily influenced by Hindi films in terms of
titles, plots, actors, and music. While there were several instances where I watched
television, films and other content within people’s households, I observed that women
did not visit others’ houses for this purpose, unless they were young girls under the age
of 25 who went to their friends’ houses under the pretext of ‘learning computers’. It was
only the men, in my field experience, who went to another’s house to enjoy television or
listening to music.

The next section is about the Hindi film music which is not just popular in this rural
setting but is an integral part of the Hindi film culture globally. I discuss below the
presence of Hindi film in Narwal through its music and the ways in which film music is
celebrated here.

73 I discuss the differences in film and television consumption by my participants in chapter five

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4.3 Film music
The popularity of Hindi film music within households in Narwal can be attributed to not
just television, smartphones, and internet, but also radios on phones and in transistors.
The local radio channels, whether accessed through phone, pocket music players, or
transistors, play exclusively commercial Hindi film music. In households where there
was no television, I observed the presence of devices that could play music, such as
phones, portable music players, or old transistors. The in-depth interviews in the final
weeks of my field work indicated that women under the age of 25 wished to own music
systems of their own in their house, which ideally would only be for their personal use
and not for use by other members. I had specifically asked them a question on the
ownership of music devices as I wanted to know whether they seek to enjoy film music,
or if it is just something that is supposed to be played in the background or at celebrations.
Women older than 25 were usually married and, hence, all their activities were closely
monitored as compared to the ‘daughters of the house’. However, my participants of all
ages enjoyed listening to film music and for them this was an activity that they could
enjoy while doing other chores as well as something they could enjoy in private.

It was not only women but also children (both boys and girls) who enjoyed songs from
Hindi films, in turn strengthening my participants’ engagement with films. A primary
school that I visited in Narwal had students of 4 to 9 years of age. The female staff
members who I interacted with told me about the individual and group activities at school.
I learnt from those conversations that popular Hindi film songs were the only music that
the children (both boys and girls) would perform to. Deepika (28), who taught
mathematics and English language in the same school, said:

On special occasions such as festivals, competitions, and other cultural events, our children
(students) perform to popular film songs. Songs like Ik uncha lamba kadd (Welcome, 2007;
translation: a tall girl), mayya yashoda (Hum Saath Saath Hain, 1999; translation: mother
Yashoda), shanivaar raati (Main Tera Hero, 2014; translation: Saturday night) are enjoyed by all.

All of the songs she talked about were invariably from Hindi films. It is notable how
children acted as sources of the latest film music for some of my participants. The other
teachers at the school confirmed the popularity of film songs among children and said
that little boys and girls find out about the songs from members of the family and, when
they come to school, they spread the word about the songs and the latest films. Once the

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children at school come to know about new songs or films, they go home and relay that
information to their family members who were most often women, as the mothers, aunts,
and grandmothers are the first ones who are available to talk to children when they reach
home. Thus, from a very tender age, girls and boys are exposed to different forms of
Hindi film. I also noticed some of these children attempting to mimic well-known film
actors. The female staff members were also sometimes given the responsibility of
choreographing some of their students’ dance performances. Some songs which these
children chose to dance to had lyrics that may have been considered objectionable by the
older people in the community. It is only when I heard young children singing songs with
lyrics objectifying women that I realised how deeply the films impact their everyday
cultural practices. However, going any deeper into children’s film consumption than that
was beyond the scope of my study.

Drawing from an earlier point I made, a simple browse through Indian television will
show that it has channels that are dedicated to producing content based on films and film
music (such as B4U music and 9XM channel). It was during a particularly warm
afternoon that I expected to meet one of my participants at her house. While walking
through a narrow lane on my way to her house, I noticed a door of another house slightly
ajar, just a few metres before her house, inside which I heard a recent popular Hindi film
song called Kar Gayi Chull (Kapoor and Sons, 2016; translation: she made me go crazy).
On getting closer, I realised that there was a young woman watching a video of that song
on her TV screen. She was mimicking the dance moves while sitting on her bed. She was
in her early twenties and I recognised her from another interaction that I had with her
friends. I knocked on her door lightly, but the young woman, still unaware of my presence
there, was completely hooked to the song video. The second time I knocked, she noticed
me. She stopped dancing, and, slightly embarrassed, she greeted me with a wide smile. I
apologised to her for knocking on her door and told her how much I admired her dancing
skills. She thanked me and said coyly:

I just watch these songs when I come back from the school after teaching. I think these [shows]
make one feel light and tension-free. I can stop watching them any time I want, otherwise with
films, it is difficult to stop. I really like this song and the dance steps of Alia Bhatt [actress]. I
thought I will try it too.

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She told me how she had just come back home, and since there was no one around, she
thought of just watching the TV for some time before her brother arrived.

Drawing on responses to the semi-structured interviews, I noted that my participants

watched these music-based channels for varied reasons such as entertainment, learning
about upcoming films, watching videos of the songs they would have heard elsewhere,
updating themselves with the latest fashion trends, and relieving stress. Although none
of my interviewees explicitly cited celebrity-gossip or actor-interviews as reasons to
watch TV channels like Zoom or B4U, the younger ones (below the age of 30) recalled
and discussed bits of interviews of Hindi film actors/ actresses that they had watched.
Ranjana, a 23-year-old participant, spoke on how ‘Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh
must get married’ and went on about how the two looked great together in the interview
that was broadcasted a week before on B4U channel.74 Film trailers, too, were particularly
important, as these music-based channels sometimes served as one-stop shops for
knowing all about the latest Bollywood films. These trailers sometimes also gave a
glimpse of the film’s music, which was enough for some of my younger participants to
know whether or not they were going to like that music album. As Ranjana shared, “My
brother sometimes shows me trailers on Google, but B4U usually shows songs of all new
films so I just learn about them on that [channel]. These channels are the only good thing
in television”. Her mother added, “She keeps watching these songs all day, how is it
different from watching films for a whole day?”, looking unimpressed. This reminded
me of Anna Morcom’s argument in her book Hindi Film Songs and the Cinema, where
she showed how “film songs incorporate Hindi films in a parallel way to how Hindi films
incorporate songs” (2007:239). Morcom discussed the integration of music in Hindi films
by describing a symbiotic relationship between film songs and their parent films. She
writes, “In commercial terms, film songs and films are two sides of the same coin” and
that “film songs have commercial power, but only when coupled with a Hindi film”
(2007:205). However, Bakshi and Sarkar (2015) argued in the context of the popularity
of Hindi film music in India, that “The box-office success of the movies depends partially
on the extent to which the songs catch the fancy of the population, but not necessarily the
other way around.” (Bakshi and Sarkar, 2015:142). I cannot say whether my participants
were engaging with Hindi films in a purposeful way by listening to film songs, but I am
certain that the songs made them familiar with the film the song belonged to. The

74 Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh are popular Hindi film stars who got married in November 2018

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popularity of Hindi film music is also due to “the marketing efforts of the music
companies, aided by the actions taken by the production houses which are inherently
focused on promoting the associated movie.” (Bakshi and Sarkar, 2015:144).

In parts of North India, the baaraat-band, a vehicle with tableau-style decorations,

flowers, lights and loudspeakers attached to it, has been popular since at least the 1980s.
These slow-moving vehicles were part of the spectacle of baaraat (the wedding
procession of the groom to the bride’s house), and traditionally had a live singer whose
voice blared out from the attached loudspeakers reciting versions of Hindi film songs. I
spotted a few of these band-vehicles in Narwal, given on rent for wedding celebrations
(figure 4.1). The tracks played on the loudspeakers were pre-recorded, with live voice-
overs by a singer, accompanied by the ‘Baaja-wallahs’ (trumpet-players), who played
differently sized trumpets. This ‘band’ always exclusively played Hindi film songs and
people danced to them during the entire wedding procession. Gregory Booth’s article on
brass bands (1990) discussed tradition and change in the Indian wedding music and
described how significant these bands were to the baaraat (the wedding procession). The
band used to be hired by the groom’s parents to company the baaraat (Booth, 1990).
Hindi film music was the predominant form of musical entertainment in Narwal today
too, just like several other parts of North India. As Booth described:

Regardless of the function at which they (bands) are performing, a brass band’s repertoire is
normally based on the same source: Hindi film music. Regional variation is minimal; at any given
moment, the same songs will be heard throughout the country…Approximately half this number
[of film songs played] will be made up of hits from relatively current films; the remainder will
include older film songs whose persistence is due to their extreme popularity or to their filmic
contexts, together with some non-film items such as folk songs specific to the community in which
the wedding is occurring..

(1990:247)

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Figure 4.1 A band-vehicle ('Baaraat-band') spotted in Narwal (©Charusmita)

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A lot of mainstream Hindi films after the 2000s have churned out wedding and party
songs that have become so popular that they are played at practically every North Indian
wedding in urban areas too and “this symbiotic relationship of films and film songs is
reflected in the increasing corporate conglomeration of different media in the Indian
entertainment industry” (Morcom, 2007:205). The men working in computer shops in
Narwal compiled Bollywood wedding playlists and, as I observed, any celebratory event
was considered incomplete without these popular film songs. This was one of the shops’
most sought-after services and it did not cost much to them or their customers – 20
Rupees (GBP 0.23) for 4 GB worth of content on a USB stick or a memory card. The
Hindi film industry has, since long, churned out occasion-specific songs such as for
festivals, weddings, and other rituals. For example, the song Rang Barse Bheege Chunar
Wali (Silsila, 1981) became a nationwide anthem in the popular cultural memory for the
festival of Holi and is played in rural as well as urban areas of North India even as of
2019. As my field work did not clash with Holi, I could not be there to experience the
festivities, but I did have a discussion with my participants about what celebrations ensue
on the day and the days leading up to it. In addition to festival and wedding playlists, the
computer shops also compile and sell other recent film music based on film albums,
playback singers, and the ‘evergreen’ film songs from the 1970s and 1980s, often catering
to specific occasions. These did not particularly hold a novelty value for my older
participants (above 60), who mostly preferred listening to sounds from ‘the era bygone’
(older Hindi film songs from the 1950s to the 1980s), as well as devotional music whose
playlists, again, were immensely popular. These devotional songs too were mostly based
on Hindi films’ melodies that were popular.

The use of songs’ audio clips as ringtones for phones was also popular among my
participants (also see Deo and Duggal, 2017). The musical MP3 clips that were in demand
by the phone users were (i) Hindi film songs (70%), (ii) Bhajans (devotional songs, about
10%), or (iii) film songs that were devotional (5%). Ringtones were sold within the 4 GB
package, usually in 200 MB folders that were pre-loaded on to the USB sticks along with
other content. Ringtones were also shared among friends and family via WhatsApp or
Bluetooth. Although I could not find precise data on the use of such ringtones according
to age groups, I noted that my participants between the ages of 30 to 50 were mostly the
ones whose phones had film songs as ringtones. However, as I mentioned earlier, they
were seldom the sole users of their phones; it could have been their children or other male

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family members who set those ringtones. Hence, what I can say with certainty is that
ringtones of film music were immensely popular, and the songs almost always belonged
to the latest Hindi film releases.

The Hindi film industry has a sub-economy, that of its music albums, which strives to
promote an upcoming film by popularising its music and attracting audiences towards it.
As Morcom explains:

Songs are intentionally composed to musically and lyrically express particular cinematic
situations, incorporating details of the film story and the characters, drama, visuals (locations,
cinematography), as well as the action and timing of the song situation.

(2007:137)

The impact of a film’s music album in the case of several films has been much more
significant than that of the film itself, depending upon the composer, singer, featured film
stars, and so on. Based on my experience in Narwal, I agree with Morcom’s assessment
that “film songs have commercial power, but only when coupled with a Hindi film”
(2007:205). This builds the interest of the audience and is the most widely accessed and
favoured film form for my participants.

The next section describes the presence of Hindi film in Narwal’s everyday culture
beyond consumption of direct filmic elements such as film music, film videos, and full
features.

4.4 Experiencing film through visual culture: Images and objects

Extra-textual manifestations of Hindi film in Narwal were also made visible through
images that existed as imprints on everyday objects, in sartorial tastes, in profile pictures
online, film-based posters, among others. Phil Wickham (2010) advocated a particularly
useful tool that I use to explain the film-related visual culture in Narwal. Wickham
suggested it for understanding the history of cinema, but I extended it to understand how
it is in the relationship between Narwal’s visual culture and Hindi film that we find
evidence of film’s influence in the lives of my participants. Talking about the approach,
Wickham wrote:

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 This [approach] is through ephemera; the material that exists beyond the text, relating to the film,
the practice of production or exhibition, or the personality, but which is not the actual reel of
celluloid, the data or the human being.

(Wickham, 2010:316)

Wickham contended that because of its specificity and its address to consumers,
ephemera opens up cinema’s role in everyday life and its place within individual lives
(2010:317). His approach also emphasised on material culture, but my study did not have
the scope to investigate everyday material culture in greater depth. I only touch upon the
materiality of the objects that had evident relations with Hindi films but do not engage
with it in this thesis, but this conception of the approach through ephemera helped me
identify the relevant instances from my data to organise this chapter.

During my field work, I witnessed (i) film-inspired fashion, (ii) use of photographs with
filmic associations to denote self, (iii) images of actresses on posters in beauty parlours,
(iv) use of film-images in other media such as in newspapers and magazines, (v) filmic
associations of studio photography, and (vi) images of Hindi film actors/actresses on
everyday objects, among others. Film-related images present in various forms had
particular associations in relation to my participants’ lives. In the following sub-sections,
not only do I show that sometimes my participants seek and acquire such objects because
of filmic associations, but also how they relate to filmic images even when those images
just happen to be there without any intentional effort. These images contribute to the
visual culture of this setting by interweaving the filmic visuals into the everyday culture
expressed through images. This gave me a sense of the lived culture of a particular place
and time, with people who were witness to the same images, looking at the same objects
as them, and sharing the same everyday context. In other words, I felt a sense of
immersion.

4.4.1 Images and posters in beauty parlours

The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside a beauty parlour in Narwal were large-
sized posters of Bollywood actresses Rani Mukerji, Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, Lara
Dutta, Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, and Madhuri Dixit, in bridal
costumes posing for the camera coyly, symbolising beauty and tradition with flawless

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faces, and wearing every possible accessory that symbolised a traditional north Indian
woman. Growing up and having travelled through years in north India, I had noted this
trend to be prevalent throughout most of the region, with women’s salons in urban north
Indian areas in the 1990s also having the same interior decorations. Use of images on
such posters in beauty parlours to emphasise Hindi film actresses as models of female
beauty was common in all four beauty parlours I visited in Narwal. Some of these posters
also had words or phrases printed on them, such as ‘Welcome’ or ‘Have a nice day’ (see
figure 3.1).

This phenomenon was also observed by Clare Wilkinson-Weber in her study on costume
in recent Hindi film remakes (2010), and she noted in the context of popularity of the
film Devdas (2002):

The stardom of actresses Aishwarya Rai and Madhuri Dixit were indispensable components of
these paratextual ventures, and promotional photographs of both women in the most lavish
costumes of the film quickly began circulating as epitomes of female beauty. One poster of
Madhuri was tacked on the door of the trainee beauty salon at the hostel where I stayed in 2002.

(2010a:130)

Sunita (42), who ran her own beauty parlour in the central part of the village, told me that
those posters were sometimes used as reference points when she had customers
requesting bridal makeup. The posters reflected the popular trends in jewellery, makeup
and clothing in the north Indian bridalwear and ethnic clothing market. For instance,
Sunita had a poster of Rani Mukerji wearing ‘smokey-eyed makeup’ and bridal lehenga
in her parlour.75 She told me:

Whenever I have to suggest a new kind of eye makeup, I just point to these posters with different
styles. When I started out a few years ago, I did not buy these posters for this purpose, but now I
change it from time to time because they are more than just décor. They sometimes help my
customers choose their look for their special day.

I noticed that she had bangle boxes, vanity cases, and make-up kits with impressions of
film actresses on them (figure 4.4). She continued:

75 Rani Mukerji is a prominent Indian film actress

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 If you notice the posters, they have minimal makeup these days, reflecting the trends in cities.
Nobody likes heavy makeup with multiple accessories these days. These posters are not how they
used to be, when they showed heavy and rich traditional makeup. Actually, I liked the earlier ones
better. They had beautiful jewellery too. If I do not keep up with the trends, who will come to me?
They will say I am outdated. I have been around for a long time and I know how things work.

I went to three more beauty parlours where I noticed similar posters of actresses in
colourful lehengas on the walls, and the owners echoed similar sentiments, that the
posters were more than just décor, and that they were specifically printed for the purpose
of being displayed in beauty salons. Over time, in the cities, as the scale of operation of
the parlours escalated, the décor posters showed the same actresses (Kareena Kapoor,
Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra) in urban attires with bold makeup, who gazed straight
into the camera, looking anything but coy.76

Growing up in Delhi, I saw such posters in the interiors of public vehicles, shops, and
other public places. But in the rural setting of Narwal these posters were characteristic of
the beauty parlours and such images would only be found in salons, especially the ones
with actresses in bridalwear and ethnic clothing.

4.4.2 Photo studios in Narwal

Christopher Pinney’s seminal work Camera Indica (1997), demonstrated through its
study of photo studios in small-town India that, up to the 1970s, the motivation to get
one’s photograph taken was to record one’s identity. In the 1980s and 1990s, this changed
and was replaced by a desire to associate oneself with actors and actresses from the Indian
film industry. First published in 1997, the book had numerous illustrations from the 1990s
(starting from the 1970s) documenting the trend of studio photographs of men and
women with costumes and props against scenic backgrounds or with film stars in the
frame with them, symbolising relationships that did not exist in real life. The following
excerpt summarised this popular phenomenon of the 1990s in Chandni Chowk, Old
Delhi:

(the faces in the photograph) …fractured by the clumsy cutting of the photographers, now sit
astride horses clutching guns. The film star Amir Khan puts a friendly arm around the shoulder of
one of these interpolated heads, leather-clad starlets strain to press their bodies against the lithe

76 By the term ‘bold makeup’, I refer to the glossy makeup that is most often too glamourous to be worn outside the
photo studio, often produced for high-quality fashion images

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 torso of their photographic partners. Some sit on Bombay’s Marine Drive, deep in conversation
with Bollywood tough-man Jackie Shroff; others are on intimate terms with Dilip Kumar and
Dharmendra.

(Pinney, 1997:210)

The photographs he studied depicted ‘filmi poses’ (Pinney, 1997:179) as, he explained,
customers visiting a studio ‘rarely desire(d) realistic (vastavik) photographs’ (1997:178)
at that time. My study indicated that this phenomenon had changed drastically as of 2015-
16. This difference was a testimony to a changing film culture, which might easily be
mistaken for a declining popularity of recent Hindi films given the absence of ‘filmi
poses’ in Narwal’s photo studios. I visited a small photo studio there with minimal
facilities. It was the ‘good one’ out of the two in the village, as my one of my hosts
recommended. The other one was smaller of the two. I met its 52-year-old owner and
asked him if he used costumes, background posters, or any props in his studio for taking
people’s photographs. He was amused by my question and said:

Nobody uses things [props] or costumes these days, beta.77 Nowadays if you come to my studio
wearing a kurta and salwar, I can do the rest through photoshop editing.78 I can photoshop makeup
on them, apply bindis. I can also change the entire outfit - a salwar suit to a saree.79 I can click
[the photograph] without any big lighting. I use simple equipment, but a good camera.

His claim of being able to change a whole outfit seemed exaggerated to me at first, but I
urged him to discuss if his customers asked to be photographed in the ‘filmi poses’ as
illustrated in Punjabi and Pinney’s Artisan Camera (2013) which had a collection of
studio photographs from the 1970s and 1980s. I also showed him an image from Pinney’s
earlier book (1997) that had a lady wearing a Rajasthani costume and carrying an earthen
pot (Pinney, 1997:179). Bemused, he said, “Beta, yeh sab ab nahi hota” [meaning: this
does not happen anymore]. There were no direct visual references to films or film actors
in his photo studio, and the images that were on display were no longer part of the Indian
photo studio tradition of the 1990s that Pinney had illustrated. I observed that the images

77 Beta is the word used to address a child or a younger person in Hindi. It literally means ‘son’
78 I use the word photoshop throughout to refer to any image editing software, and not only Adobe Photoshop. This
word is used commonly used in Narwal for the same purpose
79 Bindi is an accessory to be applied as a sticker-dot or to be painted on a woman’s forehead. Salwar suit and saree
are traditional Indian attires

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that the owner and I were discussing to be filmi resembled the photographs illustrated in
Pinney’s works (1997 and 2013). For the studio owner, filmi portraits were exaggerated,
and often caricatured versions of the self. The reference to studio photograph I showed
him was something he slightly ridiculed [arrey yeh sab yahan nahi hota madam], but the
idea of filmi as only being something from an era bygone is what struck me in our
conversation.80 The high-definition makeup and photography aesthetics that are
characteristic of the current film-fashion is noticeably different from the film-fashion of
the 1980s or 1990s, and according to Sunita, this was reflected in the current popular
taste, whereas no such association was spotted by the studio owner between current Hindi
films and his photography. For him, the association with films automatically translated
into over-the-top images with imagery of an “unreal” world, like the ones shown in
Pinney’s book (2013). Midway through our conversation, I thought that maybe the
relationship between photography in the studio and Hindi films did not exist anymore,
and then he said something that struck me. Following our earlier discussion, I asked him,
“So when you replace the clothing of a woman in her photograph, how do you get the
new cutting [cut-outs] of the clothes to be used to change a person’s clothing?” To this
he responded, “You can get that from the internet. Just open Google and look for pictures
of models, actors, and actresses. That is where we get the latest clothing styles from, and
then just cut and paste”. He added that to find suitable clothing cut-outs for photographs,
he looked up images based on desirable attires, and downloaded the images that he
thought might be required for making cut-outs. I noticed that the ones that he had saved
recently were all known faces from television or Hindi films. Although there was not
much difference in terms of designs between images of actors/actresses and fashion
models wearing similar outfits on the internet, the studio owner indicated that the
validation for a good design, for him, was when a known face endorsed it. He said, “If I
see Deepika Padukone wear a saree, it must be good, and I am sure girls here will like it
[the look]”.

At first sight, photo studios in Narwal seemed to have little to do with Hindi film – no
filmi poses, costumes, or cardboard cut-out of actors posing with the subjects – but the

80 Throughout my study, I use the word filmi to convey an association with the Hindi film, i.e., for the purpose of this
study, filmi means ‘film-related’. However, in chapter five I unpack how the word filmi is used by my participants in
relation to their everyday lives. This example, however, does not feature there as this was the understanding of a man,
and that section of my thesis considered only women’s interaction with me.

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connection with films in terms of the owner’s selection of clothing cut-outs and post-
production styling cannot be overlooked. Although the studio owner clearly stated that
he did not base this choice of design on any specific actress or actor, he did say that a
known face brings credibility. My initial conclusion was that association with film was
not something he had given much thought to. However, my reading of the pattern of
downloading images of film personalities led me to think differently.81

The photo studio owner’s choice of combining film images with his customers’
photographs was similar to the choices made by both Suman and Sunita to relate to their
surrounding objects with Hindi films. There is another similar instance of a female tailor,
Durga Devi (aged 69), which I discuss in the next section. All of these examples together
indicate that they considered Hindi film to be different from other images appearing on
products, objects, or clothing. They wanted to feel distinguished for making those
choices.

The next two sub-sections will discuss this in greater detail before my argument about
the role played by film-related images in the lives of my participants.

4.4.3 Imprints of Hindi film on everyday objects

Elizabeth Edwards, in her work on material culture, pointed out that “the material and
presentational forms of photographs are central to their meaning as images” (Edwards,
2002:67). Her argument suggested that “photographs are both images and physical
objects which exist in time and space and thus in social and cultural experience” (ibid.),
and that the “material forms create very different embodied experiences of images”
(2002:68). In my study, I do not discuss the material nature of images in great detail
because that would be a digression from my research aims, but I want to point out that
the materiality of film-related images in this setting was not homogeneous. These images
were present in the forms of physical posters, photographs, in newspapers, as well as
imprints on everyday objects. In other words, the same image imprinted on different

81 I must mention here that my interaction with the studio owner could have been inflected by two significant factors-
(i) He was a man, and so questioning him beyond a point was not possible in the social setting of Narwal, and (ii) I did
not spend as much time with him as the other three ladies, and this might have affected the way all four of them
contributed to my data.

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materials would indicate a different kind of relationship of my participants with each of
those. I will illustrate the points mentioned above with a few examples below.

After climbing to the first floor of Durga Devi’s house, I saw her sitting on the floor with
cut-pieces of various colourful fabrics. She was a 69-year-old tailor in Narwal who was
introduced to me as the most sought after one in the area for designing the trendiest saree
blouses for women. During our interaction, she showed me a few pieces that were ready
for her customers to collect, and she was packing them in plastic bags. I noticed the
bundle of colourful plastic bags that she was using for packing. These bags had an image
of Shah Rukh Khan, arguably the most popular film star of Hindi cinema since the 1990s.
Adjacent to this image were three words – ‘Simply the Best’ (figure 4.2).

I was aware that those flimsy plastic bags were certainly not the only ones available in
the local market as I had visited local shops before to get bags for packing children’s
gifts. Moreover, the cost of this bag sold there was more than a plain one or a generic one
with a rose printed on it. This made me wonder if this was a matter of choice for Durga
Devi. Curious, I diverted our conversation to it and said, “I like this bag [thaila]. It is
quite colourful. But are plain plastic bags not cheaper than this one?”, to which she
responded:

There will be no huge difference [kitna hi fark pad jayega]. I like these bags, this image projects
an idea of my clothes being trendy [naye fashion ka lagta hai]. Zyada socha toh nahi par kaam
karte karte itna toh pata lag hi jata hai ki kya naya chal raha hai [meaning: It is not a well
deliberated choice for me, but it is not difficult to know what is new and popular after so much
work experience]. I am old now, I do not know what else will the young girls like. I just know
they will like this [Shah Rukh Khan].

The choice exercised by Durga Devi may not be an example of her personal preference
for a film-related image for her packaging, but it does touch upon an association which
was perhaps partly reduced to routine for her. What was evident here though was a desire
to distinguish her product and her brand which was enabled through using a Hindi film
actor’s image. Durga Devi also had a reference design book in which models were seen
facing away from the camera, wearing embellished and printed designer blouses.

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Figure 4.2 Plastic bag with an image of Shah Rukh Khan for packaging clothes stitched by Durga Devi
(©Charusmita)

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Figure 4.3 Durga Devi's catalogue book for saree blouse designs (©Charusmita)

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The sheer variety of designs amazed me, and I asked her, “The blouse-cuts at the back
are quite deep, and they look so good. Do people come to you and ask for these designs?”,
and she said:

I make the designs according to their tastes [jisko jaisa pasand ho], but the cuts are quite
conservative [itni khule khule nahi hote]. Some of them even bring their own design, or just refer
to an actress in a film that they saw and ask me if that design can possibly be duplicated. But this
does not happen often, because maybe they think I am too old to understand film talks (references).
This did not happen when I was younger, I used to follow films and see the trends, now I know
only what is prominent or what these kids like [kya chalta hai aur kya in bacchon ko pasand hai].
I still recall some of the older designs and try to fuse them with today’s tastes. The older ones
were more wearable, like (the designs of) Hema Malini’s clothes.

She came to Narwal from Kanpur city after she got married. Her urban upbringing was
what she attributed her desire to design clothes to. Durga often consulted her daughters-
in-law, who were clearly much younger than she was, on design suggestions as she
believed they were relatively updated with films and television. Wilkinson-Weber noted
in her study on making of Bollywood film looks, that “ready-made clothing was sparsely
available in towns and cities, and even today the local street tailor remains a key sartorial
institution” (2010b:10). These are the reasons behind popularity of tailors such as Durga
Devi in the village. Although she was by no means adept in highly skilled tailoring, she
understood and encouraged women to pursue their tastes pertaining to Hindi film and
even had her own repository of suggestions for the same.

There were other materials/objects with imprints of film actors or film references in the
village which hinted at an association of the everyday life there with Hindi films. The
presence and use of these objects with imprinted images cannot be understood in isolation
from the lives of the people who bought or possessed them. These objects were not
always bought due to their film-images on them. These images were just present,
sometimes as a marketing strategy. The fact that such objects with imprinted images
existed in the village could be attributed to the industry’s persistent marketing and
distribution efforts. Visual culture alluding to popular Hindi film has also been looked at
in Wilkinson-Weber’s study the making of Bollywood film looks, who noted:

Indian actors are quite open, even profligate in their endorsements, cropping up for example on
advertisements for phone service on the sides of buses (married film stars Ajay Devgn and Kajol)
or being pictured on potato crisp packets (Saif Ali Khan).

(Wilkinson-Weber, 2010b:15)

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My participants and some of their family members bought such objects with filmic
associations to be perceived by others in a particular way, as witnessed in several cases.
A few examples show that an image had nothing to do with making a conscious choice
about buying that product, such as bangle boxes and vanity cases with the imprints of
Hindi film actresses (figures 4.4 and 4.5). In other cases, my participants as well as other
residents confirmed that they made a deliberate choice while buying certain products,
such as sachets of mouth-freshener being sold on a mobile cart selling confectionary,
because it ‘looked different from other types of mouth-fresheners’ [alag se dikhta hai]
(figure 4.6).82

82 The packaging of this sachet is a mini version of actor Salman Khan’s 2015 film Bajrangi Bhaijaan, which had just
released.

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Figure 4.4 Cardboard packaging box for bangles in Narwal (©Charusmita)

144
Figure 4.5 Packaging for women's vanity box in a Narwal household (©Charusmita)

145
Figure 4.6 Mouth freshener packaging with an image of a film poster featuring actor Salman Khan, being sold on a
cart in Narwal (©Charusmita)

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Such images on objects sold in local markets were sometimes poorly photoshopped but
clearly related to the world of Hindi films in this rural setting. These images that did not
have their origins in the village in terms of production. Bangle boxes, film-related posters,
food-packaging with film images were imported from cities and I cannot say with
certainty whether their production was specifically intended for a rural setting. One could
argue, then, that the presence of such objects in the village was purely the result of a
capitalistic push, and not because people in the village wanted or demanded them.
Interactions and observations led me to witness various instances indicating that film-
related visuals were evidence of a strong Hindi film culture in the village and were not
there by accident. I knew that not all people who used film-imprinted objects made a
purposeful choice of circulating them consciously, but I also observed how the filmic
image on an object or thought gave it an edge over others. As Wickham reminded us,
“we therefore have to be mindful of the context and extent to which objects interact with
particular lives and everyday life in general” (2010:319). Guided by caution, I still found
instances of deliberate choices to acquire, distribute, and display these images as
discussed above.

Film-images were also present in Narwal in other forms, such as images in newspapers
and magazines used to support film-related news articles. Daily newspapers in Narwal
included glossy supplements on popular culture and lifestyle.83 These were tabloid-style
pages that also comprised ‘film news’, as my participants called it. As Chhavi, a 22-year-
old teacher at a primary school and daughter of a farmer, said, “I have never been to a
cinema hall to watch a film, but I do come to know of all the ‘talkies’ in Kanpur [Original:
pata lag jata hai]”. She further shared:

Every day as soon as I get hold of the newspaper, I slip out the film wala paper (meaning: the
paper with the film-news) and read it. In that, there is a list of movie show timings in Kanpur’s
theatres and a lot of other new things about latest films.

These supplements featured sections on film-screening timings, film reviews, celebrity

interviews, gossip, and news articles on upcoming films. There was very little viewership
of full-length feature films in Chhavi’s case as she watched only about two films every

83 I have discussed this in section 3.5

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year, and yet she discussed several popular film actors/actresses as well as latest films in
her conversation with me. She enjoyed listening to film music on her radio as well and
could recall the names of the films those songs were part of, connecting the content on
the radio with her reading of the newspaper supplements. The multimodal consumption
of Hindi film in Chhavi’s case demonstrated how music, videos or images pertaining to
Hindi film contributed to my participants’ experiences of engaging with film.84

Further, in terms of fashion and sartorial, I witnessed instances where women bargained
their tastes for film-inspired fashion with their everyday realities. As Clare Wilkinson-
Weber pointed out in the context of (largely urban) consumers of fashion inspired by
Bollywood costumes, “As an apparently ‘lived’ commodity image, film costume invites
audiences to extend their own agencies through taking on some of the sartorial elements
associated with a character, or more particularly a star” (Wilkinson-Weber, 2010b:9).
This is also part of the visual culture of Hindi cinema in the village, but owing to the
organisation of this thesis, I chose to discuss this briefly in section 4.4.2 and in more
detail later in section 5.4.

Film images in some cases also influenced studio photography and images of the self on
social media platforms and android-based mobile apps (discussed in the next section),
which are not exactly what Wickham would describe as objects, but nonetheless
contribute to the filmic influences on Narwal’s visual culture.

4.4.4 Use of profile pictures on social media platforms

In the previous chapter, I described the use of social media platforms by my participants,
which was largely restricted to WhatsApp Messenger. Only three of all the women I
interacted with had Facebook accounts and none of them used platforms like Twitter,
Instagram or Snapchat. It may have been that some of my participants used these but did
not want to share it with me, or that they used their brothers’ accounts to browse through
social media networks, but I did not come across any such instances personally. Some of
the women I met asked for my phone number to be able to contact me on WhatsApp later
on. While going through my phone list, I noticed their display images on the messenger
app suggesting possible association with Hindi films. In the following paragraphs, I

84 I discuss the social significance of using multiple modes of film consumption in chapter six.

148
exemplify the ways in which my participants engaged in another form of cultural
production that alluded to Hindi films.

One of my participants, Shweta (22), was a shy young woman who was about to get
married to an army man from a nearby village in a week’s time. During a conversation,
she asked me if I used WhatsApp and we exchanged phone numbers. I noticed her display
picture the next day, a photograph of a male military personnel (recognisable by the
uniform), the back of his head facing the camera, being kissed on the cheek by a young
woman, possibly a lover (figure 4.7).

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Figure 4.7 Public display picture of Shweta (22) on her WhatsApp profile (©Google stock images)

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A simple reverse search on Google revealed that the image was a stock photograph. When
I met Shweta again, I asked her, “I see the display picture that you have uploaded. Is that
you in the picture?”, to which she said, half-giggling and visibly blushing, “No! It is not
me; it is just a photograph of someone else”. I went on, “I see. I mistook it for you as you
are getting married in a few days to a man in the uniform”, to which she shyly responded,
“No, it is nothing like that, I just put it up because I liked the photograph. I like Fauji
films (soldier-films)”. After an hour of talking about her wedding preparations, she
shared that her to-be husband looked “a bit like the man in that picture” who she thought
resembled Hindi film actor Akshay Kumar. Our conversation suddenly changed from a
clear verbal exchange to smiles, giggles and incomplete sentences. Shweta’s display
picture was an expression of affection for her to-be husband, as well as an instant
association of him to her favoured film star. Some of my other young participants
between the ages of 19 and 25 had put up similar display images comprising film actors
and actresses, often locked in embrace, with a romantic quote in Hindi ‘superimposed’
on the picture. This phenomenon had riskier consequences for my participants than for
women living in urban areas where interaction with film personalities is just a tweet
away.85

During my stay in Narwal, I did not observe any apparent display of affection or conjugal
love publicly. It was considered audacious. Social media apps such as WhatsApp
messenger were exceptions because, evidently, it was acceptable to these young women
to display such images publicly. These film-images with superimposed text served as
images reflecting their thoughts, or as forms of expression. These images were used as
their profile pictures that were publicly visible and my participants retained the plausible
excuse that they were sharing something which was ‘just off the internet’ and nothing
more.86 The users were aware that everybody who had their phone number would be able
to view that photograph and that they could and would be associated with their displayed
profile pictures. I have illustrated these thought-images and their significance in chapter

85 I discuss the significance of such film-related connections in section 6.3.4., which establishes that women in Narwal
negotiate with the everyday norms that govern them by engaging in creative cultural production driven by Hindi films.
86 Refer to chapter six and chapter four for examples of such thought-images and my participants’ use of them for
associating with Hindi films

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six, section three, where I discuss what this kind of association with films means for my
participants.

These profile photos were also sometimes arbitrary pictures like flowers, soft toys,
landscapes, and of other girls such as my participants’ cousins or sisters who lived in
cities. A large number of my young participants (19-25) also routinely uploaded
photographs of Hindi film actresses as their profile pictures on social media platforms.
The most popular actresses for this purpose were Alia Bhatt, Sonakshi Sinha, and
Parineeti Chopra, who were seen wearing fashionable western yet ‘un-revealing’ clothing
with girl-next-door personas. Use of such imagery could be understood as attempts to de-
personalise their publicly visible profile so as not to attract attention. At the same time, I
understood the thought-images to be highly personal in nature due to the use of
poetry/lyrics reflecting a thought which the user chose to share publicly (see figures 4.7
and also 6.4).

As I mentioned above, using someone else’s photograph sometimes went beyond a filmic
association. I noticed that some of my participants between the ages of 26 and 40 had put
up pictures of male family members on their WhatsApp profiles. They had a variety of
reasons for this. Two of them shared that owing to the unsafe environment in the
community for women, it seemed wise to put up these pictures so as to ward off men with
‘malicious intent’ (original usage: kharab niyat). One of them said that since she used
WhatsApp from her brother’s account, it was his photograph that was uploaded there and
not hers. Men, on the other hand, mostly uploaded their own photographs, mostly selfies,
on their WhatsApp public profiles. They enjoyed being ‘seen’ by other men and women.
Although not talked about, it was fairly conspicuous that the women were able to ‘see’
men in the way men want to be seen, but the same did not hold true the other way around
due to safety concerns and social constraints.

This section discussed the usage of film-related images in Narwal as I observed. The first
was the use of photographs and posters in beauty parlours. The second was the influence
of photographs of film personalities on studio portrait photography in this rural setting.
The third use related to imprints of images of actresses and actors of mainstream Hindi
cinema on objects used and purchased by my participants in their day-to-day lives. The
fourth point was concerned with the film-images that my participants used to expressed
themselves and their thoughts publicly online. These images uploaded on their social
media profiles can be understood as belonging to these three categories: (i) personalised:

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film-images expressing their thoughts, feelings and representations of the self, (ii) de-
personalised: film and non-film-images images detached from the self, and (iii) of the
actual self: their real photographs.

In some ways, I understood the use and purpose of this visual culture as ‘domestication
of glamour’, a borrowed term from Wilkinson-Weber’s study (2005) on how costumes
in Hindi films have inspired clothing trends in India for many years. She examined how
female consumers, largely urban, have managed their relation to film costume through
negotiations with their tailor as to how their favourite film outfits can be modified
(Wilkinson‐Weber, 2005:135). In doing so, she alluded to ‘domestication of glamour’
that I understood as the process by which Bollywood’s cultural influences were
transmitted into the Indian consumer market, and eventually into the homes of Indian
households. As such, I borrow the term to explain how and why my participants made
those choices. Not having enough money to spare for a lavish urban lifestyle did not mean
that there was no desire to associate with images that made them different in the eyes of
others, especially with their use of film. Susan Wadley had also noted in her work on
women in rural north India that the rural residents of western Uttar Pradesh borrowed and
adapted lifestyles and fashion from the global supermarket and had indeed fashioned
these as their own as they defined appropriate dress for teenage girls there (Wadley,
2008:170). She also mentioned women’s magazines such as Femina as one of the
inspirations for fashion there in the 1970s (2008:166), which published substantial film-
inspired fashion content and featured Hindi film actresses. Hindi film embodied certain
values for people in Narwal (as discussed in the next chapter too), and if images
pertaining to films served as valuable for them to advance their social aims (studio
owner), economic aims (Sunita, Durga Devi), or to fulfil their desires in their imaginative
spaces (Shweta, Seema), they constitute, this visual culture further fuelled their film
consumption, and vice versa. All of these women who were using different film images,
differently and deliberately, were trying to achieve a single goal, which was to bring the
Hindi film as close to their real or imaginative life as possible (domestication of glamour).
Additionally, if we look at the ages of these women who used images to advance their
own aims in real or imaginative spaces – Durga Devi (69), Sunita (42), Shweta (22),
Seema (20), and so on – we see that and their ages were only able to influence the ways
in which their used the film, but not the desire and the will to do so.

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The next section takes the discussion forward and reviews the influence of Hindi films
on changing trends in festivities and rituals in the village.

4.5 Filmi celebrations and changing traditions: “Filmon mein nahi

dekha kya?”87
Hindi cinema shares a special relationship with rituals and festivals. There are songs
composed specifically for traditional occasions, and the producers often strategically
release their films to coincide with major festivals like Holi, Eid, Diwali and Christmas,
as mentioned in the previous chapter. There are scenes, songs, and sub-plots in
mainstream Hindi films built specifically around these festivities as a marketing strategy.
Depicting celebrations of these festivals adds to the vibrancy of the spectacle in
cinematography, which appeals to a pan-India audience in turn. In such masala films,
sub-plots or scenes depicting religious festivals do not even seamlessly integrate within
its narrative in some cases. Tejaswini Ganti sums up what has been referred to since the
1970s as the masala film (2013) and says that these films refer to:

those (and not all Hindi films are regarded as such) that contain a blend of elements – music,
romance, action, comedy, and drama – designed to impart the most pleasurable viewing
experience. The masala film has become the global stereotype of Hindi cinema.

(Ganti, 2013:140)

As long as these sub-plots or scenes showing festivities add to the spectacle of the film
and are pleasurable to the viewers, they are welcome additions, and as Ganti noted about
film scenes that appear like patchwork, “to acculturated viewers, this is an expected
feature of popular Hindi cinema” (2013:139). On an occasion of a festival, wedding, or
a religious ritual, elements of popular Hindi cinema were seen as being consciously
adopted by my participants as an integral part of the celebration. In some cases, I
witnessed entirely new rituals being performed or celebrated by my participants, that
never existed before in the village, and they alluded this phenomenon to the popularity
of Hindi films in some ways, as I exemplify in the following paragraphs. There were

87 Translation: Have you not seen it in films?

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specific examples that some of my older participants over the age of 60 shared about this
phenomenon. I thought it would be best to ask them about the changes that the traditions
have undergone over time. They cited a few rituals that are different now from how they
were celebrated when these participants were middle-aged or younger. The integration
of traditional festivities with the recent rituals took place over an appreciable duration
and can be understood through oral accounts of the people in the village.

When examining the relationship between films and everyday culture in the village, I
must point out that the religious festivities as depicted in Bollywood (or masala) films
are not necessarily authentic regional representations of those rituals. A festival
comprises rituals based on traditional norms of the region, religion, and communal
factors. In Bollywood films, these festivals and traditions are often placed like patchwork
within the film’s narrative, depicting customs that are not identifiable in entirety by any
single region of India, i.e., those festivals are not celebrated with precise rituals and
customs of any one region. Filmmakers in the Hindi film industry have, time and again,
picked up various rites and rituals from all over the country, added their own
imaginations, and have produced and popularised blends to produce pleasurable viewing
experience. Depictions of such festivals in Hindi films resonated with many of my
participants. The reasons for them enjoying those representations ranged from common
roots of the festival and common worshipped deities, to a few common rituals. Such
representations possessed ‘a little something for everyone’, and my participants enjoyed
those irrespective of their own traditional celebrations of the same festival. Owing to
popular representations of certain festivals in films, my participants shared instances
where they adopted parts of such cinematographic festivities to real life celebrations,
thereby adding elements to their traditional celebration which probably came from
another region or from the filmmakers’ imagination. Thus, Hindi films acted as a
repository of rituals and customs for a festival across the country as well as
internationally. In some cases, previously non-existent festivals in the region were added
to the local culture, and in some others, the existing festivities were modified. I observed
how Hindi films played a role in this and I illustrate this point below with the examples
of two festivals: Karwa Chauth and Ganesh Chaturthi.

Karwa Chauth, a north Indian Hindu festival in which women fast without food and water
for a day to pray for their husband’s longevity, is ritualistically differently in the state of
Uttar Pradesh from its depiction in Bollywood films such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le

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Jayenge (1995), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (2001),
Ishq Vishq (2003), Baghban (2003), and Baabul (2006). Vineeta (29), a homemaker, told
me about how Karwa Chauth was celebrated in her mother’s time:

When we were young, we never saw our mothers, aunts or grandmothers follow Karwa Chauth
in the way it is shown in films. Fasting on Karwa Chauth used to be straightforward [seedha].
These new traditions that are shown in films are nothing like what they followed, but some of
ladies around me are doing all of that…including the chhani (sieve) ritual. These all are part of
the ‘blinding spectacle of the films’ (original usage: filmon ki chaka chaundh hai).

My older participants (above 60) echoed the above sentiment. They believed that the
filmic representations of traditions, ceremonies and rituals solely existed to contribute to
the exaggerated spectacle of the films, but these women also added that they enjoyed it,
nonetheless.

During my stay there, I also witnessed five-day-long festivities on the occasion of Ganesh
Mahotsav (literally, the Ganesh mega-fest) or as it is known more popularly, Ganesh
Chaturthi. This is a festival that celebrates the birth of the Hindu god, Lord Ganesh. The
festival traditionally is declared closed on its tenth day when an idol of the Lord is carried
by devotees in a public procession with music and group chanting. This clay idol is
subsequently immersed in a body of water such as a river or ocean, which thereafter
dissolves it. This festival used to be predominantly celebrated in Maharashtra, Madhya
Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Telangana, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, and on a small scale in
Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. I have been a frequent visitor to Kanpur and its
surrounding areas since childhood but had never witnessed Ganesh Chaturthi being
celebrated in this region on a large scale, until my stay in Narwal for field work. The
chants of “Ganpati Bappa Morya” echoed throughout the five days it was celebrated.
This phrase was in the Marathi language (spoken in Maharashtra) and was part of the
traditional chant of Ganesh Chaturthi.88 The rise of the Ganesh festival and chants of
Ganesh Chaturthi only have partly to do with films – their popularity is much more
complicated. The Ganesh festival’s popularity in Mumbai and other parts of the country
has been closely linked to right-wing, Hindutva politics, notably the Shiv Sena, and
currently, the BJP (see Chatterjee and Kamat, 2016). Raminder Kaur, in her book on

88 The whole chant is Ganpati Bappa Morya, Purchya Varshi Laukar ya (meaning: O Lord/Father Ganesha, we eagerly
await your arrival next year).

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public uses of religion in western India, explained this rise of the festival, and argued that
this festival became not only a site for performative politics but also an arena for non-
political activities that were devotional, artistic, entertaining, and socio-economic in
nature (Kaur, 2005). As the Hindi film industry is rooted in this region (Bombay/Mumbai,
Maharashtra), the depiction of this festival in Bollywood was frequent and popular. There
have been numerous Hindi films whose plots were set in Mumbai or parts of Maharashtra,
in which the above chant was chanted by the righteous ‘heroes’ in the film, and I mention
the ones my participants referred to, in the following paragraphs. Such scenes were set in
the narrative to clearly label the ‘good’ and the ‘evil’ in the film, thereby highlighting the
path of righteousness and cueing the audiences on how to feel. Such films have depicted
the main celebratory event of Ganesh Chaturthi – the long procession and the recurring
phrase – and popularised it in the cultural memory of people like my participants, thereby
consolidating the festival’s signifiers in their minds.

Sunita, the parlour owner, shared her views on this phenomenon:

This trend (celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi and the chants) has started here since people started
celebrating it in Kanpur and nearby cities. We never had this kind of a celebration with immersion
and chants while growing up. But I know about it, and also the idol immersion. We see it in so
many films.

I inquired about the chant, which was in a language not spoken in this region, and she
responded, “It is a prayer”. I continued, “I have also heard this in films, but I still don’t
know its meaning”, to which she said, “I think it just asks the Lord to bless us”. The literal
meaning of the chant was a little different in Marathi, as I mentioned in a footnote above,
but the chant/phrase had already become a part of this recently localised festival. Curious
about Ganesh Chaturthi celebration in Narwal, I spoke to my aunt in Kanpur about it,
“Mausi (aunt), how come Ganesh Chathurthi is celebrated in this part now?” She
responded:

It is recent that people have started to celebrate it. I cannot exactly point to what started it, or
when, but I knew about it as there are so many films showing this. I largely knew from films what
Ganesh Chaturthi was, from the start of the festival to the immersion ritual and the chants, so
maybe this large-scale festivity here in this Kanpur and everywhere was just a matter of time.

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To my knowledge, the role of the Hindi film industry in popularising Ganesh Chaturthi
on such a large scale in Uttar Pradesh has not been widely discussed. The factors are, of
course, wide-ranging like right-wing politics (as mentioned), rural to urban migration,
reportage of festivals in news media, television, and the increasingly commercialised
nature of traditional festivities across the country. While the news media can only run
stories on such festive rituals once a year, Hindi film songs, trailers, dialogues, and
visuals can be accessed any time, making them more impactful on the memory of the
people. My participants made references to films such as Agneepath (1990), Agneepath
(2012), Aasoo Bane Angaarey (1993), and Don: The Chase Begins (2006), to talk about
their imagination of Ganesh Chaturthi as a festival. Given the multitude of factors that
may have contributed to the popularity of this festival in this particular village, and among
my participants, I cannot say with certainty whether Hindi films were the reason for this
scale of celebration of this festival here. However, I can confirm that my participants or
other people in the village frequently referred to Hindi films whenever they spoke to me
about the way in which they have seen the festival being celebrated earlier, which was in
films. I argue here that the role of Hindi films in the lives of my participants was that of
a node through which state politics and cultural ideologies could be permanently
assimilated into the local traditions of Narwal.

It was not only large-scale religious festivals whose representation in Hindi films
influenced the culture in Narwal, but also the relatively small-scale celebrations such as
weddings. The relationship between mainstream Hindi cinema and the wedding industry
in India has been discussed by Jyotsna Kapur in her article ‘India’s Neoliberal Turn and
the Bollywood Wedding Culture Industry’, and she argued:

The Bollywood wedding industry, however, packages this yearning for noncommodified forms
of affective relations, the celebration of life markers with family and friends—selling it, instead,
as a means to tame the profound upheavals that have accompanied the shift to neoliberalism…

(2009:231)

Commenting on the capitalistic nature of Bollywood, Kapur said, “While Bollywood sets
fashions, trends, and devises rituals it is also in the business of direct spin-offs [of
weddings shown in films]” (2009:225). Large-scale commodified weddings were
unthinkable for my participants and their families, but the spectacle and the resuscitation

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of family values in the face of aggressive globalisation, was both pleasurable and
reassuring. The father of one of my participants (63) shared that wedding celebrations in
Narwal over the past few years include pre-wedding rituals that were either not
traditionally part of the wedding culture in the region, or were celebrated differently, like
the pre-wedding event of Sangeet (musical night) with both the groom’s and the bride’s
side present. I had found this to be true in my own experience, which was in agreement
with Madhupa Bakshi and Soumya Sarkar’s observation about consumption and
popularity of Hindi films’ music India that “Other than acting as pop music for the
masses, these songs also have permeated into marriage celebrations, religio-cultural
gatherings, community pujas…” (2015:142).

Some of my younger participants in their early twenties expressed their desires to

integrate elements of a Bollywood-style wedding in their own wedding arrangements.
Films not only evoked wishful thinking about weddings in my participants, but also
popularised wedding rituals prevalent in another part of the country. Shweta (22), who I
mentioned as using a film actor’s display picture on WhatsApp, wished to wear Kaleerein
(elaborate wrist jewellery) at her wedding. This ritual is similar to the tossing of the bridal
bouquet at a Christian wedding. This was essentially a ritual in Punjabi weddings (North
India) that became popularised by Hindi films. Its visual appeal was enhanced by the
accompanying songs and dances, with beautiful actors donning bejewelled attires while
publicly displaying their affection for each other in the presence of elders and family
members.

The above examples suggest that celebrations, rituals, and traditional festive fashion that
are originally North Indian have been picked up and carried by Hindi films across the
nation. National and regional politics have also capitalised on Hindi films’ popularity to
exert their influence on people such as my participants.

Conclusion
The absence of a cinema theatre in Narwal seemed disappointing at first, but I was
privileged to be able to observe and document the film culture in this setting as indicated
by everyday images, objects, social media, television, popular culture, and changing
rituals. The ways in which Hindi films shape the experience of my participants’ everyday
lives are becoming “less reliant on a film’s narrative text, or even the event and

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experience of its screening in cinema halls or on television screens” (Hoek, 2016:82), and
more dependent on filmic images, music, fragments of the feature, influence of film stars,
film-inspired fashion, and celebrity gossip. This nature of film consumption of my
participants classifies them as an involved and invested audience group of Hindi cinema.

Watching full-length features was the most socially privileged form of film consumption
for my participants, which was still less common than using YouTube on
borrowed/owned smartphones, getting a film-inspired clothing, watching television, and
daring to use profile pictures with bold filmic associations. Watching a whole film was
the ultimate form of film engagement which was the least accessible to my participants.
It is hard to say whether regular and unrestricted film viewing would diminish the
importance of some extratextual film forms or enhance them in a rural setting, but at the
moment, these forms certainly are embedded in the sensorium of my participants,
allowing for Hindi film’s persistence in this rural setting.

Each film form distinguished itself from the other in terms of use by my participants of
various age groups and classes. To put it differently, the relationship of a young woman
with Hindi film music will not fulfil the same desire in her as her use of a certain film
actress’ image as her publicly displayed profile picture. Using the ethnographic data, I
wanted to draw insights based on age, class and the use of preferred film form(s),
however, it was difficult to get adequately representative samples for each of the
categories due to the complex, and sometimes ambiguous, nature of the data.

Having established a prominent film culture here, I wish to present my analysis of the
various ways in which my participants imagine and articulate their relationship with
films. Discussions with my participants about their film-related experiences evoked a
sense of unfulfillment that the films seemed to somehow fulfil in an imaginative, or
sometimes real, space — such as new travel destinations, fashion and lifestyle trends,
ideating romance, dreaminess, festivities, urbanisation, and freedom. This is what I
explore in the next chapter.

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 5
Outside the Quotidian:
Films as everything the everyday is not

5.1 Introduction
As Janice Radway explained in Reading the Romance (1984), the mere act of buying a
book does not necessarily indicate a relationship between the book and its reader; to draw
any conclusions one needs an understanding of other social, economic and institutional
concerns. Similarly, we cannot understand mere film consumption in Narwal to mean
that films played a significant part in the lives of the women there. It only served as a
starting point for further exploration. In this chapter, I aim to explain the currency that
Hindi films held in the everyday lives of these women. In her book more than three
decades ago on rural film consumption in rural north India, Beatrix Pfleiderer argued:

In the popular Hindi film, village life is depicted as the world ‘outside’ or the world where ‘our
roots lie’. But this is an urban reflection. It does not reproduce the villagers’ needs, neither
emotional nor aesthetic. For them, the medium of film represents the ‘outside’ world, which has
no relationship to their own social and psychic world.

(Pfleiderer, 1985:59)

The popular Hindi film industry has changed in many ways since then, and so has village
life. However, I partly agree with her assessment as my participants’ Hindi film
consumption does feed into an imaginative space beyond their everyday lives. I also
found that the Hindi film loomed larger in my participants’ imagination than television,

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which they spent more hours watching. As opposed to television, which was mostly
watched within the domestic space, film consumption also took place in the wider world
of the village outside the confines of the household and fed into an imaginative space
beyond the quotidian. In order to explore the demarcations of the ‘everyday’ and the
‘other’ for these women, I also examined my participants’ interpretations of the word
filmi and the connotations this word had for them.89 I discovered that, in their view, filmi
largely referred to activities that would, or rather should, not happen within the village.
Hence, it is tempting to agree with Pfleiderer’s view. The point of disagreement is her
comment that the medium of film has no relationship to the village people’s social and
psychic world (Pfleiderer, 1985:59), and this is what this chapter focuses on. I argue that
they have a complex relationship with Hindi films, and I discuss this in detail in this
chapter.

Popular Hindi cinema not only has the power to reach and influence people in the most
remote corners of the country, but it also disseminates the ideology that it embodies. I
wanted to understand what makes Hindi films special for my participants. My initial line
of inquiry was this: Are Hindi films broadening the limits of my participants’
understanding of the world in some ways? Are films being consumed because taboos
make engaging narratives? Are my participants in some ways attracted by the excessive
commercialisation that the Hindi film industry promotes? Seeking answers to these
questions required me to understand Hindi film consumption as well as other media in
the village which support or compete with my participants’ film-use.

Films were consumed by women in Narwal in different ways, as I described in the

previous chapter. Television was one of them. However, their engagement with Hindi
films was way beyond watching a feature film on television, which itself was a rare event.
Despite television content being heavily influenced by Hindi films, my participants felt
that the content on television lacked the refreshing quality that films typified.90 What I
gathered from my interactions was that that the television in India merely follows the
Hindi film industry and the resultant content feels residual and uninspired to them.
Fortunately, the textually disintegrated (Allen, 2011) or the extratextual consumption of
films offered my participants opportunities to experience Hindi cinema in favourable

89 Filmi is an informal term that is often bandied about, but strictly means film-related, different from ‘filmic’ in its
usage.
90 As I illustrate in the next section

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ways. Without using ethnographic methods, I would not have been able to distinguish
between their notions of the ‘everyday’ and the ‘other’, and how these were influenced
by their film consumption. This was in line with Christopher Pinney’s observation that
“[t]he ethnography of consumption ceases thus to be an ‘event’—focused on particular
individuals’ reception of a specific film—but becomes rather an ongoing project ‘living
inside’ the discourses which are perpetually maintained alongside filmic text” (2001: 23).

The chapter begins with a description of how Hindi film consumption is understood in
the context the moral universe of the village. I then move on to explain how films capture
the imagination of the women living in Narwal (as compared to television consumption)
with their visuals, star attractions, aspirational values, fashion, and ideas of romance and
faraway lands. Although I have illustrated some of these in the previous chapters in
different contexts, I briefly outline them again here to explain the ways in which they
expressed their engagement with Hindi films. I then move on to analyse the different
connotations of the word filmi, all of which point to something that is outside the purview
of the women’s routine struggles. The section establishes the word filmi as a shorthand
to express a body of ideas for my participants in the village.

5.2 Transgression and compliance in the moral universe of the

village
Hindi cinema has – to a large extent – displaced folk culture as the main form of rural
entertainment. It managed to do that not only through its content but also through its
images, ideologies, and commercial and aspirational values that have seduced the urban
and the rural audiences alike. I noticed that adherence to a traditional value system to
keep the existing social code intact was the rationale behind everyday decision-making
for my participants, with few exceptions in certain situations. Some Hindi films,
according to them, portrayed freedom for women as an ‘absolute’, which was seen as
irresponsible [zimmedaari bhi koi cheez hai] and morally corrupt [bhrasht]. Some of my
middle-aged participants (40-55) shared that they enjoy slight deviations from their own
social context every now and then but were constantly reminded of their limitations and
context with phrases such as “ab kya karenge yeh sab karke” [what is the use of all this
now (that we are growing older)]. Below is a quote from Fatima, a 47-year-old housewife
in Narwal:

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 Ab hum sheher mein thodi na hain, yahan mahaul alag hai. Aap yahan ke samaaj ke kanoon tod
nahi sakte... ki filmon mein jaisi naye zamane ki aazad-khayali dikhate hain, hum waise hi
chalenge...

(Meaning: We are not in the city, it’s different here. You cannot break the rules of this society...
[and think that] the way films show free thinking, we can go the same way)

The representation of freedom as conceived and represented in Hindi cinema is vague,

vast and variable, but the images and values propagated by commercial Hindi cinema
could be indicative of what Fatima was referring to. For instance, pre-marital conjugal
relationships do not conform to the moral norms of this traditional society but are
commonly represented in Hindi films as acceptable, with people like my participants
even rooting for them. I suggest that instead of understanding popular Hindi films as
‘escapist fantasies’, it would be useful to understand them as an idea of a reality that
exists outside the village boundaries.91 This idea of films as escapist fantasies suggests
they provide a psychological escape from everyday struggles into situations that are
considered as exotic or unreal. The notion of film existing outside the day-to-day life
does not place the filmic reality in an exotic psychological space but is understood as a
real scenario outside the village realm which is more accessible than a fantasy yet less
likely to happen within the everyday life of the village.

My participants’ rejection of the value system promoted by Hindi films was not always
out of disdain for it, rather it was because of the difference between their context and
urban life. For some, the pleasure of engaging with a film was more than the ease of
relating to its value system. For instance, during my stay with one of one of my hosts, we
decided to watch the movie Jab we met (2007), which was being aired on television on a
Sunday afternoon. There were three of us, the husband (53), the wife (48) and me. During
the film, the husband commented on how the female protagonist in the film was a
disgrace to her family and parents because she ran away to unite with her boyfriend (even
though she was single). I have discussion this incident in detail in section 6.3.7 and have
illustrated the powerful yet non-confrontational reaction of the wife to his comments. Jab
We Met, the film, in this case did not trigger a major change in this woman’s life, but it
did provide a reference point for her to articulate her own reality in relation to that of the

91 For discussions on criticisms of popular Hindi cinema as escapist, formulaic, or fantasies, see Thomas, 1985: 119-
120, Dwyer, 2010:383; Banaji, 2006:1; Dudrah, 2006:25.

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urban-dwelling protagonist. She neither whined about her life in the village, where she
‘found comfort’ [humko yahin aaram hai], nor did she dismiss the decision of the film’s
character as immoral/ characterless [charitraheen], unlike her husband. Through this
example I noted how my participants use films to connect with ideas that are beyond their
everyday life in an empathetic manner. This also contradicts Pfleiderer’s argument (1985)
on north Indian rural film audiences that the medium of film has no relationship to rural
audience’s own social and psychic world (Pfleiderer, 1985:59). This also contradicts her
study’s finding that film viewers in villages of north India at that time were not
empathetic to the film’s characters (1985).92

An important reminder here is that even today the village is a space that, for women, is
largely cut off from the outside world. Men have substantially greater access to the world
outside the village than the women. This scenario is changing slowly, but it is still a long
way to go.93 Women hardly travel outside Narwal, let alone go to a theatre to watch a
film. This is also a place where, due to social constraints, women are not on any social
media network apart from WhatsApp, and do not use the internet heavily, unless
accessing content which is in some way related to Hindi films. My point here is that
despite all of these constraints, the women I spoke to were not only empathetic to the
value systems of an urban and globalised life as shown in films, but also articulated it
with references to film content. Hindi films have an immense impact on my participants’
social and psychic world, and they are more than just windows to the outside world.

Issues of morality and transgression within a film can be explained when we understand
the films as having their own complex value system. In the context of popular Hindi films
in the late 1970s/ 1980s, Rosie Thomas (1985) explained that:

Order, or equilibrium, is presented as a state in which humans live in harmony with fate, respecting
social obligations and ties of friendship or family. Disruption of this order is the result of selfish
greed, fate (or human meddling in fate) and (hetero)-sexual desire.

(Thomas, 1985:126)

More than three decades on, this argument still describes the narrative of most of the
recent popular Hindi films that my participants claimed to like. This does not mean that

92 See chapter two, section three for Pfleiderer’s argument on this

93 The next chapter discusses the process of this change in detail

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the narrative within Hindi films have not gone through change since the themes of the
1970s and 1980s.94 Thomas (1985) explained that:

…the ‘ideal moral universe’ of Bombay cinema revolved around the archetypal figures of Mother
and Villain, a good-evil opposition in which good was subtly conflated with the ‘traditional’, or
that which is Indian; bad with the ‘non-traditional’ and the ‘non-Indian’…[..]…The narrative
function of the hero/ heroine was not to embody good but to mediate between these two poles.
Through such mediation certain elements of the non-traditional could become gradually
legitimated and incorporated within the ‘traditional’ modern – that is, connotations, for example,
of love marriage or women driving motorbikes could be shifted over time through careful
negotiation of the contexts within which they appeared.

(cited in Thomas, 2013:174)

Sarah Joshi built her argument on this idea of ‘moral universe’ in Hindi films (Thomas,
1985) in the case of narrative techniques in Hindi films in article ‘Transgressing the
Moral Universe’ (2014) and said:

The key to a successful film is often the management of the need of appearing familiar, similar to
what has come before, and yet new and different at the same time. There is a fine balance that
must be achieved, then, and at the centre of this construction is the presentation of values in the
film.

(Joshi, 2014:43)

Ashis Nandy pointed out in an interview:

But they (Hindi films) are not conservative. They have, even if by default, their own conception
of limits, and the films can be seen as an exploration of these limits – limits of modernity, of
tradition, of mothering, limits of evil and tolerance.

(Nandy, 1995:11)

The notion of an ideal moral universe in films is a filmmaker’s belief, rather than a
universal one. As Thomas clarifies:

94 See Thomas (1985) for the themes popular in the Hindi films of ‘70s/ ‘80s, the themes being, “(1)‘lost and found’
(parents and children are separated and reunited years later following revelation of mistaken identities); (2) ‘dostana’
(two male friends fall in love with the same woman and the one who discovers this sacrifices his love – and often life
– for the male friendship or dostana); and (3) revenge (villains get their deserts at the hands of the heroes they
wronged)” (1985:125)

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 It is important to stress that the ideal moral universe is not necessarily believed by anyone: it is a
construct of the filmmakers, with the connivance of their audience, and is as much a product of
the history of Indian cinema and the genre conventions it has evolved as of other discourses on
Indian society.

(Thomas, 1995:164)

The act of transgression in a Hindi film narrative can be understood as a temporary

divergence that eventually converged into the narrative resolution preserving the overall
moral focus of the film. For my participants too, it all came down to what the narrative
of the film focused on. For instance, a marriage between the protagonists trumps pre-
marital romantic relationships, parental love trumps marrying for love, and empathising
with the suffering of a couple trumps parental love. This, as I understand, is the hierarchy
of moral and social values that my participants expected to be preserved. I observed that
the pattern of thought and behaviour of my participants was in agreement with the above
argument. The element of familiarity was crucial in order for them to engage with a
film.95 It was important for my participants to know in advance that whatever they were
going to watch, listen to, or engage with, was going to preserve the overall moral
hierarchy as I described above. Plotlines, film stars, and film song clips gave them a fair
idea of whether or not they might like a certain film.

It was not only the outside world that was made accessible to my participants through
Hindi films. Film was also a medium that provided opportunities for self-expression and
for the positioning of the self in everyday life. To put it differently, these women’s
imagination of the ‘self’ in everyday life was inflected by Hindi films.96 It was through
their consumption (of film) or communication (about it) that they tested the permissible
and pushed its limits. I will elaborate this through another example. References to Hindi
films, their scenes, songs, and dialogues, were often used to communicate the coding of
moral-versus-immoral. For example, a married couple is seen as a single entity bound
together in a sacred bond. This belief system has been reiterated by Hindi films time and
again. In discussions relating to films promoting family values, Baghban (2003) was
referred to by almost every participant. In the film, Alok (played by Salman Khan) as the
ideal son was complemented by his wife Arpita (played by Mahima Chaudhry) who had

95 See section 5.4

96 See section 6.3.4 for a few examples of how this took place

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a framed photograph of Alok’s parents in a small Mandir (temple) at home and prayed
to them every day. The perception of the ideal son and daughter-in-law was incomplete
without their unquestioning devotion towards the parents. Hindi cinema did not offer only
a singular meaning but acted as a point of reference for contradictions and negotiations
as well, and I noted this when Rajni (27) shared her views on the filmic representation of
the social code versus the lived realities of women like herself. She said:

Now if the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law are not getting along, what can one do? There
are very few films in which the in-laws seem happy with their daughter-in-law, like Salman
Khan’s wife in Baghban. If the mother-in-law is upset all the time with us, how will their
daughters-in-law feel happy with their life?

Rajni’s comment above gave me a good idea of how she understood and expressed this
aspect of her life. This is one example that shows how my participants used film to
comment on their everyday reality. There were other aspects of everyday life that found
expression through reference to films. Whether it was the desire to own fashionable
clothing, an unfulfilled love for travel, a longing for a fairy-tale wedding, or an aspiration
to become independent, all of these found expression or an outlet through conversations
involving Hindi films. Further, even resistance to these ideas was articulated using film
references in some cases. To illustrate this in detail, I will explain the desires, aspirations
and relationships that exist between my participants and Hindi film products in the
following paragraphs. Before that, I briefly examine television consumption and why
Hindi films have a stronger hold on my participants’ imaginative space.

5.3 Uninspiring television: The mundane versus the special

A television set was invariably assigned the most privileged position in a household in
Narwal. It usually was placed in the living/ drawing room with artificial flowers or small
showpieces around it. It was immediately visible upon entering the house. In houses
which only had one room or no separate living room, it was still placed in a location
where it did not have to compete for attention with furniture or other items of home décor.
The significance of a television set in a village household was more than the content that
it offered, as I explained in chapters three and four. Despite still being a status symbol, it
is increasingly in competition with leaner gadgets like laptops that offer a larger window

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to the outside world. However, despite the growing popularity of laptops, television was
still the most accessible and conventional form of audio-visual entertainment. Due to the
interweaving between films and television soap operas, the television was able to offer a
wide variety of entertainment options. Although the viewership of soap operas was
evidently far higher than viewership of complete feature films amongst women in the
village, the connection my participants had with Hindi cinema appeared to be deeper and
stronger. I will demonstrate this using an example from my field visit.

I held two screenings of two different Hindi films in Narwal.97 During and after the film
screening of Pink (2016), I noticed that my participants did not once mention actor
Amitabh Bachchan’s character in the film by its name. In the other screening of Prem
Ratan Dhan Payo (2015), the women referred to actor Salman Khan’s character as
Salman, rather than the character’s name in the film. Contrary to this, I noted that the
characters in television series were never called by actors’ real-life names in everyday
conversations. The popularity of Hindi films was reflected in this recognition accorded
to actors, as well as certain filmmakers, whereas in the case of television the recall value
of the actors was negligible, as the storyline, characterisation and other devices seemed
the priority for my participants. For instance, in a conversation about the film Jodhaa
Akbar (2008), my participants referred to the protagonists with their real-life names –
‘Hrithik’ (Roshan) and ‘Aishwarya’ (Rai Bachchan) – whereas in the television series by
the same name (Jodha Akbar, 2013-2015), the protagonists were referred to as ‘Jodha’
and ‘Akbar’. Therefore, film stars not only lent their style and acting skills to a film but
also induced a desire to forge relationships between my participants and themselves,
unlike the star personas of actors on television.

I would extend the above point to say that television serials were perceived to be
‘mundane’ (wahi roz ka) by my participants as compared to Hindi films, perhaps due to
their film-inspired content or the treatment of it. As Nandini (43) remarked:

In the television soap operas, everything they show is the same-old thing, same fights between
mothers-in-laws and daughters-in-law. See where the world of films has reached [kahan se kahan
pahuch gayi hai]. These days they show everything from the world [duniya bhar ki cheezein
dikhate hain]. In this [TV soap operas], even the songs are from films.

97 I have mentioned the details in chapters one and four

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Television channels in north India such as Star Plus and Zee TV air dramas that are
heavily dependent on film songs and content. These channels identify the ‘formulae’ that
work in mainstream Hindi cinema so that they can instantly be adopted by television
producers. Some productions exploit the popularity of existing films in ways that include
titling dramas based on titles of famous Hindi film songs, or naming series after filmic
characters or films themselves.98 Conversations with my participants showed that they
were aware of the film songs or film plots from which the television dramas borrowed.
The examples that I cite in the footnote (no. 95) were from my interactions with Narwal
women, and it was evident that they felt a deeper connection with film songs, themes,
and stars, in comparison to the same elements in a television soap opera. In Narwal,
television content is invariably consumed within a domestic space on a particular device,
whereas film content is not necessarily consumed within the confines of the household
or on the same device, and this affected the relationship of my participants with films and
television. My participants seem to understand television consumption as a quotidian
task, while film consumption outside of TV dramas is a slightly forbidden pleasure.

Accounts of the Hindi film industry have for many years linked its development to the
socio-economic development of India.99 The popularity and pleasures of Hindi films have
been analysed by scholars across the globe and continue to spark academic and popular
interest in Indian film studies (see Thomas, 1985; Vasudevan, 1989; Dwyer and Pinney,
2002; Rajadhyaksha, 2003; Dudrah, 2012). The current crop of television dramas has not
been able to sustain its relationship with the viewers in the same way as films. This,
however, does not mean that these dramas are not hugely popular, as demonstrated by
scholars such as Mitra (1993); Mankekar (1999); and Mehta (2008). It simply means that
television dramas, although watched routinely and keenly, did not evoke the same sense
of nostalgia for the past or hope for the future for my participants.

98 Star Plus aired Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai (2009-present), Chand Chupa Badal Mein (2010-2011), Iss Pyaar ko
Kya Naam Doon? (2011-present), Ek Hazaaron Mein Meri Behna Hai (2011–2013), Mere Angne Mein (2015-2017),
Ruk Jaana Nahin (2011-2012), Sasural Genda Phool (2010-2012), and many more, all of which also happen to be
famous Hindi film song titles. Zee TV’s Jodha Akbar (2013-2015) is a historical fiction drama that aired a few years
after the success of director Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar (2008), and evidently borrowed its title to capitalise
on the film’s popularity.
99 See (Dwyer, 2010)

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5.4 Relationship with the world of popular Hindi films
My participants approached films with a complex set of anticipations learned through
their long-standing association with films. Knowing the type of a film [kis tarah ki film]
was important for them before engaging with it for various reasons, such as figuring out
whether or not the other family members would appreciate it or not. The English words
‘type’ and ‘family’ were used commonly by several participants. Perception of a film as
belonging to a particular type, such as ‘love films’ [prem kahani] and ‘family dramas’
[family type ki film] was sometimes more important than the film’s actual narrative itself.
Lata (48) lived with her husband, in-laws, and two adult sons (26 and 23), and according
to her, “films disrupted family life in villages [parivaar ki mahatta nahi…gaon mein]”.
Exceptions to this strong notion were films that promoted a traditional family setup, such
as Baghban (2003). According to my participants, the underlying criterion for a likeable
family-film was that responsibilities towards parents and family must be shown to be
given prime importance. This view was common among my participants, irrespective of
their age groups. Family dramas were immensely popular. Due to a tightly-knit social
fabric, the ideals of contemporary mainstream Hindi cinema were deemed as a threat to
the joint-family setup as they promoted an individualistic lifestyle, according to five of
my participants (aged 34, 39, 39, and 55).100 Films with love stories at the core of their
diegeses were liked by the women under the age of 50, but the realities of their own
everyday experiences made them feel that the romance-dramas could only be a distant
dream. For Jyoti (21), she could not relate to most of the contemporary romance-drama
films, but they did fuel her desire to consume similar stories. She said, “Didi, I like love-
films [pyaar wali filmein] but where is the environment for that here? But I really like
watching it in films”. Dramas on family and romance also had the highest recall value
among women of all age groups in Narwal. However, it was not just the contemporary
films that dominated my discussions with my participants, and although my study is
focused on mainstream Hindi films after 2000, my participants’ long-standing association
with film culture is significant to their knowledge and fondness for films.

100 The words used to allude to individualistic lifestyle were varied, but pointed to the same set of people who did not
strictly follow the traditional joint-family setting. There was swaarthi (selfish), bhautik (materialistic), and manmauji
(does whatever he/she wants)

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Hindi films were an essential part of my participants’ memories, especially for those over
the age of 55, and were recalled frequently to describe the time that these women lived
in. Some of them shared fond memories of Hindi films of the 1960s, 70s and 80s when
they were introduced to the world of Hindi cinema. Their older brothers or fathers would
go and watch films in the city and then come back home to a bunch of eager children
waiting to listen to ‘the story’ [kahani] of the film. Film songs, newspaper articles, and
melodramatic monologues that earned fame at the time were etched in the memories of
my participants; some of the middle-aged participants also recalled some of their
favourite monologues, such as Rekha’s from Umrao Jaan (1981), Salman Khan’s in
Dabangg (2010), Amitabh Bachchan’s in Baghban (2003), Shah Rukh Khan’s in Kal Ho
Na Ho (2003). While they narrated their experiences, I observed that Hindi film culture
retained its hold on their imagination in the form of dialogues, songs, and their love for
film stars of the time. Recalling her favourite memories of films, Saraswati Devi (67)
who attended college in a city in Uttar Pradesh before coming to Narwal after marriage,
said:

I used to like Dev Anand and his way of speaking.101 Not films like Bobby… In those days, films
had ideals and romantic Urdu poetry [shayari] was popular. Men used to write letters to women
sometimes using Hindi film dialogues, although it was not too common. Men thought women
would not know the dialogue-references, but we knew where those dialogues came from….
[..]...The way they used to show heroines (blushing and smiling), we girls used to feel the same
way… Despite that, no one had the courage to confess their love in front of their parents, so such
things used to fade on their own. Saadhana-cut was very popular in those days.102 Like Suraiyya,
there were several talented heroines who used to both sing and act. Those days are gone now.

Other examples included quick references to their past in their conversations using films.
As one my participants (57) shared, “Before getting married to your uncle, I had not seen
him. People used to tell them he looked like Rajesh Khanna”.103

Similar to Saraswati Devi’s comments on the Saadhana-cut hairstyle, the younger

participants (below 40) in my research pointed out that Hindi films have also been the
trendsetters in clothing and fashion for a long time.104 Clare Wilkinson-Weber pointed

101 Dev Anand was a Hindi film actor, writer, director and producer who was immensely popular in 1950s, 60s, and
early 70s
102 Saadhana-cut was a popular haircut inspired by renowned actress Saadhana’s hairstyle
103 Rajesh Khanna was a famous film actor of Hindi cinema who is known to have starred in 15 consecutive solo hit
films from 1969 to 1971, and was immensely popular as a ‘romantic hero’
104 Also see (Dwyer and Patel, 2002:96-7) on popular Hindi films’ impact on various fashion trends

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out that “affluent Indian men and women have drawn on film costume to inspire their
own clothing choices for several decades” (Wilkinson‐Weber, 2005:135), but my field
work suggested that this has started to trickle down, albeit slowly and not in the same
way, to rural areas in north India as well. Susan Wadley, in her book on women’s lives
in rural north India, remarked, “changes in clothing mark more than a change in female
status per se: they are also indicative of shifts in how clothing marks identity, and the
meaning of identity itself in rural India” (2008:154). Commenting on Karimpur’s
residents, she said that they “participate in the global arena while at the same time
marking social change relevant to their local situations on the bodies of their teenage
girls” (Wadley, 2008:153), and that “clothing is also conceptually allied with the idea of
‘fashion’” (Wadley, 2008:154). My experience in Narwal resonated with her observation
that “not only are females more aware of what is available through advertising, word of
mouth and television, but they also have greater freedom of movement” (Wadley,
2008:169) as compared to their previous generation. A young participant, Geeta (25),
believed that Hindi films are a great inspiration for exploring new hairstyles and clothes.
She said:

Shraddha Kapoor acts badly but her hair is so nice. Deepika Padukone also has a good hairstyle.
They show all of these clothes and hairstyles in TV serials as well, but that kind of fashion looks
good on older women. It is not new. Those people (in TV) also must be copying from films.

The sartorial sense prevalent in films or television series does not directly translate into
an immediate inspiration for clothing for my participants. Most of these trends shown are
neither wearable on a daily basis, nor is it economically viable for these women to follow
the trend up in real life. Although Wilkinson-Weber pointed it out in the context of urban
consumers, this held true in my experience too:

Some [consumers] asked to combine elements from several costumes in an idiosyncratic

bricolage: a kurta (shirt) with a sleeve like ‘the one that Sushmita wore in film x’, with a neckline
adapted from ‘what Ash wore in film y’. Others asked to make a copy, but ‘raise the neckline
here’, or ‘lengthen the sleeve there’ to produce a more modest outfit.

(Wilkinson‐Weber, 2005:142)

These were the kinds of negotiations my participants had to do in order to relate more to
their favourite film stars and their fashion inspirations. However, even when the ‘latest’

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film fashion trends and styles are not adopted widely or are considered to be too revealing
or too bold, they are still being updated in popular memory. In the long run, however,
these trends do inspire the everyday sartorial sensibilities for women, such as saree styles,
blouse-cuts, and draping styles, as shared by some of the female tailors in Narwal.105
Sudha (43) shared about her favourite piece of clothing:

The film Raja Hindustani came out in 1996, and I had got an outfit tailored for myself, inspired
by Karishma Kapoor’s attire in the film. Before I got married, I had fondness for wearing
fashionable clothing. People would ask me about it, complimented me. But now after marriage,
that has faded.

In her book, Fashioning Bollywood (2014), Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber raises a pertinent

question: “Why, though, does the wearing of a costume while playing a character exert
so powerful a grip on the public imagination?” (2014:163) Sudha’s comment above
reminded me of this question. The glamour quotient in films was a strong motivation for
some of my participants to aspire to a similar lifestyle despite negligible viewership.106
As she argued:

Even knowing they could not, or would not, look exactly like the stars and their characters,
viewers could carry away the hope and desire that an equivalent costume might, via a similar
mediation with the world, enrich their experience.

(Wilkinson-Weber, 2014:163)

My conversation with Poonam (50) confirmed this assessment. Poonam’s younger sisters
and daughter were always excited about the latest fashions, and “if it were up to them,
they would live the same way as film heroines”, but there was hardly any money to
support that. Poonam felt that films and television often played a negative role by painting
the parents and elders as ‘villains’ or obstacles in fulfilling their desires, especially in the
case of a love for fashion. As I mentioned in the context of the television, my participants
always recall the name of the film star by his/her real name instead of the character he/she
is playing in a film. Similarly, “all the examples of copied costumes are described as
garments worn by the actor, not by the character” (ibid.). Although in my participants’

105 I discuss, in bits, the influence of film fashion on the village sartorial sense for women in chapters three and four
106 See section 5.5.4 for more examples of the influence of Hindi films on the women’s fashion in the village

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case, any film-inspired clothing was far from a film costume in terms of accentuating
cuts, there were demands for similar embroideries, designs, colours, draping styles,
sleeves, and saree blouses.

Hindi films expand these women’s knowledge of the rest of India and the world. The
aspirational value of films for my participants extends beyond clothing and material
objects to trips to domestic and global destinations. Images from faraway places made
films even more popular since the 1960s. As Ranjani Mazumdar noted, “..by the mid
1960s, we see the emergence of a cluster of films that showcased travel to foreign cities
like Paris, London, Tokyo, and Rome” (2011:130).107 A cosmopolitan lifestyle as
promoted in Hindi films too had a far-reaching cultural consequence in rural north India.
Until the 1980s, migration from rural to urban used to be solely for the purpose of
economic improvement. For my participants, travelling to holiday destinations was
usually to places of worship or to family homes of relatives. Hindi films showed a range
of holiday destinations, both domestic and international, to a set of people who had never
left the village and could not afford to visit those places. However, the culture and
lifestyle of a different region within the country, and also outside it, was only made
accessible visually through Hindi films as they still were still not able to afford those. I
observed the ways in which images of these global cities and distant lands were discussed
by my participants. Anushka (18) loved watching videos of film songs that show sea
beaches. She said, “Cocktail showed seashores, if only I could visit a place like that…”.
The film she was referring to was released in 2012 and the location Anushka was talking
about was Cape Town in South Africa, but she did not know that. Hindi films took these
women to places they had not been to before, and probably would not visit in the near
future, if ever. Medhavi (20) shared her experience of watching awe-inspiring visuals in
the film Sanam Re (2016). She said:

107 See (Mazumdar, 2011). She notes that the most important films in shaping the perception of the ‘outdoor’ were
“Sangam (Raj Kapoor, 1964), Love in Tokyo (Pramod Chakravarty, 1966), An Evening in Paris (Shakti Samanta,
1967), and Around the World (Pachi, 1967). These were box office successes which inspired other lesser known films
remembered today only for their songs, including Night in London (Brij, 1967) and Spy in Rome (B.K. Adarsh, 1968).
This article returns to Bombay’s global travel films of the 1960s to unpack the “postcard imagination” that brought jet
age aviation, tourism, consumerism, color film stock, fashion, and music into a distinct cultural configuration”
(2011:130)

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 I am not too fond of watching all the latest films as soon they are released, and I do not even have
the time for it. But in the film Sanam Re there are some stunning locations. I want to go to a place
like that once. Are such places for real?

After my conversation with her, I researched on the filming location of Sanam Re. The
film, about a romantic triangle, was filmed in multiple locations including Mumbai,
Chandigarh, Shimla, Kalpa and Ladakh in India, and Banff, Jasper, Waterton Park and
Calgary in Canada. Most of the visuals are heavily edited in post-production and are
specially shown to have dreamy landscapes to support the plot. Locations depicting
romance and dream sequences were popular among my young participants (below 25).
For instance, the photo studio owner in Narwal recalled the film Chandni (1989) during
our conversations to explain his point about filmi poses and locations. His recollection of
the image of actress Sridevi and actor Rishi Kapoor could not be dissociated from the
pose in the film still from the location. He shared, “They made the film somewhere
abroad. The mountains there looked beautiful”. Visuals of locations, along with actors
and music, made for a long-lasting impact on the minds of my participants. They would
associate songs, actors or even the locations with their respective films, which had
symbolic associations as mentioned above. Locations could be symbols of romance,
fashion, or cosmopolitan and diasporic culture. Malti (42) wanted to visit Kashmir once
in her lifetime because of the stunning images that she had seen of the place in Hindi
films. She said:

Didi, I have seen in films, Kashmir is a lovely [pyaari] place. I have seen films showing that place
like Kashmir ki Kali (1964) and Junglee (1961). Even in films these days, sometimes you get to
see Kashmir, like in that (actor) Ranbir Kapoor’s film (referring to his film Rockstar (2011)), in
which I only saw its songs that were shot in Kashmir. The atmosphere of the place is lovely
[khushnuma], otherwise so many filmmakers would not have shown that place in their films.

The contribution of Kashmir as a location to symbolise romance in the mainstream Hindi

cinema has long been significant, as exemplified by the films mentioned by Malti.108 I
also observed in my interactions that metropolitan cities like Mumbai or Delhi have come
to be associated with crimes and chaos. For instance, as Chhavi (20) shared after the
screening of the film Pink (2016):

108 See Dwyer (2010), Mazumdar (2011:129), Ahmed (2015) and Gaur (2011:73)

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 Mumbai [Bambai] and Delhi [Dilli] would be too chaotic [bahut maara-maari]. I do not know
what is there in those cities in reality, only my elder brothers have gone there to study. But what
I see in films makes me question, what will happen if I go there alone? We just saw in this film
what can happen to a woman there.

The scepticism in her comment about the big cities in India partly came from Hindi films
like the one I showed in the screening. A dense population, different languages and
cultures, and competition for limited resources typifies these metropolitan cities, as is
also represented in films. Depiction of urban life sometimes fuelled the fear of my young
participants, who seemed afraid such dystopian situations. Images of international
locations in Hindi films also expanded the world view of my young participants (below
25). While showing photographs of my university in London, I showed Rehana (19) and
her friends a few aerial photographic shots of the South Bank in London, and Rehana
commented:

Didi, wasn’t this shown in that film Desi Boyz (a 2011 romantic comedy) too? And in Namastey
London (2007)? They show this scene (shot) in many films and now I just know that the film is
set in London when they show this.

Her comment demonstrated how global symbols of a cosmopolitan city like London were
propagated through films. Such images were icons signifying particular locations, and
through these images, my participants were able to develop their perceptions about those
locations as the films showed people speaking the same language as them in another
country. For young females like Rehana, cities like London did not seem to be a faraway
place which she cannot imagine. The curiosity about places and cultures was both fuelled
and satisfied by Hindi films in cases like these, perfectly typifying the commercial nature
of Bollywood. Cities like New York, Tokyo, and London were no longer unfamiliar
among my participants because of their extensive visual treatment in Hindi films.

It was not just the cultures of foreign lands that were brought to my participants through
films. Festivals celebrated in different regions in India were also popularised by Hindi
films, among other factors, and I illustrated this in chapter four with the examples of two
festivals, Ganesh Chaturthi and Karwa Chauth. What I could not discuss in those
chapters was that the lyrics of Hindi film songs often borrow phrases from other Indian
languages, and I noted an example where this phenomenon widened my Hindi-speaking

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participant’s curiosity about knowledge of other parts of India and their languages. Neetu
(23), while watching a film music video on a music-based TV show, said:

Didi, in the song Jiya Jale (film Dil se, 1998), what is the language in the song? I do understand
a few phrases of Marathi and Punjabi now…they are so common in films, but not this. My brother
[bhaiya] said it is the language of Kerala. Is that the case?

I nodded affirmatively. The lyrics were indeed in Malayalam, a Dravidian language

primarily spoken in the Indian state of Kerala, and one of the 22 scheduled languages of
India. Neetu’s brother had obviously found out the language of the lyrics and shared the
information with her. Thus, the curiosity around the unknown part of the song lyrics was
aroused through a film song. There are numerous other Hindi film songs that borrow
phrases or poetry from other languages for lyrics in songs that are primarily in Hindi.
These languages are not just Indian, but range from Spanish and French to Arabic and
Nepali.109 Neetu spoke of her love for such mixed-language Hindi songs to me, “Didi, it
feels like I am listening to things that I don’t know, but still understand”, and evidently
she was curious about it. Hindi films were her favourite form of entertainment, she
shared.

My interactions in the field also helped me understand ways in which they express their
imagined relationship with Hindi film stars. Studies on fandom or stardom in the Hindi
film industry (see Punathambekar, 2007; Mazumdar 2012; Singh, 2017) have highlighted
the fact that the figure of the star has acquired a new force in recent years. In an earlier
decade, Christopher Pinney’s 1997 account of photo studios in the 1990s painted a picture
of the intimate association that the audience wished to forge through posed photographs,
as discussed in chapter four (section 4.4.2). In the context of my study, I wish to distance
myself from scholarly descriptions of fandom as a collective strategy, a communal effort
to form interpretive communities that evade the preferred and intended meanings as
represented by popular media (Gray et al, 2007). The relationship between my

109 A few examples are: ‘Senorita’ from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) that borrowed phrases from Spanish, ‘Nashe
Si Chadh Gayi’ from Befikre (2016) that borrowed part of its lyrics from French, ‘Bore Bore Boro Boro’ from
Bluffmaster (2005) that had part of the lyrics in Arabic, ‘Musu Musu Hasi’ from Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi (1999) and
Kasto Mazza from Parineeta (2005) which borrowed part of their lyrics from Nepali. Among other Hindi songs that
used phrases and poetry from other Indian languages are: Chammak Challo from Ra One (2011) that used Tamil
phrases, and Monta Re from Lootera (2013) that had Bangla bits.

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participants and film stars did not have the required communal effort to be considered a
study of fandom as described above. Having said that, it was fairly common for my
participants to engage with a Hindi film because of its star cast value, as I showed in the
comparison between television and Hindi films as well as through other examples in
chapters three and four. In Narwal, images of Hindi film stars were popular as imprints
on everyday objects.110 The widespread use and presence of these images hinted at a
possible association between the people living here and their favourite actors/ actresses,
as I have discussed in earlier chapters. Conversations with my participants revealed that
a film star was most often the first point of attraction for anyone willing to engage with
a Hindi film. If we understand the Hindi film as a “moral fable that involves its audience
largely through the puzzle of resolving some (apparently irresolvable) disorder in the
ideal moral universe” (Thomas, 1995:163), then its ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine’ are almost
always at the helm of affairs, ensuring that the desires and emotions of the audiences are
represented on screen. The relationship between film actors/actresses and my participants
was a personal one; it did not translate into a communal effort or an engagement with the
stars off-screen. However, it was powerful enough for women to engage with film culture
in a setting where it was frowned upon for them to do so. Among the female staff (18-
55) in the schools that I visited, I observed young females made fun of each other about
film actors, and sometimes even making a teasing remark about their middle-aged
colleagues’ fondness of a particular film star. Jaya (22) was among the eight women I
interacted with at a secondary school in Narwal. The women in this school (ages 20-52)
obliged me and stayed back after work hours to sit with me to have tea and samosas. For
the first ten minutes, it was only the younger women who were talking. When I asked
their colleague, 50, to join in and participate, she blushed and said, “Arrey I am old now,
what will I know about these things”, at which Jaya loudly remarked, “Ma’am only likes
Salman Khan. So, if you talk about him, only then she will answer”, and all of them burst
out laughing. Contemporary actors who were popular among my participants included
Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Shahid Kapoor, and
Varun Dhawan, and the actresses included Deepika Padukone, Karishma Kapoor,
Kareena Kapoor, Kajol, Alia Bhatt and Shraddha Kapoor. The reasons for their
popularity apart from acting skills ranged from their appearance, voice, and fashion
choices on and off screen, to their image as stereotyped by their filmic personas. For

110 See chapter four

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instance, Ajay Devgn’s name came up a few times in my conversations with women
between the ages of 35-50. Nandini (43) opened up about her fondness for the actor and
said, “Uski ankhein achhi hain (His eyes are nice)”. On being probed, she shared, “I mean
I like his films. He always saves everyone in his films. Just by looking at his eyes, you
know that he will do something, and not just sing and dance”. The persona of actor Ajay
Devgn for my participants was that of an intense, brooding man who was responsible for
saving not just his family and friends but also the society. Similar to this perception was
the popularity of film star Akshay Kumar. As Swati (20) shared, “Akshay Kumar can do
everything. I like his patriotic [desh-bhakti] movies. He looks good too”. Amitabh
Bachchan was a name that came up in almost every conversation about film stars. Actor
Salman Khan was another favourite among my participants.111 Younger actors Shahid
Kapoor (38) and Varun Dhawan (32) were talked about for their dance moves and their
image of being a ‘romantic hero’. In terms of actresses, women still considered actress
Madhuri Dixit to be the one of the best in the Hindi film industry for her looks, dance
moves, and acting skills, apart from her smile and clothing. As Sarita (40) shared, with
nods of agreement from the two other women (45 and 50) present there, “There is no
match [jod] to Madhuri Dixit. She looks so beautiful in a saree. She acted so well. Even
after so many years, there is no one like her”. Younger actresses Deepika Padukone (33),
Alia Bhatt (26) and Shraddha Kapoor (32) were seen as fashion icons who inspired
fashion trends among my younger participants and were adored for their screen presence.
Karisma Kapoor (45), Kareena Kapoor-Khan (38) and Katrina Kaif (36) were actresses
whose photographs were the most common ones on the bridal posters in beauty parlours
in the village, but were considered to be actresses “whose world is very different from
ours” [Inki toh duniya hi alag hai, aur rehen sehen ka dhang bhi]. Due to the short
duration of my field work, I was not able to deepen my understanding of the nature of
such relationships with stars that existed beyond mere liking of a particular film-star.
Stardom as a cultural phenomenon in rural Indian settings requires further study. Film
stars ranged from being the object of attraction to an embodiment of the fulfilment of
moral expectations.

The role of a film in embodying a value system is central to my study and in the course
of my research I was curious to understand the ways in which the commonly heard word

111 See figure 4.6 for an imprint of Salman Khan’s image from his latest film on a sachet of mouth-freshner being sold
in Narwal’s market.

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filmi was used. Through an explanation of the various connotations of this word, I present
my analysis of filmic associations of my participants with not only the film’s stars but
also its music, images, and ideology. In the following sections, I describe the ways in
which my participants considered an idea, object, relationship, person, or an image, to be
filmi. I also explain how the word filmi has become a ‘cultural trope’ that is integral to
the everyday life of women in Narwal.

5.5 Connotations of the word Filmi

During the semi-structured in-depth interviews that I conducted in the final three weeks
of my field work, I specifically asked my participants who or what they considered to be
filmi. I asked them for a precise definition, which no one could give me. I observed that
they were surprised by my direct questions on the meaning of filmi and most were hesitant
to respond. The ones who did answer said, “Someone who watches a lot of films” or “a
situation where something miraculously happens [chamatkari tarike se sab hone lage]”.
However, the word was in common parlance and used in a variety of ways, so my analysis
primarily relies on the informal everyday interactions or conversations that I was part of
during the field work. The idea was to find out what aspect of themselves or others did
my participants find filmi, if any.

In a space where the pleasure of engaging with films can itself be a transgressive activity,
I concluded that filmi connotes anything that is ‘other’ to village life in these women’s
imaginations. I analysed all the things they meant when they used this word and found
that ‘being filmi’ refers to attributes varying from being an avid film consumer, to being
stylish, romantic, a slacker or jobless, unrealistic, rebellious, boycotted, or devoid of
moral values.

5.5.1 Filmi as an avid film consumer

In the interviews, the most common response of my participants in relation to the meaning
of the word filmi was someone who is an avid film consumer, unlike the generic meaning
of filmi (pertaining to film). This usage relates directly to a film consumer in the most
obvious ways – one who watches films, listens to film music, shares video clips of films,
reads interviews and features about actors/actresses, and is interested in film stars’ lives.

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There was one response that articulated the perception of filmi as someone who is
extremely fond of Hindi films. Jyoti (21) shared that:

My elder brother and younger sister are so filmi that in the name of entertainment [manoranjan],
they only watch films. Even when we go for family events to the city or adjacent village, my
brother downloads and saves the latest Hindi films in his laptop or phone and both my siblings
watch it wherever we go. Father does not like it, but my other cousins join in too, so he does not
say anything.

This broadly referred to the one for whom films were the most important source of
entertainment. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that in this notion of filmi, watching a film
became a slightly forbidden activity.

In another conversation, Rehana (19) revealed:

My father loves [shauk hai] the old film songs sung by Rafi and Kishore Kumar. My uncle too is
quite filmi, he remembers all the songs from the old Hindi films by heart even today.

A love for films, their songs, storylines, actors and film star lives, was widely believed
to be a filmi characteristic, a common notion among the participants and their families.
This notion mostly was referred to when talking about others and not oneself. Further, I
observed that in the case of older men in the family, their love for films or film songs was
considered filmi but the term was used in the context of light-hearted banter, unlike for
women, who had to be (slightly) audacious to be able to confidently declare their
fondness for films. The above examples are of women aged 19 and 21, however, there
were a few middle-aged women too who referred to their children, husbands or other
family members as being filmi because those people loved films.

5.5.2 Filmi as an exaggerated version of the self

In chapter four I discussed a conversation I had with a photo studio’s owner (52) in
Narwal, who dismissed the photographs from Pinney’s book, Camera Indica (1997), as
being too filmi. He used the term to slightly ridicule the references to film in studio
photography of the last two decades, but the idea of filmi in the context of a bygone era
is what struck me. The 1990s’ studio photography denoted people who wanted, through
their photographs of the self, to depict a relationship that did not exist. This relationship

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was mainly between a famous film star and the subject of the photograph, where young
men and women visited photo studios and got photographed with backgrounds of still
images from Hindi films. They posed for the camera as an actor would pose for a still or
a poster of a film. These were people who not only wanted to be seen as desirable like
the film stars, but also in the same frame as their favourite actor/actress. These
photographs were characterised by painted backdrops (similar to landscape images as
shown in the film’s stills), elaborate costumes, makeup, film-related poses and stiff body
language. These photographs were not only intended to depict their subjects as modern
and urbane, but also to fulfil their desire for a perceived association with Hindi films.
However, this phenomenon typically characterised the photo studios of the 1980s and
1990s, and according to the Narwal studio owner, those images would “probably be
laughed at” now. He said, “Now where does this happen? Someone should have told
these people just standing next to a film-person [film-walle] does not make them like
that”. Filmi according to the studio owner, was an exaggerated version of how people
wanted to be seen.

5.5.3 Filmi as melodramatic

On an afternoon in the home of one of my hosts, I was part of a conversation that indicated
that filmi could be used alongside another phrase, kop bhawan, which was commonly
used by people in the region. Kop Bhawan has been a part of the local vocabulary for
centuries as it originated from Sanskrit. Kop Bhawan literally translates as ‘sulking
chambers’ and refers to a room inside a king’s palace or aristocratic household in ancient
times, that was a dedicated space to calm oneself after a moment of rage. It appears in
Hindu mythological epics like the Ramayana.112 Anamika (40) was at home with her
mother-in-law and her sister, and I was talking to them about a recipe. They had a moment
of disagreement and Anamika thought it best to go inside the kitchen at that instant to
calm herself down. A few seconds after she sent away, her mother-in-law remarked, “Oh,
look now the queen [maharani ji] went away in anger, her tantrums are so filmi”. I said,
“Let me go and check in on her, and I can help with the cooking as well. I think she has
just gone inside the kitchen”, and she responded:

112 Kop means anger/rage whereas bhawan could refer to a house, hall or a room

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 Ab kop bhawan mein jaayein ya kitchen mein, yehi sab filmi nakhre hain aur kuch nahi. Hamare
time pe aisa nahi hota tha.

(meaning: Now whether she has gone to a kop bhawan or to the kitchen, these are all filmi
tantrums, nothing else. This did not used to happen in my time.

Growing up, I observed Kop bhawan being used in a condescending manner by mothers-
in-law in north India to describe the behaviour of disobedient daughters-in-law.
Anamika’s mother-in-law felt that her daughter-in-law acted out in a dramatic manner as
she had no respect for the traditional family hierarchy. She felt that Anamika had
‘trapped’ her husband using emotional drama [rona-dhona]. Melodrama as a film device
has been a distinguishing feature of Hindi films.113 Associating filmi with melodrama,
thus, did not surprise me. However, filmi as a metaphor for melodrama alongside the
usage of kop bhawan made me think of two possibilities. First, filmi may have referred
to Anamika’s act of getting up abruptly and leaving as melodramatic since it made a
statement about her flouting the older woman’s authority, especially in front of me.
Second, filmi perhaps indicated Anamika being pompous since the mother-in-law also
called her a maharani (queen) and remarked how she behaved like one by not giving in
to what her mother-in-law was saying.

In another instance, 32-year-old Vibha described her mother-in-law as being too filmi for
“manipulating my (Vibha’s) husband by crying and telling her about how miserable her
life is all the time [zindagi dubhar ho gayi hai]”. Vibha also shared in a separate
conversation about how her mother-in-law’s behaviour would completely change to that
of a melodramatic mother [naatak-kaar] when the son was around her. Filmi as dramatic
or melodramatic was not only used by mothers-in-law or daughters-in-law to complain
about each other, but these two examples show that when filmi means melodramatic, it
was always used to describe the ‘other’, and not oneself.

5.5.4 Filmi as fashionably transgressive

Ritu (28), a housewife who lived in a house with seven family members, was a self-
confessed fashion-loving woman. I interviewed her. Her idea of filmi was initially unclear

113 See (Thomas, 1995; Vasudevan, 1989; Ganti, 2004 and 2013)

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to me, but multiple references to it made her response understandable. After a long pause,
she said:

A lot of things can be considered to be filmi. Such as it can mean entertaining…or maybe luxurious
[aish-aaram]. Only fancy [shaukeen] people can live like film-people…maybe filmi can be
someone who just loves movies.

On being asked what she liked most about Hindi films, she said:

I really like filmi clothes. They have great designs [ek se ek designs] and beautiful colours. Here
we cannot wear those kinds of clothes, but design and colours can be worn during weddings and
all [shaadi-byaah mein]. I find Deepika’s and Madhuri’s (actresses) sarees and long-sleeved
blouses to be beautiful. These days there are a lot of filmi blouse designs in trend, like the ones
Deepika wears. Now there are many designs that we can actually wear (in the village).

Broadly, filmi in this sense connoted a manner of dressing that did not follow the sartorial
conventions of everyday life in the village.114 Wilkinson-Weber used the word filmi to
refer to the “Bollywood archetype” (2010a:142) in the context of costumes used in Hindi
films, and argued:

The residual tension surrounding the heroine’s costuming becomes apparent when we consider
that audience appropriation of costume has often involved adaptations of the outfit that stripped it
of its most dangerous ‘filmy’ connotations.

(Wilkinson‐Weber, 2005:142)

While watching a film together, I showed some of my participants a photograph of me in

which I wore a dress with long boots. I asked, “Do I not look too filmi here? I was trying
to dress up like (actress) Katrina Kaif”, to which one of them (22) responded:

But didi, there (in London) everyone wears the clothes that you are wearing. Your clothing is not
different from what everyone wears there. You are not looking filmi at all. Here (in the village),
you instantly come to know if someone is wearing something glamorous [chamak-dhamak] that
is from films or TV.

114 See section 5.4 for a brief discussion on Hindi film fashion and its consumers among my participants. The argument
in this section follows from that.

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Women who possessed and wore this kind of clothing were thought of as filmi, i.e., she
was considered to be embracing trendy clothing, accessories and designs; someone who
chose to appear distinguished from other women in the village. Filmi as fashionably
different or transgressive was a recurring signification that I observed among my
participants to describe a specific manner of clothing and lifestyle of other men and
women in the village. Among my participants aged 35 or below, this connotation seemed
a positive one, but older women did not entertain the idea of a fashion sense that was too
different from the everyday clothing style in the village. The colour palette, fabric and
prints of the clothing of women who liked to dress up fashionably was different from the
locally produced clothing in the sense that they either (i) got an outfit stitched in the exact
colour of a star’s clothing, (ii) took pains to get a film-inspired embroidery done on their
clothes, or (iii) asked a friend/kin to bring back a certain piece of clothing from outside
the village. There were more such instances that indicated the difference between a filmi
and a non-filmi clothing, and I discussed an example of saree blouse-designs in the
context of a female village tailor in chapter four. This process of adaptation of film
fashion has increasingly become more complex and elaborate. Susan Wadley made a note
of such fashion-related inspirations in 1998 in a rural setting:

The key ‘fashion’ of the time was the polyester see-through sari which was featured in magazines
like Femina. These saris, popular with young women through the 1970s, brought on the wrath of
their mothers-in-law who found the synthetic material to be too revealing. These synthetic saris
were seen by the older women as a sign of moral decay and of the loss of the modesty of women
that rules of purdah mandated.

(2008:166)

She also mentioned that women in the late 1990s who used village tailors would “have
him add ruffles and other decorative items not found on earlier clothing” (2008:167).
During my stay in Narwal, I observed that synthetic saris were common and not at all
scorned upon. The limits had been pushed further since, of course. However, the socio-
economics of the village life still did not regularly allow the women there to consume
updated fashion trends in comparison to cities, i.e., the quality of fabric, the latest tailored
cuts, and the changing print designs were not easily accessible to my participants as
compared to their urban counterparts, and therefore, the use of the word filmi by my
participants became even more significant to denote sartorial transgressions.

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Durga Devi, a 69-year-old tailor who I referred to in the earlier chapters, did not precisely
use the word filmi to describe the artwork on plastic packaging bags that she used to sell
her clothes. However, for her, the use of Shah Rukh Khan’s image signalled to her
customers that she was a tailor conscious of trends in ladies’ fashion. Being aware of
Hindi films with their songs, images, stars, and storylines, counted as being modern. For
my participants such as Durga Devi, being modern indicated being updated with the latest
technology, closely imitating filmic fashion trends, comparing oneself with the urban in
terms of lifestyle, and claiming to build a secure future by migrating to big cities [sheher
jaake apni zindagi banana].

5.5.5 Filmi as romantically bold and expressive

Durga Devi’s life had been exceptional in terms of her marriage with a man she fell in
love with. She got married in 1966 in Kanpur, where she lived earlier. She then moved
to Narwal, where his family lived. She has two sons now, and three grandchildren. Both
her sons had arranged marriages in the same caste and the whole family now lives
together in their ancestral home in Narwal. I spent several days in their house and
observed the relationship between Durga Devi and her daughters-in-law. In one of our
conversations about women’s lives before marriage, the older daughter-in-law said:

Arrey what will she know of an arranged marriage? Her wedding was so filmi itself. In those days,
it was a love marriage. They used to meet sometimes, and he asked her father for her hand in
marriage. They even watched movies together before their marriage.

Marriage alliances in this region, and largely throughout rural India, are still arranged
between families on the basis of caste, class and other socio-economic considerations
(see Chaudhry, 2016; Chowdhry, 2004; Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996). According to my
participants, themes of romance and marrying-for-love have predominantly been the
domain of Hindi film. At the centre of most Hindi films is a passionate love story. Thus,
Durga Devi’s unusual situation, i.e., a love-marriage, was considered to be filmi by not
only her daughters-in-law but also by other women in the village. They saw such alliances
as an influence of Hindi cinema and the films’ urban or Western values [West ki
sabhyata]. Marrying for attraction, without considering the family background and

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values, threatened the core cultural values of the family life that my participants lived.
Malti (42), in a conversation about the Western influence on Indian society, said:

Westerners [firangi] project us as backward [pichhde] if we are conservative [dakiyanusi] about

our traditions [prathaayein]. But in their own homes, their marriages are falling apart, children do
not respect their elders, they leave ageing parents behind, and then they say we are backward. In
our (culture), we are taught the value of families staying together. I do not understand all these
filmi people who marry someone just because pyaar ho gaya [because they fell in ‘love’].

People saying that Hindi films promote Western values was not a surprising notion to me
growing up in India, and this belief was common amongst sections of urban and rural
audiences in the country. However, according to my observation from my interactions
with women in Narwal, the bold expressions of love and romance as depicted in Hindi
films were embedded within these so-called Western values. Depictions of love in Hindi
films were considered to be a fleeting feeling by my participants [do din mein chala jaata
hai]. They felt that ‘love’ as shown in Hindi films was considered to be a feeling of
infatuation/ attraction [lubhaavna], and hence, was not a good enough reason to get
married. More importantly, the fact that they met and got attracted to each other before
marriage showed that they transgressed the segregated lives that young men and women
ought to live before they get married. I summarise my lengthy interaction with Malti
regarding the family drama Baghban (2003) below:

What Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini (depicted in the film as a righteous ageing couple) had
for each other as husband and wife and as parents was respectable. All these filmi stories show the
boy and the girl meeting and falling in love. We get attracted to the idea, and we root for them
being together [chahte hain ki ladka-ladki shadi kar lein] at the end, but no one would like to see
that happen in real life. They put all that filmi music and we are supposed to think it is true love
[jaise bada mahaan prem ho]. Life is not about roaming around aimlessly with boys
[awaaragardi] and degrading the family name.

Despite criticism from some of my participants, love stories were popular among women
film audiences in Narwal. The discouragement of marriages in real life based solely on
‘love’ was based on social and cultural considerations which were contextually more
important to keep the social fabric intact. For younger women (below 25), getting married
for love was an idea that they could only dream of, but something that was aspirational
and close to their hearts. Babita (22), who lived in a nearby village, had come to Narwal
to attend a class at the ITI. She shared:

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 Didi, I think it will be better if my mother and father choose someone for me. I have never even
talked to another man except for my brothers. I have never had a male friend. Why should I dream
of a filmi marriage? Even if I do, it will never happen.

Thus, the connotation of a filmi marriage was a ‘love-marriage’ as opposed to the one set
up by families or relatives.

My participants also considered grand gestures of affection to be filmi. Drawing on my

conversation with Malti, I observed that everyday expressions of romance that were
elaborate or too affectionate according to traditional sensibilities were also seen as filmi.
For example, Malti spoke of Renu, her 38-year-old neighbour:

Many women have husbands who are very filmi, they get them many sarees and take them out. I
do not have time for all this. Now tell me, what should a husband do – should he spend time with
his wife all day or do some work [joru ka ghulam bana rahega kya]?

It would be incorrect to say that the expression of romance would not take place here if
not for the films, but the individual choices made regarding ways of expressing romance
in everyday life between a woman and her husband were heavily influenced by the way
the families were organised social context. As I understood from my interactions with
my participants, the ways in which Hindi films portrayed conjugal romance did not
represent an accurate depiction for them of their everyday experience of love. The reason
why certain expressions of love were considered filmi by my participants and others could
have been due to the absence of an on-screen depiction of love which was at all close to
their way of living within the village. For instance, the fact that Renu’s neighbour’s
husband took her out to the city often was a rare situation in the village context. Although
this had nothing to do with Hindi films directly, the idea of conveying love had come to
be associated with Hindi films that showed songs picturised on couples showering
affection on each other openly. Expressing love publicly was not common, as one had to
be extremely shameless [nirlajya, besharm] to do so. This boldness of expressing love
became a filmi aspect in such cases. Hindi films were often criticised as well as celebrated
for promoting escapism. This paradigm of a typical (masala) Hindi film inspired yet
another connotation of the word filmi which I describe in the next section.

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5.5.6 Filmi as a slacker

Women in Narwal spent time every day on activities that involved film such as listening
to film music, watching movies and interviews, reading magazine columns about films,
consuming film-inspired content on television, looking at film images on everyday
objects, and sharing video clips and ringtones over WhatsApp.

My participants above the age of 60 had a dismissive attitude towards younger men and
women who watched films, but I did not observe them to be vocal about younger people
engaging in other film-related activities such as listening to film songs, sharing videos,
or making film-based videos on mobile apps. Viewership of films was perhaps criticised
by older women because, in their view, watching a two-hour-long Hindi film meant the
bulk of their time was being spent on ‘unproductive activities’. I met Kishori Devi (76)
in the village temple, who was introduced to me during an everyday prayer ceremony. I
asked her about her family, and while talking about her two grandsons, she said:

My older grandson is good at studies, but the younger one is absolutely filmi. He keeps watching
films in his mobile, songs, photos all day. Maar-dhad [violence] and god knows what all is going
in his brain all day. No one can make him work when does not want to move. He takes after his
father. My younger son, who is also very filmi, does not do any work. If he worked and was
employed, he could bring some money into the house.

Kishori Devi used filmi to describe someone who she considered to be a slacker due to
their high level of engagement with films. This indicated a person who had no inclination
for occupational work and was understood as an escapist who ‘just wasted time’ [khali
samay vyarth ganwaana hai]. Such people were looked down upon or mocked by their
own family members too. As Kishori Devi added in a tone of disappointment:

People in films can do whatever they want. They leave everything to go to sing and dance, but we
do not. Life is filled with struggles.

The conception of filmi as a slacker, lazy or jobless person needs to be contextualised.

First, when my older participants felt that the focus of their young ones or family
members was not to make their everyday life better, but to spend time on entertainment,
their economic struggle seemed harder than it was. Second, Hindi films showing the
characters singing, dancing and falling in love instead of spending time in a real
workplace could not be related to by my older and middle-aged participants in this village

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setting, where the primary concern for most people was the improvement of their
economic condition. Although it was understood by them that the diegesis cannot focus
on every detail of human life, it irked several of my older, as well as middle-aged,
participants that films were negatively influencing the younger generation. For instance,
during our conversation, I asked Sunita (42) if she considered herself filmi, given how
fond she was of the actresses and their fashion, style and glamour. She said:

Not at all bitti (endearment for ‘daughter’), when am I filmi? I have to work, I have to run a
household. Although in films they show a bit of real life, but people are never shown to be
working. Now if children grow up seeing films, all they will think is that there is no need to work
or have jobs.

It was implied by her that young people who engaged in a lot of film consumption were
less motivated to face the difficulties of working hard to earn money. What I noted here
was that Sunita, who ran a beauty parlour herself and was closely connected with the
world of Hindi films (chapter four), saw the engagement with films by younger people
in this way. Further, her idea of filmi too was about others, not herself. When discussing
films, she was accepting of the fact that she consumed film forms, but the word filmi was
not something she identified herself with at all. Could it be that middle-aged and older
women film consumers in the village did not deem films fit for consumption by younger
people? Or was it just the word filmi that that led them to decide what was or was not
acceptable behaviour in the rural community?

Filmi was not just used for people who spent time sitting idle or entertaining themselves
rather than spending their day in ‘fruitful’ work-related activities. It also referred to a
person with expensive tastes, having a grand but unrealistic view of the world. This is
not far removed from my questions above. I explain this in the next section.

5.5.7 Filmi as unrealistic

Sunita (42) and Kishori Devi (76) were not the only ones who thought of filmi as
something that deflected people from the realities of everyday in the village. Growing up
in India, I have observed that Hindi films have a high aspirational value for audiences
across the country. International locations, expensive clothing, and luxurious lifestyles in
Hindi films show a lavish lifestyle as the norm. During my field work, the elected village

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head of Narwal was a young woman in her late thirties, born and brought up in Kanpur
city.115 She prided herself on her sparing use of media devices such as phones and laptops,
and film consumption. In a conversation that lasted close to two hours, she spoke on the
mindset and hardships of the people living in Narwal:

People need to be realistic about what they can have in life. When people know they have to live
within the village, then what good will it do to them to be curious to watch films all the time?
Studies, marriage, kids, and a job [roji-roti] do not leave any time for all this. It is the same in the
city. There are only a few filmi people…god knows what it is that they expect from the world.
Especially young boys. There was that film about motorcycles (Dhoom, 2004, known for luxury
motorbikes) after which bauaa (brother-in-law) started demanding a bike from my husband. All
of these bikes are so expensive, where is the money for that? If he brings in a bride tomorrow,
maybe he will ask for a Madhuri-Dixit-Saree for her.

In another example, Sudha (43) pointed out:

Filmon mein toh garib bhi ameer hai, aur garib ki tarah koi dikhta hi nahi. Ab ya toh hum filmi
logon ki tarah khayali duniya mein rahein, ya apne aas paas jo kuch hai, usi se khush rahein.

(meaning: In films, even the poor are shown as rich, and no one looks like the poor. Either we can
live like filmi people, in our imaginary world, or we can be happy with whatever we have around
us.

Sudha’s comment referred to the way some Hindi films have depicted poverty, especially
the way she has seen it around her. According to her, even the poor and the middle-class
people were represented as having a lavish life as was visible in their lifestyle and
clothing. I asked her if she had any specific film in mind, but she did not. If I believed
Sudha and Sonal (above), the depiction of rural poverty and its complexity is not
represented in a way that Sudha would be able to relate to. However, some of the recent
films Sudha’s daughter later named after being asked about it by her mother were films
that were based on small towns and not in a village like Narwal like Dum Laga Ke Haisha
(2015). For instance, in a film that was released after my field work, Bareilly ki Barfi
(2017), the female protagonist was depicted as a woman who was oddly immodest as
compared to the women that actually live in Bareilly, a small town in the same state as
Narwal. As the ‘heroine’ shared a cigarette with her father and went around on bikes,
wearing jeans, chasing an unknown man who she thought understood her completely, her

115 I have provided a brief description of her in chapter one

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mannerisms, clothing, hairstyles, and cultural values did not even remotely resemble a
young woman living in a small town. Sudha’s comment played on my mind while
observing the characters in Bareilly ki Barfi. However, I was also cautious of painting
this as the response that all my participants would have had. I wanted to compare Sudha’s
response with some of my other participants, especially younger ones who was more
aware of the latest Hindi films. So, I asked Ranjana (23) about it, “Do you think films are
not able to show the problem of poverty in a proper way?”116, and she told me, “No, it’s
not like that completely…there is that film Manjhi (2015) which I really liked. I have
seen such people. I could understand his woes [vyatha]. There are many such places
where there are no hospitals and people die (due to lack of medical care)”.

The discourse on realism within Hindi film narratives was beyond the scope of this study.
However, it was relevant to describe how my participants saw themselves in relation to
the people shown in Hindi films. There was no single point of view. I noted a few
similarities with Rao’s study (2007) in terms of non-elite film audiences and their
responses to the issue of representation of the ‘non-elite’ in films, as exemplified above.
An ‘unrealistic’ world view was often deemed to be film related. This connotation of a
filmi person or idea stemmed from the unrealistic representations of people and far-
fetched aspirations that some of my older participants felt characterised Hindi films.
These were not only economic but also social. The socio-cultural setup in a rural area has
rigid norms under which the everyday operates. Thus, a filmi person sometimes referred
to one who broke these norms to fulfil an ambition or a personal desire, as I discuss this
in the next section.

5.5.8 Filmi as rebellious

The neighbouring house of one of my hosts looked like an uninhabited building from the
outside with tattered walls outside and house plants overgrowing it. Curious, I inquired,
“Does any woman live in that house?”, to which my host (58) replied, “Yes. Why?”. I
said, “She never joins us in the evenings for walks or in the afternoon. Can you introduce
me to her?” At this point I witnessed a polite yet dismissive look on her face. She said:

Well, her husband married into another caste. She comes from a lower caste and their marriage is
still frowned upon. God knows if his decision was influenced due to his stay in the city or whether

116 I discuss other responses by her in chapter four, section four.

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 he was this filmi. When he knew that he would have to come back and live in the village, then
why did he do it? His wife does not mingle with people too much. In some ways, they are socially
boycotted here.

The passing mention of filmi in this context tempted me to probe further. I asked, “Where
did filmi come in all of this?”, to which she responded:

Aur nahi toh kya [What is this if not this….] This is what films are showing these days. As if you
can get married to anyone without even thinking about your parents or society. No film shows
people inquiring about each other’s castes [jaat-paat] before marriage. Even today knowing about
all of these things, such as caste, family, are important before marriage.

Two things were evident by my host’s responses: (i) Caste was still an important criterion
for marital alliances, and (ii) in her view, Hindi film’s love stories did not seem to have
‘real-life’ considerations such as caste and parental consent. Getting married in another
caste automatically made one an outcaste (Chaudhry, 2016:33-42). Such people were
considered to be worthy of punishment. Some men and women who migrated to cities
and have been living there for generations still experience feelings of nostalgia for their
ancestral villages, which they consider as the root of their cultural values. 117 Therefore,
the village as a social unit becomes much more significant for researchers as the preserver
of traditions and indigenous Indian cultural thinking. I inferred from interactions with my
participants that Hindi films were seen to encourage young men and women to take a
stand against their parents, thus becoming ‘unreasonable’ [dheet] and rebellious.
Rebelling to get married was not the only act that would lead someone to be socially
boycotted.

My interlocutors who were more middle-class in the village indicated that certain
professionals such as writers, performing artists and painters, commanded less social
recognition and respect as compared to government employees, engineers, doctors,
businessmen (including shopkeepers), real-estate contractors, computer-professionals

117 The cultural role of village in nation building has been discussed in scholarly as well non-academic writings. For a
discussion on role of the ‘folk’ in Indian nation building, see (Kumar, 2012:62); for a discussion on rural nostalgia as
a coping strategy for migration (from Bihar, India), see ‘Culture and Emotional Economy of Migration’ (Narayan,
2017). Although Narayan’s point of reference is also Bihar migration to Suriname and other countries, the village as
comprising the cultural heritage of India is a common notion I have grown up with. My parents migrated from villages
in Uttar Pradesh and it is in common conversation that I derived this longing for the time spent in the village.

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and teachers. My own experience with families with young males seeking employment
confirmed this. Owing to the economic conditions of families in the village, professional
ambitions were only encouraged when they focused on conventional occupations such as
engineering, medicine, teaching, law, the civil service and so on. As the husband one of
my hosts remarked, if a secondary school mathematics teacher decided to build a career
in theatre, this would be deemed a deliberate attempt to deprive one’s family of social
prestige and financial stability. People who knowingly made their family go through this
‘ordeal’ to chase ‘castles in the air’ [hawai-mahal] were socially boycotted (bahishkrit).
The fear of losing long-standing traditions and cultural values fuelled the need to preserve
them strongly. This was where filmi people, with their ‘oft-confused’ and
‘unrealistic/impractical’ ideas (nasamajh or phoohad), were also looked upon with
contempt by the older members of the village community, both males and females.
Therefore, it came as no surprise that some of my participants also used filmi to refer to
someone devoid of moral values, as I discuss in the next section.

5.5.9 Filmi as devoid of morals and cultural values

There was a strong moral panic regarding women’s access to film, and more broadly
media, in the village among most of the older community members (men and women) as
well as men (of all ages), as I observed. There were several reasons for this, which
primarily stemmed from patriarchal beliefs that were constantly reproduced in this
setting.118 Sunita (42), the beautician in Narwal, was preparing to get her daughter (18)
married next year (2017). Sunita was up to date with the recent trends in film fashion as
she “had to know what is going on in the field of fashion and makeup”. However, she
specifically said that she was not essentially a huge fan of Hindi films. She remarked that
there were people who were so filmi that they forget their sanskaar.119 While talking
about marrying for love, she said:

This kind of a filmi mentality [soch] cannot work in a place like this, my dear. These days, it is
difficult to meet someone with their cultural and moral values [sanskaar] intact. I will not let my
daughter live in this filmi way. All of this does not happen in real life, generations are destroyed,
families are destroyed due to such thinking.

118 I have addressed this briefly in chapter four and will discuss it at length in the next chapter.
119 Moral values imbibed in one’s culture

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Despite the moral universe being preserved towards the end of a film (Thomas, 1985),
transgressions by the younger generation, especially young women, of the moral code of
this village setting were seen as wrong by men and older residents. Despite the films’
overall moral focus, most of my older and middle-aged participants could not overlook
the filmi individual decisions made by protagonists and continued to criticise specific
parts of the film’s narrative. It was only the strongly family-oriented films like Baghban
(2003) that restored the faith of my participants in films. It was because the focus of such
films was closer to the moral compass of those participants themselves. Due to the
strength of the central theme of Baghban (unconditional love for parents), the other
factors that were outside their own everyday reality did not hinder their attachment to the
film. The word filmi was used by them to indicate people who did not believe in the
values that were thought to have kept the traditional way of living.

Conclusion
My objectives in this chapter have been twofold: to describe village women’s relationship
to Hindi film consumption as they expressed in their conversations with me, and to arrive
at an understanding of how this differs within my participant group. I have collated
ethnographic evidence from previous chapters as well as added new observations to
explain how my participants relate to the world of films and analysing the connotations
of the word filmi seems to crystallise that relationship most clearly.

Hindi films hold the imaginations of women in the village by offering them a world of
new possibilities. The pleasures of consuming film sometimes translate into transgressive
activities, such as watching films at a relative’s place when the parents disapprove,
listening to film songs on a mobile phone that one is not supposed to have, dreaming of
a grand fairy-tale wedding that is beyond the household budget, displaying affection on
a social media app which you are not supposed to share publicly, dressing up in a manner
that deviates from rural sartorial tastes, and marrying a man from a different caste, thus
wreaking havoc. These examples demonstrate various ways in which the women there
were negotiating their quotidian reality and trying to gain control over their own lives
through the consumption of Hindi films. In the domestic space, in which women’s
everyday activities were mainly situated, television was the medium that was mostly

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watched for entertainment. Despite this, films had a lustre that television lacked. The
word filmi had an emotional charge around it. While television lay within their quotidian
world, films were everything that their everyday lives were not.

Filmi signalled everything that resided outside my participants’ immediate realm of

experience, i.e., the everyday village life. I observed that none of the connotations of the
word were particularly positive, which the tone and words that my participants used while
talking about it confirmed. The use of filmi to describe an avid film consumer,
melodramatic, stylish, and romantic, was commonly used by younger as well as some
middle-aged participants. On the other hand, its connotation as an exaggerated version of
oneself, slacker, unrealistic, rebellious, and devoid of moral/cultural values, was mostly
in use by my older and some middle-aged participants. My older participants (above 60)
were quick to paint Hindi films as a monolithic entity in the way they discussed them
[filmon mein toh sab aise hi hota hai…]. In contrast, females below the age of 40 were
more appreciative of the diversity that existed within the narratives of Hindi films. They
had specific films that they liked for a particular reason, just as I described in the first
half of this chapter. I cannot generalise and say that for younger women the connotations
of filmi could not be negative in Narwal, or for older women filmi cannot signify
something that is a positive trait. But I make an overall argument that my participants’
engagement with Hindi films was a way through which they understood their day-to-day
selves as well as the ‘other’. Despite having multiple significations, anyone who uses the
word need not clarify what it is that he/she precisely means by it. The listener understands
the exact connotation that filmi carries in that particular conversation, and for me,
observing the seamlessness and versatility of this word to discuss day-to-day things in
the village was deeply intriguing.

Understanding a Hindi film, which preserved ideas of both the ‘everyday’ and the ‘other’,
was also central to my contextual understanding of what constituted filmi in this village.
This was similar to watching a Hindi film itself where it was apparent what was real and
what was not, what was within our power and what was unattainable, yet both were
essential to create a pleasurable experience.

The next chapter explores the potential advantage films have in advancing the social aims
of women and how the everyday negotiations by women in Narwal around media
consumption are helping to bring about a change in their lives.

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 6
“But if he can, why can’t I?”:
Restrictions on and negotiations around
women’s film consumption

6.1 Introduction
Life in Narwal is slow-paced but hardly devoid of day-to-day struggles for women. The
interests of the village community are favoured over those of an individual. Against this
background, Hindi films offer my participants a peep into a world that often goes beyond
the permissible ways of life for women living here. A victimhood narrative of women’s
everyday lives in the village would fail to show the other side of their existence, which is
filled with instances of joy, resistance, negotiation, and little victories. At the risk of
sounding simplistic, my current understanding of this relationship is one in which the
man in the village is akin to the narrator of day-to-day life whose account is validated by
the societal norm, while the woman is placed in the position of being like the bard, who
tells stories involving different voices at different times for different people, but whose
voice is not yet documented in the narrative of everyday life and in the media
representations of this. I investigate how my participants’ multimodal long-term Hindi
film consumption played a role in producing different, sometimes self-referential,
narratives of their everyday lives using film.

The question that I want to answer through this chapter is: Has there been any socially
significant change in the village that has been connected to women’s film consumption?
In other words, is women’s relationship with Hindi films socially significant at all?

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Moreover, in what ways does their film consumption get affected by the society, and in
what ways does it affect the society in turn? I will discuss two interactions with my
participants in the following two paragraphs. The first one is an example of how my
participants’ love for films gets affected by the prevalent social norms. The second
instance will explain how some of the women question these norms precisely because of
their fondness for films.

As I sat in an empty classroom inside the Industrial Training Institute (ITI Narwal) talking
to my 18-year-old participant Anu, she suggested that we move to an adjacent classroom.
On being asked for the reason, she said that it was further away from where the boys had
just finished attending their class on electrical wire-fitting. Singing in the presence of
strange men and, thus, attracting their attention was something she wanted to avoid. She
did not mind singing on another day in front of her female classmates and some other
young girls from the neighbourhood. It was singing amidst male presence that made her
uncomfortable, and she said, “What if they can see my through the window? It does not
look good”. My conversation with Anu was one of the twenty in-depth semi-structured
interviews that I conducted in the final weeks of my field work. At the end of our half-
hour interaction, she offered to sing a song for me. This song, from a recent Hindi film
Dhoni (2016), ran: Kaun tujhe yun pyaar karega (Translation: Who will love you as much
as I do?).120 She remembered the lyrics perfectly and used slight hand gestures while
singing with closed eyes. When I complimented her on her voice, she said, “Didi, I listen
to film songs a lot. I listen to them so many times that I learn them by heart. Sometimes
my mother tells me to sing. I sang this song on Anku’s Mundan”.121 Anu shared that she
never thought of professional singing despite people suggesting she do so. She said,
“People tell me that if I could get training for singing, I would have been able to sing like
those TV people (referring to reality tv talent shows). I love film songs. I see the songs
(videos) and listen to them numerous times till I memorise them”. Anu’s mindfulness
about making me change rooms so that no male can ‘see’ her sing was a manifestation of
the social norms of gender segregation in a public place (such as the ITI).

120 The film was a biographical feature on Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, released in September 2016
121 Mundan ceremony is a Hindi ritual practiced in North India wherein the head of a child aged 3 or 4 years is shaved.
This is done in the hope that the child will have thicker and healthier hair in the future. This is celebrated in the
households of Narwal as a family event with music and dance to celebrate the child.

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Like Anu, Kanchan (18) was also immensely talented. I mentioned her in chapter three
in the context of her brother’s refusal to buy a smartphone for her.122 Her mother shared,
“Kanchan does embroidery, gets inspired for new designs from here and there”, to which
Kanchan added:

There are a few designs which girls from the ITI give me; they get these from their teachers in
their (stitching) class. But if I have to make a new design then I can easily find ideas in films
[filmon mein dikh jaati hai]. In Devdas (2002), the Bengali sarees were shown to have lovely
[pyaare] blouses.

Kanchan was a soft-spoken girl with creative interests. She showed me a long shirt that
she had stitched for which the creative input came from actress Alia Bhatt, and said,
“These days heroines are wearing loose-loose [dheeli-dheeli] long shirts”. After some
time, when we had a conversation in which her brother (then present) shared his concern
over her potential usage of the internet – and subsequently its corrupting influence – her
mother politely told Kanchan, “Let it go, he’s your brother”. To this, Kanchan’s instant
response, “Mother, he has two (smartphones) himself. If he can, why can’t I?”. The
moment she posed this question to her mother, I noted an instance of questioning the
status quo, even if it was meant to be rhetorical. Her mother did not respond, and Kanchan
did not take it up any further. Her protest had been registered.

Kanchan and Anu’s examples are very specific instances of two 18-year-olds,
demonstrating two different points, as I mentioned before. There were more such
instances across age-groups in different ways which I discuss in this chapter. These
seemingly insignificant instances of answering back and questioning the status quo
become crucial when we understand them in the context of the prevalent social setting.
Susan Wadley’s work on residents of Karimpur village (1994) partly resonated with my
own experience in 2016 and made these instances of non-conformation remarkable. She
noted:

Within the family, sons are challenging parental authority, whereas women's demands for equality
are muted. Women are neither asking to govern nor declaring the family an irrelevant institution.
But as disorder increases, gender control becomes the focus of greater attention. Control of women
becomes the symbolic focus of male control and control in the community. Yet this inward turning
to control within the family is itself challenged by women's education and demands to ease purdah
restrictions.

122 See chapter three, section four for the whole conversation. I discuss this interaction again in the sections below

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 (1994:5)

Although I did not witness any community-wide, organised resistance by women during
my field visit, there were instances of resistance at both individual and household level.
These instances were not only questioning the gender norms by comparing women’s
status with men’s, but also seeking to distinguish themselves in the social space of the
village. For instance, Durga Devi (69) used plastic bags with an image of Shah Rukh
Khan to distinguish the clothes she sold. In order to advance her economic aims, she
made use of a distinct (filmic) image which marked her out from other tailors in the
village. The upward social mobility that she felt she achieved through that small act
substantiates the rationale of this chapter, i.e., to sketch the ongoing reorganisation of
gender power relations in Narwal.

At the start of my analysis, I broadly wanted to understand how film consumption as a

cultural activity was influencing other socially significant processes. In order to
understand the changes that this village was going through – social, cultural, especially
gender-specific – Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of field proved immensely useful
(Bourdieu, 1984b). Bourdieu noted that a field is a space in which a game takes place, a
field of relations between individuals or institutions who are competing for the same stake
(Bourdieu, 1984b). An agent in such a field may be assumed to be seeking maximum
power within it. The aim is to “rule the field, to become the instance which has the power
to confer or withdraw legitimacy from other participants in the game” (Moi, 1991:1021).
Bourdieu’s conception of field was especially useful in making sense of my ethnographic
data and using it to identify the structures of power in my participants’ everyday life. It
is through my engagement with this conception that I started to look at my participants’
actions and non-actions as responses to the factors that governed their lives, and
specifically their film consumption. His sociological work on domination explained why
the power structures existed, what kept them the way they were, and which processes led
to their rearrangement. This led me to briefly engage with his conception of habitus,
which Bourdieu defined as a system of dispositions adjusted to the game of the field
(1984b; also see Moi, 1991:1021). He specified that:

Habitus is neither a result of free will, nor determined by structures, but created by a kind of
interplay between the two over time: dispositions that are both shaped by past events and

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 structures, and that shape current practices and structures and also, importantly, that condition our
very perceptions of these.

(Bourdieu 1984a: 170)

However, while engaging with Bourdieu’s field theory was useful in recognising and
identifying the power structures in the village affecting my participants, it did not help
me identify the agents in the field. Bourdieu conceived that these agents aim to dominate
in the field, and I could not see the struggle to dominate. This does not mean the village
was not a site of struggle, it just meant that my participants did not aim to dominate other
powerful agents in the field namely men and older community members. Women here
were certainly questioning, negotiating, and in some ways resisting the constraints
imposed on their film consumption practices, and this is what I explain through this
chapter. My observations and interpretations pointed to how these acts were forms of
everyday resistance, and I discuss that in the last section of this chapter. As Vinthagen
and Johansson remind us, “Everyday resistance is a practice (neither a certain
consciousness, intent, recognition, nor an outcome)” (2013:1).

I also particularly explored the notion of ‘cultural field’ as conceived by Bourdieu (see
1984 and 1993) to understand the core of my study – film practices of my participants in
the village. I was hoping to theorise the way the film content is created, distributed, and
consumed by my participants in the village. Bourdieu's ‘cultural field’ situates artistic
works – such as film, artwork, novels, and so on – within the social conditions of their
production, circulation, and consumption (Bourdieu, 1984 and 1993). Through this,
Bourdieu wanted us to understand the field as a sociological whole where ‘activities’ of
production, distribution, and consumption take place within ‘structures of power’.
However, in my study, I look only at the context of consumption of film by women in a
village. My data on the creation of film content (such as videos on film-based mobile
apps), the distribution (through computer shops, online downloads), and the consumption
(film-content consumed in different forms), was not sufficient to identify a cultural field
in Bourdieu’s sense of the term. This was because the ‘artistic form’ in question was
Hindi film content, which was not wholly produced in the village. It was beyond the
scope of my study to see how the consumption practices of film by these women are
affecting the creative processes of actual Hindi film production, which would be essential
in order to outline the ‘cultural field’ of Hindi film in this village. The concept of habitus,

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too, can only be theoretically understood as existing within a field. I draw on this notion,
however, to explain how the constraints on women’s media consumption are maintained,
and how any rearrangement in this power structure is met with resistance from men and
older family members. Hence, at this point, although the field theory offers a useful
conceptual framework to understand the cultural production process as a whole, I had to
disengage with this theoretical apparatus due to the scope of my study.

The aim of this chapter is to explain the ways in which (i) women are constrained in their
use of media, and more specifically, Hindi film, and (ii) how they are questioning,
negotiating or resisting the existing gender power structures due to their engagement with
film forms. I also describe the role of men in facilitating this change in several ways,
sometimes by just looking away. The chapter argues that women’s relationship with
Hindi films is more than just an ‘enjoyable deviation’; it can be used to socially
distinguish themselves, question the power structures, pursue their unfulfilled desires,
and in some cases, restructure the existing gender relations, thus driving a moment – a
long moment – of change.

6.2 The status quo: Concerns regarding women’s media use

There was a minor incident while screening the film Pink (2012) at the ITI in Narwal that
would set the tone for a discussion on concerns regarding women’s film (and media) use
in the village.123 About thirty minutes into the film screening, a young man probably in
his mid 20s barged into the classroom where the screening was held. Our classroom was
not bolted from inside, as I was not expecting any interruption having sought permission
from the head of the institute. I immediately sensed the unease that gripped several of my
audience members who were all women. Several females who were sitting in a relaxed
position on the desks, with their faces resting on their palms, instantly sat upright. The
young man came in and parked himself on one of the tables near the room window. He
crossed his arms, looked at the screen and narrowed his eyes to have a clear look at the
paused feature-film and said without looking at me, “Humein kyun nahi bulaya gaya
bhyi? Hum bhi dekhein sab kya dekh rahe hain (meaning: Why have we (or I) not been
invited to this? I also want to watch what everyone is watching)”. The authoritative tone

123 See section on methodology in chapter one for more discussion on the film screening at the ITI

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of his statement further fed into the unease of the women. I told him, “If it were meant
for you, you would have been certainly invited. I have permission from your principal”.
When he did not budge, I said, “We have very little time today and I need to finish my
discussion (with the women). Could you please wait for some time and we can talk later?”
He still did not leave. This time, he looked at me. Nobody else spoke to him except me,
not even the two women instructors who were present. He said, “If it is being held here
(at the campus), I want to know about it. You are the one who has come from outside”. I
asked him to take it up with the principal and encouraged everyone to leave the room
since the man was making it difficult for my participants to watch the film. It is at that
moment that he left. As soon as he left, I could sense the disquiet and a reduced interest
in watching the film. After he left, two of my participants explained to me that he teaches
on one of the other courses for electricians and wire-fitters at the same institute. I
wondered if it was his sincere concern as a teacher that made him do this. However, a
conversation with the principal later on revealed that the man already knew about the
screening and the principal had explained it to the whole staff so as to avoid any
disruptions during the screening. The young man’s attempt to disrupt the screening was,
therefore, deliberate. Such a scenario would be unimaginable if the situation were
reversed in that setting, i.e., if there was a room full of men watching a film in the village,
a woman could not simply walk in knowingly. If she did, she would be met with glares,
shouts, and unwelcoming comments. This dynamic between the social behaviour of men
and women was confirmed by one of my hosts (52) when I told her about the incident.
She was not surprised at all, and told me:

Beta, if four (several) men in the village are talking to each other, how can the girls go and just
start talking amidst them? God knows what they might be watching.

The privacy of the menfolk was not an easy territory to invade, unlike women’s. In his
paper on the (limited) effect of cultural globalisation in India in the early 2000s, Steve
Derné pointed out that “the effects of cultural changes in media on non-elite men have
been limited because the institutional arrangements these men live with and the
institutional constraints that they face have changed little in recent years” (2005:34). My
own experience in the field and otherwise was in alignment with Derné’s above
assessment. His argument also confirmed Ann Swidler’s explanation that cultural
“consistencies across individuals come less from common inculcation by cultural

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authorities than from the common dilemmas institutional life poses in a given society.
Not shared indoctrination but shared life-structuring institutions create the basis for a
common culture” (2001:176). By institutional arrangements, Derné referred to an
existing social order that existed in the form of joint family setups, arranged marriage,
and established gender relations. As discussed in my earlier chapter reviewing the
literature, his study was on men living in Dehradun (a town in North India). Earlier
scholarly accounts of women in joint-family setups (Kakar, 1981; Obeyesekere, 1984),
living within the confines of a caste system (Douglas, 1966:124-125; Ganesh, 1989) were
still relevant as of 2017.124 My (limited) data on men’s attitudes towards women’s film
consumption found resonance with the accounts of the same in Derné’s study (2005). My
interactions with men and detailed ones with women about men’s role in their film
consumption gave me an indication of the rules that govern women’s film consumption.
Below, an excerpt from Derné’s (2005) article explains this:

Some men seem to enjoy their exclusive use of cinema-hall public spaces, while emphasizing how
this contrasts with women’s home-based lives. Tahsin, a married 25-year-old, describes his
compelling attraction (chaska) to Hindi film as so strong that he sees at least two movies a week,
but he proudly relates that his wife is so “home loving (gharelu) that she even objects to seeing
movies with her own husband.” For Tahsin, the cinema hall is a place that men enjoy, while
women should remain at home. Tahsin doesn’t watch television at home much. “It’s for women
and children,” he says.

(2005:38)

Derné’s ethnographic data gave various examples of men’s attitude of towards women’s
film consumption. Although the men he interviewed were from a city, unlike Narwal, the
attitude of these men was close to those I observed in Narwal. Films were for men and
television dramas were for women.

Hailing from urban North India myself, I observed fundamental differences between the
film consumption patterns of women in urban and rural society in north India. The
examples with which I began this chapter, Anu and Kanchan’s, show the attitudes of men
who act as gatekeepers of media, especially of films, for women. My observations
indicated that such exclusion of women from the media and communication discourse is

124 My own experience confirms this. For a detailed discussion on marriages being arranged within the caste, see
(Chaudhry, 2016:42)

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a preemptive tactic employed by men in their broader struggle for control over women’s
lives.

Like women in most of rural North India, the majority of women in Narwal are financially
dependent on men, discouraged from working full-time outside their homes, and
expected to cater to household needs with unquestioning devotion. As Rehana’s mother
pointed out:

I keep explaining this to both of them (my daughters), that once you get married, then you can do
what your heart tells you. You can roam around with your husband, can go wherever you want,
can do whatever you want to do. Then you will know better, and your husband (can decide). But
the reality of life is, bitti [darling daughter], once you get married, then it is all about mother-in-
law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, children…Then whatever your in-laws want, you will have to
live accordingly. They will think that whatever roaming-around you had to do, you must/should
have already done that in your childhood before marriage. Then (post-marriage) it will be time to
look after the household, there are hundreds of tasks every day. Life is not about having fun [Mauj
masti zindagi thodi na hai].

Rehana’s mother summed up the general idea about women’s way of living in this part
of India. This greatly affected their media consumption practices too.

This also reminds me of Patricia and Roger Jeffery’s account of women’s everyday lives
in another village in Uttar Pradesh (1996). Here is how they outlined the lives of women
before and after their marriage:

Throughout a girl’s childhood, her parents would prepare her for her inevitable marriage, for she
was “someone else’s property” [paraya dhan], a temporary resident in her parents’ house and
destined to live elsewhere. Their love for her would be reflected in their concern that her
upbringing ensured that she was sufficiently tamed and domesticated to become an acceptable
bride and one who would fit in with her in-laws’ ways…[..]…Her activities would be monitored
in an attempt to ensure that she had no sexual liaison before her marriage.

(1996:6)

Transgressive habits or desires of the daughters ought to have been monitored by the
parents lest the in-laws pin the blame on the girl’s natal kin for her culturally corrupt
conduct. An avid film consumer would not make for an ideal daughter-in-law, and my
observations, particularly the significations of filmi, confirmed this. Keeping this in mind,
I will now focus on specific attitudes and concerns of the village residents towards
women’s film consumption as well as their media use in general.

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6.2.1 Safety concerns around women’s media use

Mansi, an 18-year-old student, shared her experience about her brother’s filmgoing
adventures:

My brother goes…to Kanpur and all where all the new movies are being screened…something
like once in two weeks…The city is too chaotic [bahut bheed-bhaad] …my parents are afraid of
sending me there because it is not safe [surakshit] for girls.

The concern for safety of women is a valid one here as the city is far away. Hence, even
when the young men of the family visit the cities for occupational and recreational
purposes, women stay back in the village. I observed that, in the cases where young
women did travel outside Narwal, going there for the purpose of watching a film is not
acceptable. I remember the reaction of the wife (52) of a host when I asked her if she
would accompany me to Kanpur to watch a film. She looked at me amazed and amused,
and said, “Sheher? Film dekhne? Akele?” (meaning: City? To watch a film? Alone?).
This was considered an urban activity that was still outside the norm in the village, as I
explained in the previous chapters.

Sneha, a 22-year-old schoolteacher, told me:

Didi, I do not use my real photograph in WhatsApp anyway. I usually check WhatsApp on my
father’s or brother’s phone. They also feel that unknown boys might call and annoy (harass) me
[pareshaan karenge]

There were very few women in Narwal (between the ages of 18-24) who uploaded their
actual photographs publicly as their profile pictures on WhatsApp messenger. It was not
deemed acceptable to put themselves (in this case, their actual photographs) ‘on display’
publicly. The impermissibility of public display of their real photograph was
characteristic of women’s usage of social media in this setting. It was considered to be
borderline promiscuous behaviour, as though she was asking for attention and therefore,
for trouble [yeh sab karengi, toh aur kya hoga].

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6.2.2 Rules guiding women’s media use within households

Women were expected to live within the understood norms even when it came to
engagement with films and other media within the household. Shivani, a 46-year-old
tailor, said:

It is almost impossible [naa ke barabar] for me to watch television in my house. There are so
many people in the house, how will I (watch)? My son watches it during the day and my husband
in the evening/night. Rest…the (older) members do not like it if I watch TV with my husband.
Immediately their eyebrows are raised [bhauyein tan jaati hain] …It does not look good in front
of the elders, no?

The older men and women in the family set the domestic guidelines for women younger
than them, who may be daughters, daughters-in-law, wives, sisters, and sisters-in-law.125
In terms of these younger women’s film consumption, it was either limited or dependent
on men and children (mostly sons, sometimes daughters). Even within a household where
there were as many or more women than men, television was not a ‘personal’ medium
for them unless they were at home alone. Swati, a 20-year-old college student, shared:

I enjoy dancing to film songs, but I do it when no one is around to see me at home. If my father
came to know about it, he would be furious that I am wasting time on useless [bekaar] activities.

A commonly understood premise by the community was that media devices and
entertainment content were a waste of time (samay ki barbaadi) for women and had a
corrupting influence on them engaging them in a world that they were not encouraged to
pursue. I observed several people, mostly men and old women (above 60), dismissing the
use of media as an ‘undesirable activity’ (anishtha) for women belonging to a ‘reputable
household’ (achhe ghar ki), such as in the case of the brother who was unwilling to buy
a smartphone for his sister citing safety and moral concerns [ulti-seedhi baat badhegi].

For some women, using or even seeing a computer was a rare occasion due to poor
financial conditions of their household. A male child or adult belonging to a poor
household would not necessarily be deprived of this privilege, as they would gain access
to computers through friends or other sources. In the case of Radha (42), her husband
described her as a woman belonging to an extremely poor household in another

125 ‘Older women’ refers to mothers, mothers-in-law or sisters-in-law

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downtrodden village before she married him. To me, his tone seemed disparaging. He
said:

(You) just understand…the place where she comes from does not even have a post-office. Only
after coming here has she seen the world. Before she got married (to me), she had not even seen
a computer. Imagine, there was nothing in her village [kuchho nahi tha inke gaon mein]. Bitti, I
have heard that you have come to do research here? Take her interview too… [Then he turned
towards his wife and spoke] …Tell her everything truthfully. Whatever she asks, answer it [Jo
puchein uska jawaab dena].

Radha’s husband described her lack of access to a computer as something she was
deprived of before her marriage to him. His tone suggested that he was aiming to appease
me rather than talking about an aspect of his wife’s life. Radha was silent and looked at
him, and then down. He continued, “I have work, you can talk to her. Whatever you ask
her, she will answer (respond to) everything”. The dynamics of their relationship, in that
moment, prompted me to wonder whether he had already spoken to Radha about me,
since he knew I was conducting research in Narwal. He reiterated the word ghareeb
(poor) several times in relation to Radha and hinted at her less privileged background as
her qualification to be a ‘subject’ of my research. Shortly after, he left for work and Radha
did not refer to his comments about her to me in our subsequent conversation. Men, in
their limited conversations with me about the women in Narwal, often opined that women
in their households ‘just sit idle all day and watch TV’. Radha’s husband said the same
to me in another conversation I had with him on another day. Some men (among my hosts
and interlocutors) indicated that it is in women’s interests that they do not watch ‘too
much film and television’ simply because these days, ‘TV and films have frivolous [faltu/
ulta seedha] content, and nothing useful [matlab ka]’. This attitude has an important
bearing on women’s access to media – and especially film – as I discuss in the next
section. Men used morally loaded arguments to justify their purchase of media gadgets
as an investment for the household [ghar ke hi kaam ayega]. This inevitably led to a
situation where the control of the media technology was in the hands of men, leaving
women to be largely dependent on men. This was not just the case in Narwal. For
instance, in March 2017, according to an NDTV News report (NDTV.com, 2017),
Mandora’s Village Council in Uttar Pradesh announced that women seen talking on cell-
phones in public would be fined Rupees 21,000 (GBP 245).126 This subjugation of

126 Village Mandora is in the same state as Narwal, geographically 585 kms (363 miles) from Narwal

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women is institutionalised not only through the support of, but also as an initiative of, the
local authorities, as in the case of Mandora village.

For most married women, conversations about their media consumption turned into a
detailed narrative of what their husband and children liked to watch/ listen to and how
they did that. It was a difficult task for me to keep the discussion focused on the women,
and it took me a long time to get them talking about what they like. I sensed that a few of
them felt hesitant when I asked questions about film or media, probably due to a fear of
being perceived as too filmi or because they did not want to be seen to be unaware and
backward owing to their restricted and regulated access to media. It might have also been
simply because they had never been asked questions about this aspect of their life before.
Archana, a 32-year-old married woman pursuing a Diploma in stitching and embroidery
at the ITI, shared:

I get to know about everything through him (husband). He and (my) son tell me which films to
watch, which songs to listen to. My son keeps changing my (phone’s) ringtone.

I noted that they were more willing to discuss the media habits of husbands, brothers and
male children (responses to what is being consumed, who likes to watch what, how men
are consuming media and so on), suggesting that men’s media consumption is perceived
by women to be varied and fashionable trendy, while in the eyes of the men I interacted
with, women’s engagement remains limited to phaaltu (useless) entertainment.

6.2.3 Differential barriers in accessing and using technology

While interactions with my participants helped me to find where to look for concentration
of power in terms of media consumption in Narwal, they also revealed some common
notions around the use of technology in general. The engagement of my participants with
Hindi film was technologically driven in certain ways, such as watching films and
listening to film music on laptops or phones and sharing content on smartphones.
Therefore, the ownership as well as the use of technology to access media – and
especially Hindi films – become relevant in examining the nature of the power structure
within which women’s film consumption is situated.

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A study conducted on ICT use in India found that technology was socially contextualised
and gendered, with differential access to and use of ICTs by men and women (Arun,
Heeks and Morgan, 2007:297). The study identified this gender dimension of the ‘digital
divide’ and raised concerns that ICTs will be applied in ways that maintain or even
exacerbate existing gender inequalities (ibid.; Jorge 2002; Marcelle 2002). I sought to
understand this issue in the context of Narwal. The gendered access to and use of
technology helped to maintain the status quo in the village, i.e., men were at the forefront
of any kind of media consumption. The belief that men are predisposed to utilise
technology better than women gave them an edge over females in terms of ownership of
media technology and regulation of film content. Every participant I interacted with
regarding ownership of media technology - such as laptops, smartphones and television
sets - believed that their menfolk are more naturally capable of engaging with media
owing to a need to be ‘aware’ or just for unwinding after a hard day at work.

With competitive distribution and lower broadcasting costs, combined with easy access
to personal and mass media, media and entertainment are being consumed at an
unprecedented rate in rural India today.127 My study also found that the digital revolution
has not trickled down to these village-dwelling women, who are still marginalised in
terms of technology ownership due to the reasons explained above. In all the households
I visited, only the men of the family owned the latest portable media devices and
electronic gadgets. This observation reminded me of Scott’s argument that the “process
of subordination firmly anchored in material practice” (1990:188). However, ownership
is not the only barrier for females. Women who do own mobile phones use either old
phone models or the discarded smartphones of the men in their household. Further, even
the low cost of phones is not an incentive for women to purchase them because they do
not have the authority to make decisions regarding such purchases within the household.
I used Kanchan’s example at the start of this chapter and am reproducing a part of that
interaction below to discuss the arguments used by her brother. Kanchan, who designed
and stitched clothes taking inspirations from film actresses, expressed her desire for a
smartphone in a conversation with me and her mother. She wanted to capture and share
photographs of her work with her friends and family members. Her elder brother, who

127 See (Aneja, 2018) for the detailed report

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owned two Samsung smartphones himself, immediately interjected and invalidated any
need for her to own one. His reasoning was this:

I myself spend a lot of time on Whatsapp and Facebook. It is very bad for women...[..]…If I buy
her a phone, then she will demand an internet connection. I do not want her to waste her time
unnecessarily. It is much better this way. What if something untoward [unch-neech] happens
tomorrow? There are all kinds of people here.

This interaction was similar to other instances where men were apprehensive about the
extent and content of media consumption by women, and therefore, labelled the lack of
ownership as ‘good’ and ‘safe’ for women. A concern for their safety often only existed
in the case of their film - or more broadly their media - consumption. For instance, on
another day, there was a second conversation between Kanchan’s brother and me. He
asked, “I am thinking of getting a job in Delhi”, to which I responded, “If you go to Delhi,
who will take care of your younger sister here?” He said proudly, “These days girls are
very smart. Now she has grown up, she handles the whole household on her own”. This
comment was from a brother who believed his ‘younger’ sister is grown enough to handle
the everyday life in the village and was confident that she would manage things when he
was away but felt uncomfortable about buying a smartphone for her. The men’s fear for
the safety of their women in several cases became an umbrella belief underneath which
there were some genuine safety concerns and some that arose due to attitudinal opposition
to women’s media consumption (and power).

An effort to acquire media technology by females is also deemed unnecessary because of

the notion that such an investment will not yield any economic benefit in the case of
women. In terms of household investment, laptops in Narwal were increasingly being
prioritised instead of television sets as an investment for the future. However, as Binti
(19) pointed out:

Computers only came/ are bought for sons. Bhaiya (elder brother) or chacha (paternal uncle) know
how to use it. Only they (the men) use it. It is important for their work (job).

While a few teenaged girls and young women received computer education in the only
institute in Narwal, they did not own that equipment, thereby making it difficult for them

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to enhance their knowledge of computers beyond basic functionality.128 It was not just at
the level of the household or training institute that women were not able to engage with
technology as much as men. They were also absent as customers at the locally existing
‘computer shops’ in the village. As described in chapters three and four, these shops had
a repository of downloaded film music, video clips, and feature films. It was only men
who went outside of the household for the purpose of downloading or buying films and
songs on memory sticks that were topped up with the latest content by the shop workers.
In my conversation with the young man (~25 years) running the computer shop, he
pointed to the absence of female customers in his shop. He shared:

We (his co-workers at the shop) download content that will be liked by everyone. We keep all the
latest popular films…We do not keep different [alag type ki] films…I usually ask the boys (here
in the village)…they tell me what is the latest and what people want to see…What is the point if
no one likes it? All these boys know more than me, what films are releasing, what music videos
are popular…I just download what everyone likes.

I asked him, “(What) everyone likes? This is great, brother. Even girls and mothers and
everyone?”, to which he responded after a brief pause, “Yes”. This young man knew that
it was mostly men who were his customers and catered to their choices. Some of the men
I spoke to confirm his statement about downloading whatever his customers ask him to.
The man running the shop believed that if women wanted to watch/ listen to something,
they could convey it to their brothers, sons or husbands, and they in turn would then ask
him to download the content. He did not see men as barriers or deterrents to women’s
film consumption. Rather, he saw them as a bridge between the film and its female
audience. This was exemplified when he said, “My sister tells me, ‘Bhaiya, I want to
watch this film’, and I bring (download) it for her. She likes film songs more”. This tells
us three things, if what he said about his sister was true.129 First, there were females who
actively sought to engage with Hindi films. Second, the fact that men stored and
distributed film content had a strong implication for women’s film use. Finally, despite
the final approval being that of the men (in terms of access and content), women were
pushing these boundaries as far as they could in this context, in terms of their film
consumption. The question I faced then was this: How did this expansion of women’s

128 There were 20 girls out of 80 students in the entire batch. See chapter three for details about the institute
129 I had seen brothers and male children sometimes lobbying for women’s media use in the family, and hence, I chose
to consider this man’s statement

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boundaries take place? What did this changing dynamic say about the significance of
women’s film consumption? I address these questions in later sections in this chapter.
Before that, I want to draw on my participants’ responses about their own film
consumption, as discussed in the previous chapter. My conversations with them
suggested that the underlying rationale of men about women’s film engagement was
largely this: If women’s participation in film-related activities increases, it may give them
‘undesirable’ and ‘unrealistic’ ideas about their roles as women living in a traditional
village setting, i.e., lying outside the domain of their everyday reality.

Even if women did acquire ownership of the media technology that would enable them
to consume their preferred film forms, the cost of maintaining that technology had to be
borne by the women themselves. If that hurdle was crossed, then it was the film content
that the men objected to. As I understood it, the barriers to women’s film use were
differential. Television consumption by women within the household was not considered
by men in the same way as these women’s film-use. The fundamental concern was that
women might go beyond the mundanity of the kitchen politics shown in TV soap operas
and be exposed to ideas that lay outside the realm of their everyday experience, such as
those propagated in Hindi films.130 Numerous mainstream Hindi films have been
criticised for reinforcing gender stereotypes, thus reproducing the same structural
arrangements. As discussed at length by Wimal Dissanayake and K.M. Gokulsing two
decades ago (1998), the representations of women in popular Hindi cinema were often
sketched around these four roles: ideal wife, ideal mother, the vamp, and the courtesan
(Dissanayake and Gokulsing, 1998:7). These roles and constructions of women are
reflected in numerous popular Hindi films even now. Ramasubramanian and Oliver
(2003), in their study on portrayals of sexual violence in popular Hindi films from 1997-
99, conducted an exploratory content analysis which suggested that moderate sexual
violence is depicted as fun, enjoyable, and a normal expression of romantic love in
popular Hindi films, where victims were more likely to be women rather than men, and
sexual violence committed by heroes was a common portrayal, particularly moderate
violence such as harassment of women with whom the heroes ultimately became
romantically involved (Ramasubramanian and Oliver, 2003:1). Both of the
aforementioned studies were published some years ago (1998 and 2003) and the Hindi
film industry has taken many new directions since then. The non-transgressive

130 I have compared women’s television consumption with their use of Hindi films in the previous chapter

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representations of women on screen still exist but this has been challenged by many
popular Hindi films. Some of them referred to by my participants were Chak De! India
(2007), Kahani (2012), English Vinglish (2012), Queen (2013), and Pink (2016). These
were extremely popular films and most of my participants aged below 40 had watched at
least one of them. However, women wanting to watch films like Pink (2016) that showed
explicit and disturbing images of sexual assault, were discouraged by men from doing so.
During the screening of Pink that I organised, a young woman (22) said, “My (elder)
brother told me not to watch this. He has watched it, so he told me it is not worth watching
for me [hamare dekhne layak nahi hai]”. The reason for my participant’s brother
discouraging her might have been to protect her from viewing images depicting sexual
abuse. I cannot say that with certainty based on her comment. However, my point here
concerns the choices women have; access to Hindi films is largely an activity of the
privileged gender in the village.

The lack of ownership of media technology was a primary factor affecting how women
engage with media, and consequently with Hindi films, but as I mentioned earlier, it was
not the only barrier for women. This is an aspect that the NGO and government
development programmes on gender and communication may want to explore in greater
depth. Research projects by international organisations like BBC Media Action, among
others, periodically publish reports about mobile apps for women’s health, education and
skills and claim that the village women benefit from these.131 However, in my experience
as a field researcher, I did not find a single woman using such a mobile app for this
purpose. Any social messaging in such villages is mostly still done through the Indian
public broadcaster or through on-the-ground interaction.132 However, I did find that
mobile apps like Filmora were being used by women aged 18-25 in order to create their
own little films and images, as a form of self-expression.133 Such acts of transgression
made these young women producers of cultural content, thereby challenging the status
quo, but an overall examination of the use of film and other mass media suggested that
men were at the top of the power hierarchy due to their complete control over ownership

131 For an example, see report - “Design thinking and health communication: learning from failure” (URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mediaactioninsight/entries/bbf66eff-b109-4f14-8cd9-8473442a7da9).
132 By social messaging I refer to public-service-based television shows and social advertisements.
133 I discuss this at greater length in a later section. This discussion was also initiated in chapters three, four and five.

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of media technology. Women’s use of film and media was still considered to be an act of
transgression in the village.

6.2.4 Women’s social position in public spaces within the village

Political content in the media, such as the national news or a discussion of national
politics, was still viewed as the domain of men in the village. The men in the village had
more ingress into public spaces of political discussion than the women – such as local
teashops, banks, local administrative workplaces – thereby often acting as political
influencers and opinion leaders for women. This did not mean that women were
completely absent in workplaces or public spaces. Parmeswaran (2001) drew on Altorki
and Fawzi El-Solh (1988) to describe gender segregation in modern India, which also fits
my own observation in Narwal, as a “less stringent bifurcation of social life, whereby
women venture into public spaces and participate in numerous male spheres but must
nevertheless observe real or decorous distance from men” (Altorki and Fawzi El-Solh,
1988:5 as cited in Parmeswaran, 2001:83). This was precisely the reason why Anu (at the
start of this chapter) wanted to ensure appropriate distance from the classroom where
boys had gathered to attend a class, before starting an intimate conversation with me.
Greater access to discussions on socio-political and economic affairs of everyday life
consequently gave men the upper hand over women in everyday decision-making about
media consumption, and more specifically film consumption. If even the basic political
communication was regulated for women, considering unregulated film consumption by
women was a far-fetched possibility. But with changing modalities of film engagement
by women, was men’s control over this loosening? I observed the status quo as well as
transgressions within the village in my research. Largely, the reality of gendered
consumption reinforces the fact that access to media – and especially films – in everyday
life strengthens the dominant voice in the village (men’s) while rendering the other half
(women) less visible.

Even when women were present in spaces of political importance in the village, it was
not guaranteed to raise women’s social position there. To explain this point, I recall my
interaction with a woman at the helm of the village’s administrative affairs who exercised
self-censorship in exerting her political power. The elected village-head of Narwal at the
time of my field work was a young woman born and brought up in Kanpur city. She held

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an MA degree in Sociology. An in-depth interview with her gave me an insight into the
day-to-day working of the local administration through the eyes of a woman holding the
most important office in the rural governance. At the time of my meeting, she was living
in Kanpur at her parents’ house. She was pleasant, intelligent and articulate. In the
previous election term, it was her father-in-law who had won an elected seat and was the
village head for two terms. This time, the seat was reserved for a female as per the Indian
constitutional setup for village-level administration. Hence, it was ‘understood’ within
her family that she would stand for election, and the election campaign was openly
backed by the previous village-head, her own father-in-law. Her contestation, and
subsequent detachment from village affairs, was not objected to by anyone in Narwal,
according to her. She explained how she had only a small role to play in the civil and
criminal cases concerning the village:

Now, will I sit there to resolve the civil and criminal cases of the menfolk? I just sign the papers
and papa (father-in-law) handles the rest. He has a lot of experience, and he has been (involved)
in the district matters from the start, it will not be difficult for him to do all this.

She also told me that she took interest in the matters raised by women, such as domestic
violence and health issues, but she seldom went to the village herself for this. Her husband
was in the armed forces and she lived in the city for half the year. Despite being in a
position to wield authority, she did not demonstrate any real power or independence in
matters of village administration. She added, “Women can come and tell me about the
problems they face. But I can only help them so much, and for the rest I convey the issues
to my papa (father-in-law) for him to tackle (the issues)”. Her situation had an important
bearing on my understanding of the gender power relations within the village. Her
involvement (or lack thereof) reinforced men’s social and political position as being more
powerful than that of the women. As a city dweller, her own use of media, however, was
varied and not restrictive in terms of access. From watching news and soap operas on
television and using WhatsApp messenger on her smartphone without many restrictions,
to listening to music on her phone and on television or going out to watch films with her
family members, her life was starkly different from her counterparts in the village that
she notionally headed.

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6.3 A moment of change: Forms of everyday resistance and
negotiations
Women’s engagement with media, especially Hindi films, can be understood as a
microcosm of existing gender relations in Narwal. The trend of women’s unequal relation
to technology has been observed by many other scholars in the context of other
developing countries. As noted by Arun, Heeks and Morgan, “gender relations often
determine the use and impact of technologies” (2007:298). In my field work too, I
observed that new technologies were driving social change in the existing gender
relations in addition to a (gradual) change in the socio-economic condition of women.
More female children were being sent to school as compared to ten years ago (as reflected
by the records in schools), more young women are attaining higher education than before,
acquiring stitching and knitting skills at the ITI, learning to operate computer systems at
the local institute, operating WhatsApp on smartphones, teaching children in primary and
secondary schools in the village, watching Hindi music videos on YouTube to acquire
choreographic skills, and so on. In other words, they are acquiring more social capital
(Bourdieu, 1986). This is part of a larger process of social and cultural change that is
taking place in the way women live their everyday lives in the village. However, this
change is gradual, contradictory, and complex in nature.

The gender power structure continues to exert a strong influence on women’s Hindi film
consumption, but as I noted during my stay in Narwal, there were instances where women
of various age groups deviated from their expected behaviour and either negotiated,
questioned, or resisted the impositions on their direct/indirect film consumption. The
question that emerged from my observations was this: Can we say that gatekeeping of
women’s film use has slowly started to weaken due to women questioning men’s control
over their film, or more broadly, media consumption?

Instances of women carrying out such negotiations or deviations were not openly
confrontational and generally occurred under constraints. For instance, when Rehana (19)
bought a smartphone without her parents’ knowledge, she understood that she had broken
a norm.134 She knew she was not supposed to possess that phone and yet she could not
resist the pleasure of engaging with her favourite film music videos on YouTube. I

134 Refer to chapter three, section four, for details of this interaction

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noticed her negotiation with the patriarchal norms as she not only hid it from her parents
but also from her older brother. Such a strategy can be understood as a ‘bargain with
patriarchy’, a term coined by Turkish sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti (1988). As Kandiyoti
explained:

Women strategize within a set of concrete constraints, which I identify as patriarchal bargains.
Different forms of patriarchy present women with distinct ‘rules of the game’ and call for different
strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or
passive resistance in the face of oppression.

(Kandiyoti, 1988:1)

Anu (18), whose love for Hindi film songs began this chapter, smiled coyly when I
appreciated her singing, but at the same time, she also said:

I know a lot of songs and I am fond of films [shauk hai], but father or my elder brother never take
me to Kanpur to watch films. They say I should not waste my time with all this when I should be
studying and doing work at home…I have never even asked them to take me.

I understood her love for memorising the latest film songs as both an expression of
resistance (she was proud of her ability to memorise and sing film songs despite being
asked to stay away from ‘wasting her time’ on films) as well as acceptance of the status
quo (not being able to watch films in the theatre) at the same time. This was the kind of
negotiation or ‘patriarchal bargain’ (Kandiyoti, 1988) that other women also made on an
everyday basis to nurture their liking for Hindi films. Even during our conversation that
took place outside her home and away from her parents, Anu requested to move to a
different room so that the boys could not hear her sing.135 Such everyday dilemmas,
silences, failures, and little victories of women in consuming Hindi films, were pushing,
even if slowly, towards an erosion of norms that were once impossible for women to
break. I wanted to understand if it was the Hindi film itself that was influencing their
negotiations, or the rise of the technology and increased acquisition of social capital
(Bourdieu, 1986) that was popularising Hindi film consumption among my participants

135 As described in this chapter’s introduction

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in this manner. Maybe it was something completely different, or maybe a combination of
the above.136

In his noted book Weapons of the Weak (1985), James C. Scott argued persuasively in
the context of peasants and factory workers in a Malaysian village that resistance is most
often rooted in everyday material goals rather than revolutionary consciousness. His
attention to detail in his conception of resistance was useful in analysing the responses of
my participants who shared instances of their transgressive behaviour by narrating stories
of their everyday lives. Scott (1985) also warned against overestimating what everyday
resistance is capable of and advocated recognising the complex lives most people lead
(also see Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996). Therefore, discerning what is resistance and what is
not was no easy analytical task. In their study on the everyday lives of women in a North
Indian village, Jeffery and Jeffery argued:

Typically, such (everyday) forms of resistance are spontaneous and individual rather than highly
organised social rebellions. They are generally mundane rather than spectacular challenges to the
status quo, avoiding open confrontation rather than being revolutionary. They often entail
subterfuge and secrecy. They might seem devious and underhand to the powers that be. They are
also likely to be rather elusive for the transient researcher. Incontrovertibly, however, this is
important material to document, for portraying subordinates simply as passive and obedient can
provide only a seriously lopsided account of social order.

(Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996:15)

In the following sections of this chapter, I cite instances which, I felt, disrupted the status
quo of women’s film engagement and in some way, fit the narrative of everyday
resistance as theorised by Scott (1985). Here, I do not claim to be sketching a grand
narrative of a social or cultural overhaul in the village, but I put together instances that
indicate conflict and negotiation by my participants. My analysis is inflected by incidents
that revealed my participants’ own prejudices about other women within the village, and
outside of it, including the actresses depicted in Hindi films. Hence, even the instances
that I describe, of questioning the status quo, carry within themselves certain
contradictions that challenge the image of a neatly characterised social change.

136 I recognise that there were personality and age differences within my participants’ group, apart from their socio-
economic positions within the village. However, the popularity of Hindi films among the women in this village
exhibited some common influences on my participants and what I am presenting in my thesis is a study of film
consumption as a broad social trend of women’s film habits.

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6.3.1 Negotiation through the use of multiple modes of film engagement

As we have seen, the advent of technology has weakened the patriarchal control over
women’s lives to some extent, as the use of multifarious modes of film engagement has
catalysed the instances where women feel they can break the norms of their film
consumption. Women in the village are now closely in touch with Hindi film culture,
which was earlier dominated by men. Even if women cannot visit the city to watch films
or view them with their husbands on television in joint family settings, they engage with
films in different ways that cannot be completely controlled by men. This happens due
to the ‘textually disintegrated’ (Allen, 2011) nature of film consumption.137 In particular,
there was little viewership of films in Achala’s (19) case, as she watched only two or
three full-length feature films a year on television. But she fostered her film-use through
other modes simultaneously. She knew the names of almost all the contemporary Hindi
film actors, actresses and the latest box-office hits of Bollywood. She enjoyed listening
to film music on her phone’s radio and brought up the names of several films that she
either read about in newspapers or heard songs of in recent times. She combined the (i)
content (music, film related interviews) on radio with (ii) her reading of film-related
sections in newspapers and (iii) recommendations of songs from friends, constituting her
knowledge of a particular film. Combining multiple forms of consumption, Achala
shared:

Whenever a new song plays on the radio, I memorise/remember the name of the song and the film
if it is mentioned (on the radio) … If the song is new, then the newspapers must be having
something (information) about the new film it is from – where it is playing, and who the hero is.
The whole story (plotline) of a film can be read about in the newspapers, including the cinema
hall where it is playing, so neither is there any pressing need for me to watch the films nor have I
the time.

The examples cited above led me to question the role of technology in enabling women
to challenge the rules that govern their media usage. To explain how useful this
multimodal consumption is for my participants, I draw on Bakshi and Sarkar’s
observation about their rural and semi-urban participants:

137 See chapter three for a discussion on various modes of consumption of Hindi films by women, where I also discuss
Allen’s (2011) ‘textually disintegrated’ phenomenon of media consumption

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 They also observed that this incessant promotion and word-of-mouth communication often made
them visit the YouTube channel of that particular movie. As for the older respondents, none of
them were into buying recent releases but the old classics were collector’s items for them. The
new releases are collected in their laptops, or mobile devices through sharing. Even people without
Internet access were not buying [conventional CD-DVD style of] music.

(2015:148)

This observation indicates that even within the consumption of one mode of film (its
music), there were differentiations such as consuming music online, on mobile phones,
laptops, and so on. Therefore, using different modes of film consumption meant a much
more complex film consumption. This was useful for my participants of all age groups.
However, a technologically deterministic approach provides an incomplete account of
their film and other media consumption. The social constraints as described in the
previous section ensured that the ownership of technology itself was restricted for
women. I do not wish to exaggerate the role played by technology, but I want to point
out that once my participants decided to do so, the technology enabled them to a large
extent.

6.3.2 Away from the watchful eyes: Consuming film through print medium

Women’s engagement with Hindi newspapers, their supplements and magazines, has not
so far been the object of scholarly discussion on private media consumption in non-urban
social spaces. The supplements of national newspapers in India are localised and mostly
styled and fashioned as tabloids. They not only carry film reviews, plot summaries,
celebrity news, interviews, features, upcoming film information, film-fashion reviews
and gossip, but also show timings for film releases. The newspapers and their
supplements in Narwal are mostly in Hindi. The most widely circulated ones are
Hindustan, Dainik Jagran, and Amar Ujala. These carry localised content at the city level
and Kanpur papers are circulated in nearby villages like Narwal. Since they are primarily
aimed at readers in Kanpur, the papers publish show timings of the latest Bollywood as
well as Hollywood films running in cinema halls there.

Hindustan newspaper’s popular weekly supplement is named ‘Movie Magic’. Here are a
few samples of its front pages and a feature article in this supplement that provides
glimpses of its content:

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224
Figure 6.1 Front page of 'Movie Magic' newspaper supplement - 01 (©Hindustan Times Media Group, source:
htmedia.in)

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Figure 6.2 Front page of 'Movie Magic' newspaper supplement - 02 (©Hindustan Times Media Group, source:
htmedia.in)

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Figure 6.3 Third page of ‘Movie Magic' newspaper supplement (©Hindustan Times Media Group, source:
htmedia.in)

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Supplements (both daily and weekly) carrying extensive coverage of the Hindi film
industry are a common feature in all the national newspapers that are circulated in
Narwal. I noted that while reading film-related material in these supplements, women did
not attract a lot of attention from men as compared to them using mobile phones,
television or laptops. This is because men no longer consider newspapers and radio to be
transgressions from the everyday culture. Digital technology is now the corrupting
[bhrasht] influence. I noted several women flipping through newspapers, especially the
colourful supplements, in their homes during the afternoons, which led me to think that
reading newspapers and magazines is certainly not regulated in the strict manner that the
newer forms of media are.

Naazneen (34) looked forward to reading these supplements as often as she could, which
was once every two or three days, quickly slipping them out from the folds of the main
newspaper, once her husband and children left for work and school. It was not that she
thought she had to keep her interest in these supplements a secret from her husband, but
she preferred to browse through them when she was alone: “When he (husband) and
children are around at home, when (how) can I read it? …He never said anything if and
when I read it, but I feel odd myself [ajeeb lagta hai]”. I wanted to talk to her about the
off-screen lives of actors and actresses who featured in the newspaper she was reading. I
learnt that she particularly looked for film-related news and interviews of Hindi film
actors, especially Salman Khan and Ajay Devgn. She said, “I like reading about what is
going on (in the film world). I just like it, what else [aur kya]. I get to know about all the
films”. Similar to Naazneen, for whom reading film-related content in newspaper
supplements was pleasurable, there were other women who turned to newspapers in order
to delve into the world of Hindi cinema and its glamour whilst being fully aware of their
own everyday reality. All but two of the middle-aged women in my study denied reading
newspaper supplements. I came to know that they read them through the younger women
in their family who were candid about it. A young participant aged 19 mentioned in a
casual conversation about her sisters-in-law and mother skimming through it when they
got time. This remark was immediately met with scorn and an instant reaction from her
mother present there, who retorted, “When have you seen me reading that? You are lying.
I just wanted to find out what you and your sisters-in-law keep reading all day”. I did not
succeed in understanding the popularity of newspaper supplements among the middle-
aged women through conversations with them, but indirect references to them made by

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younger female family members proved how fiercely protective the older women were
about their personal preferences when it came to conversations about consuming film
through stardom, celebrity engagement, and content that is typically associated with
‘foreign countries’ [bahar videsh mein sab chalta hai, hamare yahan aise kapde nahi
pehenta koi roz mein].138

6.3.3 Strategies within the household

Wives, sisters, and mothers sometimes requested the husbands, brothers, and sons to
access films, songs, film-video clips, and film ringtones. I spent an afternoon in
Santoshi’s (64) house when her three sons were at work, and the rest of the family
members were at home. Out of her nine family members, five were females. She had
three daughters-in-law [bahus], a granddaughter and a grandson. Sushila (28), the
youngest bahu, was the most talkative and had an eight-year-old son who was excited to
show me his new gadget, a low-cost neon-green smartwatch. Although just eight, he was
adept at using the technological features of his smartwatch as well as Sushila’s
smartphone, which he mostly kept with him during the day. Sushila told me that her son
had to be ‘bribed’ (rishwat deke karwana padta hai) in order to upload videos for her
onto her own phone. She told me, pointing towards him, that he was a ‘good son’ (raja
beta) who helped his mother watch devotional videos, bhajans and occasionally, a few
Hindi films.139 The last one she saw was Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015). She said that
she would have preferred to watch television but due to constraints (she hinted at her
other family members through her eyes), she has to rely on her son and his knowledge of
operating her smartphone. She said:

You see didi, if only I could watch television in the afternoon, it would have been badhiya (great).
We pay so much for the cable TV and we have a good television (set), but there is no electricity.
I cannot watch anything when I want. The cable TV charges are a waste for me then, as I get time
for TV only in the afternoon, and in the afternoon, there is no power [batti-gul]. This (TV) is only
(useful) for everyone else.

When compared with men’s claims that women have plenty of leisure hours in the
afternoons to rest and watch television, Sushila’s comment suggested that limited

138 Refer to the attached images of the Movie Magic supplement of Hindustan newspaper (figures 6.1, 6.2, 6.3)
139 Bhajans refer to Hindi devotional songs

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availability of electricity in the afternoon hinders women’s media use and favours the
men’s as the usable hours of electric power coincide with men’s media usage. In the
households with power backup, television is not prioritised to be powered by the backup
as it is considered to be a luxury possession, unless men want to use it for watching news.
However, the way she hinted with her facial expression towards her other family
members, it was also likely that she wanted to put part of the blame on them too, for her
not being able to use the television as she wished. It was difficult for me in this case to
know the exact reasons, but drawing on my other interactions, I can say that a joint family
setting was one of the reasons for participants like Sushila not being able to watch films
on television. I suggested watching her favourite TV series on YouTube to her, to which
her response was:

Arrey kahan didi (oh come on didi!) …I am trying to learn the (inter)net. My son sometimes shows
me how to do Google etc…But watching all things on internet is expensive. It is better that I wait
for the electricity timings to change.

Her response indicated that within households, women find it useful to collaborate with
their sons (or in some cases, other male members) to access films and other media.140

This kind of collaboration mostly happens because knowledge of using mobile phones
and laptops for everyday film use is not common among my participants. I wish to
reiterate my point about differential barriers to women’s media use here. If a woman gets
access to a phone, the chances are that it will not be a smartphone; if she gets her own
smartphone, it is likely that she will not be optimising its use; if she uses it, the internet
charges are too high; if she wants to watch the television as a cheap and easy alternative,
there is no electricity during her spare time, and so on. Hence, strategies within
households also include use of a platform like WhatsApp messenger, as they find this
relatively easy to use and to share and receive film content from others without
restrictions such as electricity hours, presence of family members, and so on. I noted that
instead of downloading content online, transferring content from other devices and
watching films on their phones (which was done mostly by sons, brothers), they rely more
on shared content from their family members or female friends. This also hints at the

140 See section 6.2 for a conversation with the young worker at the computer shop who downloads and gets film content
for his sister back home

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possibility of a greater homogeneity in terms of content shared among women, who are
less likely to optimise the features in their smartphones. In other words, at the village
level, the film-related content by women using WhatsApp – music, video clips, mass-
texts, among others – is likely to be similar to other women residents.

Vinita, a 42-year-old mother who ensured that her daughter attained basic computer
education, shared:

I always felt afraid of these wire-electricity things [taar bijli wali cheej]. Computer, phone,
machine, everything. I do not want my daughter to have the same fear. These days, one must know
computers for a good job…[I asked her, “what if she only watches films on that?”]…so what if
she starts to watch films on that, if she likes watching films, she can start learning the computer
from that itself. Those who have computers at home, their sons also watch films day and night.

I asked then, “What does uncle (her husband) say about this?”, to which she responded:

I have not told this to him yet. I will tell him when the time is right. For this, I will make sure that
he is convinced. I will tell (ask) him, do we want our daughter to be illiterate (uneducated); how
will she get a good boy (groom)?

Vinita had not discussed this with her husband, but she had prepared her reasoning. She
was convinced that her rationalisation would work on her husband because the aspect of
their daughter’s marriage would certainly make him agree with her. Vinita did not share
with her husband the way she feels about her lack of confidence with technology, but she
wanted her daughter to engage with the outside world more, and for her, ‘net seekhna’
(learning the internet) would enable this. Vinita was absolutely on board with her
daughter’s love for Hindi films if that would enable her to engage more with technology.

6.3.4 Negotiating through creative production

The ways in which my participants interacted with mobile apps such as Filmora and
WhatsApp, among others, can be understood as cultural productions. This strategy meant
indulging in creative processes through which my participants could use their imaginative
space to see themselves as someone outside of their own reality, in a new realm that has
Hindi film songs playing in the background. I will illustrate this point through a few
examples.

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Women uploading their own photographs on social media networks was mostly restricted
to WhatsApp messenger.141 Here, I will use an example of a WhatsApp display picture
used by one of my participants, Seema (20). The image (figure 6.4) was on her public
profile and was automatically visible to any user of this app who had the phone number
of the device she was using. The image in question was from the popular film Bahubali
(2015), with Hindi text (Devanagari script) placed on the image for contrasting effect.
The text on the image read, “Nadaan hain bahut woh, zara samajhaiye use, baat na karne
se, mohabbat kam nahi hoti”, which translates as:

He is too naïve,

(Someone) make him understand,

That despite (him) not talking (to me),

Our love is not diminished.

141 See section 4.4.4 from where this discussion follows

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Figure 6.4 WhatsApp display picture of my participant, Seema (20) (source: participant’s WhatsApp profile)

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The image portrays an expression of conjugal romance and the text positioned on it could
be understood as implying either a form of admiration for the image or the text, self-
expression, or as a message to someone. In any of these cases, I saw the use of this image
on a public profile as a form of negotiation – borderline rebellion – that was tied up with
women’s basic struggles and conflicts. In the rigid boundaries of their everyday lives,
where even interactions with their own husbands within their home are limited (see
Liddle and Joshi, 1986; Omvedt, 1980:170; Sharma, 1978), a young woman chose to
display an image/text which was not an acceptable form of public communication. There
were other such examples where women’s desires found expression through the use of
films and their images. Seema shared, “Didi, now you see, we cannot use our own
photographs, so I thought maybe I will put something that I like. Then they (people) will
know this is me when they see me in WhatsApp”. I read Seema’s act as borderline
rebellious because she used an openly ‘suggestive’ image in response to the restriction
imposed on her of not being allowed to upload her own photograph.142 Use of this image
can also be probably explained by a (her) desire to be recognised by others in a way that
would somewhat be defined by that image. This was not a unique case among my
participants under the age of 25. This act of transgression is a negotiation with Seema’s
reality, as she was aware that uploading her own photograph on social media might attract
unwanted attention and also that her elders in the family would disapprove. I understood
Seema’s case as being similar to Shweta’s (22), who had uploaded an image (figure 4.7)
of a couple resembling her to-be husband (in military uniform) and herself on WhatsApp.

In another example, Barkha (21) shared the ways in which she, like Seema, indulged in
film-related creative pursuits. She introduced me to an app named Filmora on her android
smartphone. This mobile application is a video editor app which enables the user to create
videos with music, images and effects. Barkha showed me videos that she had made and
said, “Didi see this, in this you can put (upload) your photos, and search for a song which
you want to play in the background, and this immediately makes the video and gives it”.
The images used in these videos were mostly her selfies taken at various places in the
village, gazing into the phone camera or looking sideways. In some videos, there were
photographs of her with female friends on farmlands or inside ITI’s classroom. These
videos could then be shared on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and so on.

142 I use the word ‘suggestive’ to convey the contrast between what is morally acceptable in the village and the boldness
of the image that Seema uploaded

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Since I did not observe any of my participants using Instagram or YouTube, it was not
surprising that these videos were not on those networks. However, WhatsApp played an
important role in distribution of these videos. Barkha told me, “I send this to my maternal
aunt’s daughter, and sometimes to my friends... (on being asked what is so special about
this app) ...I just like it”. I noted that the videos were a representation of the way that she
looked at herself or the way she wanted to be looked at.

Self-representation through videos as a form of creative production became more

significant for me as cultural production when she informed me that some of her other
friends use this app too. Through these creative productions, it was evident how important
a role Hindi films play in these women’s imagination of the self. Hindi films are where
they want to be in their imaginations, with film songs playing in the background. My
participants shared that they do not share these videos with any men in the village (Kewal
ladkiyaan-ladkiyaan hi) out of the fear that women will face a backlash from male family
members. As Barkha said, “If father sees it, he will be angry”. Such activities took place
strictly outside the direct surveillance of the male family members. Indulging in creative
production was an important form of negotiation for my participants and had a significant
implication on the production of culture at village level.

6.3.5 Men’s uncomfortable relationship with women’s preferences

Men’s gatekeeping of women’s film consumption transpired in several ways such as

citing of safety concerns, moral loaded arguments, rules guiding film content for women,
among others mentioned in first part of this chapter. During my field work I observed
that there were men who distanced themselves from the thought that Hindi films might
be significant to aspects of women’s everyday lives. One such example is of a 54-year-
old male tailor in the village. Upon entering his shop, he asked me where I was from, and
if I had got a sample kurta as a measurement reference.143 I explained to him that I was
not there to get an outfit stitched. I asked if he gets requests from women to stitch designs
inspired by fashion trends in films or television, in response to which he looked me
without saying anything for a few seconds. He then said, “Earlier people used to ask me.
They used to bring designs’ cut-outs [parcha] (possibly from newspapers or magazines).

143 Kurta is long shirt-like outfit worn mainly in South Asia over salwar, churidars, or pyjama

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But I told them clearly that I am not ‘that kind of a tailor’”. I probed, “Uncle, ‘that kind
of a tailor’ meaning?”, to which he said:

I do not know from where, from films or elsewhere, these people bring designs. What will the
women (of this village) do with all those film and TV designs? Where will they wear such lace-
and-embroidery blouses? I just ask them to give their measurements, and make the clothing
according to my own understanding, the way it is worn here [jaisa yahan ka chalan hai]. There
are one or two more tailors here, but most ladies come to me for getting clothes stitched, I am the
most experienced one. And if you want so much design in the clothes you can look for a female
tailor.

I nodded in agreement and did not ask any more questions. His comment was in contrast
to what I had gathered from my conversations with the female tailor in the village. It was
understandable to me that women were more comfortable with female professionals, but
the refusal of the male tailor to engage in or entertain a conversation on film and
television-inspired fashion among women in Narwal showed that in his view, film
fashion was not wearable in women’s everyday lives there. I understood from our
interaction that for him, discussing this topic would not evoke a more elaborate response.
This reminded me of the kind of relationship men shared with certain aspects of women’s
everyday lives there. In this case, the tailor was not willing to cater to the possibility of
something that was outside his view of village women’s lives. My participants had told
me that sometimes men in their families too were uncomfortable with discussing certain
topics or directly confronting young females about aspects such as clothing, jewellery,
and others that were considered the domain of the mothers or older females in the house.
This sometimes gave my younger and the middle-aged participants an opportunity to seek
pleasures, such as fondness for films, that would otherwise be frowned upon by men and
other older family members. The negotiation of women’s film engagement took place
when they were away from the male – and largely patriarchal – control.

6.3.6 When men choose to ‘look away’

Men may not be present in women’s conversations among themselves about Hindi films,
but they play a significant part in women’s film and another media consumption. Till
now, I have explained the restrictive influence of men on women’s media related
activities, but in some other ways – deliberately or by chance – men are facilitating
change in women’s film engagement in Narwal. For example, as shown by my interaction

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with the young man who worked at the computer shop in Narwal, he downloaded films
and songs that his sister asked him to and took the content home on a memory stick for
her.144 I posed a question in section 6.2.3: Are some men enabling women’s film
consumption in conscious ways? This young man’s example did not clearly indicate
whether he chose to regulate his sister’s film consumption. Did he ever say no to her if
she asked for a particular film or song to be downloaded? Surely, there must be some
content that his sister could not have asked him to download owing to moral constraints.
I could not cross-question him over this due to a lot of people present at his shop. Male
family members such as fathers, uncles, brothers and sons frequently lent their phones to
female family members. Women used WhatsApp on men’s phones in some cases and
watched films in several others. In the third chapter, I explained how a laptop in a family
was supposed to be under the control of the male members. However, with help from
fathers or brothers, several young women have gained a degree of access to these devices.
For instance, there were two young sisters (aged 17 and 20) who shared that their older
brother (23) is not aware of what their female friends who hold IT diplomas or are
attaining computer education are doing. These friends download films and music and
transfer it on to their female friends’ brothers’ laptops when visiting them. This has a
certain degree of overlap with section 6.3.3 where I discuss how women negotiate their
film consumption through collaborating with male members, but the point of departure
is that, in this case, they watch films or listen to music when their brother is not around,
pretend to study with their friends and then delete the content afterwards. The older of
the two sisters shared with a shy smile:

Our older brother knows that we keep doing ‘something-something’ on his laptop (when he is
away), but he does not say anything to us or to our father.

In another example, Seema (20) shared:

I thought my father would see my WhatsApp profile photo and scold me, but he did not say
anything. Perhaps he does not know how much I like films [filmon ka kitna shauk hai].

144 See section 6.2.3

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I discussed my interaction with Seema in an earlier section in the context of negotiation
through creative production. One reason why her father did not object to or confront her
regarding her WhatsApp public photo could be that it is not her real photograph that she
used there. However, the image depicted a couple in an intimate pose with the actor
gazing daringly at the face of the actress, and the actress seen as looking away with a
smile on her face. This image had a chunk of text positioned on it, which Seema thought
her father might object to.145 This may be seen as a way of Seema’s father’s denying his
daughter’s public display of her association with filmic images, or it could be that he
chose to look away as he did not think of it as something to confront her over.

I observed that some other male family members in the village too chose to refrain from
confronting their female family members about their film use. The men, when enabling
film-consumption by ‘looking away’ or actively helping women, were removed from the
authoritative influence of the everyday rules that apply on women. For instance, a brother
will let his sister use his laptop/phone only when they are not in the presence of anyone
who harbours moral panic around women’s film consumption. In this case, the
authoritative presence could very well be an older man or even an older woman in the
house who disapproves of the act.

6.3.7 What men cannot control

In this section, I focus on aspects of women’s media consumption that the men cannot
control. These include women’s love for style and fashion as shown in Hindi films
(discussed above), songs that women choose to dance to during women’s only wedding
rituals (Sangeet), women’s attraction towards certain film actors; their ideas about
romance and love, and their admiration/condemnation of various characters in the film.

I observed that the belief that men are more skilled at technology than women was largely
unquestioned by people there, even by women who used technology themselves.
Exceptions like Kanchan, who posed a question to her mother about an unequal status
compared to her brother, challenged the gender power relations in a small yet significant
way. In some cases, like Maithili’s (discussed below), men could not control how women
felt about a certain character or a theme in a film. Sometimes, my participants would curb

145 See section 6.3.5 for the filmic association of the image

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their reaction due to family members being present, when it was not clear how they felt
about certain scenes or characters. But some of my participants had various ways of
expressing their like/dislike for the film’s content even in the presence of other family
members, without explicitly stating so.

The following example showed how a woman’s admiration for a film protagonist’s way
of living differed from what her husband thought of it, and how she chose to express her
liking for the film by expressing her disagreement with her husband. Her chosen way of
expressing her disagreement with him, as I observed, was not openly confrontational.
During my stay with a family in Narwal, we started watching the movie Jab we met
(2007) on a Sunday afternoon. There were three of us, Maithili (48), her husband (53),
and I. Maithili’s husband constantly commented on how the female protagonist in the
film was a disgrace to her family because she ran away to unite with her lover in the film.
Maithili did not react to several comments that he went on to make about the film
character’s jovial but escapist attitude [kabhi yahan, kabhi wahan]. Finally, he remarked
on how the female protagonist fell in love with another man after shown to be chasing
some other man throughout the movie. His comments were clear, in full sentences and
morally loaded [aajkal yehi sab chal raha hai duniya mein]. At this point, Maithili got
up and left abruptly on the pretext of washing dishes in the kitchen. The abruptness of
the situation prompted me to get up and follow her shortly afterwards, pretending to look
for her to ask for something to eat. I observed the way she got up suddenly right after the
husband remarked on the film and her disapproval with his comments was evident. In the
kitchen, before I could even ask about the film, she said:

He always does this. We have seen this (film) before too, I do not understand what his issue
[dikkat] with the character is. Sure, she is not like us, she does not live in a village, but she was
brought up in a city, what does he expect? Is every woman going to be like us (or me)?

Immediately after this comment, she added softly:

I like the way we live [rehen-sehen] here, I do not wish to be like her. But if someone is free-
spirited [unmukt], lives according to his/her own will, isn’t it good?

Maithili made it clear that she did not agree with her husband’s constant rebuke of the
protagonist’s life choices, yet she chose to talk about it inside the kitchen rather than to

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openly challenge him verbally. What she thought of the character and the rest of the film
was different from her husband’s views, and she no longer depended on his comments to
make sense of the film. Thus, while men can control women’s access to films, they cannot
lead them to find the meanings in it they want. Finding value in a film is a process that is
intrinsic to women’s own relationship with a film, and this process is significant in the
negotiations around their film consumption.

Conclusion: Theoretical implications

In studying women’s film consumption in a rural setting, I gathered evidence of moments
or acts where women questioned, negotiated or rejected certain social norms because of
their relationship with a film form. The nature of this resistance was also shaped by the
power structure itself. Moments that defined this kind of everyday resistance were not
the most effective in most cases. Sometimes, it was merely the process of registering a
protest that I observed. In this way, I understood women’s agency in their film
consumption as different from their resistive ways. In some examples where women’s
acts of resistance were self-defeating or self-destructive (Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996:16), I
was tempted to give up on the idea of studying their acts as everyday resistance
altogether. For instance, Kanchan’s insistence on getting a smartphone was met with a
refusal by her brother because of what she wanted to do with it, and he anticipated that
she will start demanding more once she gets the phone, such as an internet connection.
Stellan Vinthagen and Anna Johansson’s article on everyday resistance as a concept was
useful in understanding this phenomenon in Narwal, and they explained:

Everyday resistance happens in other spaces and times or in other relations. In this sense it
becomes the silent, mundane and ordinary acts that are normalized. Therefore, actors themselves
are not necessarily regarding it as “resistance” at all, rather a normal part and way of their life,
personality, culture and tradition.

(Vinthagen and Johansson, 2013:9)

They argued that this concept must be understood as something that is “done routinely,
but which is not politically articulated or formally organized (yet or in that situation)”
(2013:10). It made me understand that I had almost overlooked this resistive aspect of
women’s film use because such acts could be “made invisible by society, by not being

240
recognized as resistance” (ibid.). This is what I meant to draw out partly through
examples in the previous section too, and I understand this process as a (long) moment
of change. Despite the existence of power structures that are overarching and
overwhelming for my participants, these women find creative ways of negotiating with
their everyday realities in order to associate themselves with the world of Hindi films.

There is negligible dialogue between men and women around the negotiation of men’s
control over women’s media habits. The everyday life of the village does not provide
time or space for a discussion of women’s media use specifically. I suggest that women’s
media consumption must not be studied as a space of contestation between men (who
dominate the village mediascape) and women (who are dominated in the village
mediascape). This would imply that men and women are competing to get maximum
access to film consumption or media use, which is not accurate. How then, can we best
understand what is going on here?

James C. Scott’s theoretical contribution in Domination and the Arts of Resistance:

Hidden Transcripts (1990) was his distinction between public transcripts, which he
defined as “a shorthand way of describing the open interaction between subordinates and
those who dominate” (1990:2), and hidden transcripts, which he characterised as the
“discourse that takes place ‘offstage’, beyond direct observation by powerholders”
(1990:4). He made out a case for “a different study of power that uncovers contradictions,
tensions, and immanent possibilities” (1990: xii). In Scott’s view, the public transcript is
a conventional pattern of speech for the subordinated, but it is, in reality, only a stylised
performance which witnesses forms of deference and respect for the powerful which are
necessary to avoid conflict with them (1990). Further, not only is the public script only
skin-deep, but the role of the dominated becomes crucial beyond such open interactions.
This means that “the dominated are by no means taken in by their own affirmations of
the justice and good manners of their masters, and behind the scenes we may expect to
hear much raucous laughing, merciless lampooning, and bitter criticism” (Little, 2009).
As Scott explained:

Offstage, where subordinates may gather outside the intimidating gaze of power, a sharply
dissonant political culture is possible. Slaves in the relative safety of their quarters can speak the
words of anger, revenge, self-assertion that they must normally choke back when in the presence
of the masters and mistresses.

(1990:18)

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In his study of peasant workers above, he terms all interactions that take place beyond
the surveillance of the powerful as hidden transcripts (ibid.). The nature of what I
witnessed during my field work was the closest to what Scott explained as hidden
transcripts and I will discuss this shortly.

Examining my evidence required the identification of the subordinate, which was a

challenging task. My initial focus was on women as the dominated group in the village.
The problem lay with referring to women as a whole as the subordinate community. In
citing evidences of women’s negotiations, I noted that in numerous cases women were
pitted against each other (also see Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996 for similar observations in
another North Indian village). Mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, female relatives, and even
women in the natal kin became a part of the patriarchal structure that governed the social
norms within the village. This was because women generally have “greater stakes in the
system, at least in the long term” (Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996:18). They are, in this way,
different from other subaltern groups (ibid.). A woman’s different roles within her family
keep shifting her position within the domestic space. For instance, a sister-in-law (nanad)
might hold a higher position over the wife (patni), but when the same sister-in-law gets
married and goes to another household, her position as the daughter-in-law (bahu) of the
new family is lower than that of her mother-in-law or her husband’s sister. With time,
these women tend to gain greater power in everyday decision-making within the
household. For example, she may enjoy relatively more personal space, she might have
fewer responsibilities once a younger daughter-in-law enters the family, bearing children
(especially sons) is highly likely to put her at a higher position, and so on. Studying
women’s relations with each other, as well as those with men in the village, complicates
an analysis of power relations and its impact on women’s media use.

Evidence from my field work suggested that in several cases of women-to-women

relations, women not only endorsed the terms of their subordination but were “willing,
even enthusiastic, partners in that subordination” (Scott, 1990:4). I noticed this especially
in the consumption of film on television in joint families where daughters-in-law, sisters-
in-law and mothers-in law affected each other’s media habits. As Jeffery and Jeffery

242
noted, “The twin tendencies of romanticising women’s resistance and seeing it as
coterminous with agency contain their own difficulties” (1996:16).146

As I found in my study, men are increasingly recognising women’s acquisition of social

capital (Bourdieu, 1986) – education, skills – and, in my limited interactions with them,
men acknowledged that the society is indeed changing, and that women are changing
along with it [zamana badal raha hai]. However, even in those interactions with men,
this change that they referred to was ‘not necessarily desirable’ [achha nahi lagta]. The
question now is this: Are the women of Narwal moving towards a slow-but-steady socio-
cultural transformation? Can we understand my participants’ negotiations theoretically
through Scott’s model of resistance, which was developed to discuss peasants and factory
workers (groups that are clearly subaltern)?

I argue that the role of Hindi films in the everyday lives of women in Narwal is a
transformative one for them because they see filmic representation of a world beyond
their everyday, and also mobilise in order to engage more with it. Film consumption is
not the sole enabler of this change, but many of the examples of resistance I observed
were closely related to it. This change is subtle and reflects the fact that women are
moving away from the rigid structures of power to fulfil their desires in their imaginative
spaces. This in turn tells us how important Hindi films are in persuading them to break
those rules. The heterogeneity of women’s experiences in consuming films, and media in
general, can be observed to be thriving underneath the surface, bolstered by women’s
interpersonal networks, as well as digital technology, which is making it increasingly
difficult for women’s media consumption to be monitored by men. In the case of Maithili,
who disagreed with her husband’s constant patronising commentary of a film, the
woman’s expression of disagreement lay in between a public and a hidden transcript.147
Was her interaction with me in the kitchen a hidden transcript? Or was her gesture of
getting up suddenly and leaving the living area an open declaration of disagreement with
her husband? In the previous chapter, I cited my interactions with my participants where
they indicated their personal relationship with Hindi films. Some of these conversations
were shared in the presence of other women, and possibly existed with the knowledge of
men too. However, most of the women confided in me only after spending a considerable

146 The authors draw this observation on the work of Mani (1990) in her discussion of Sati (widow immolation), Abu-
Lughod (1990), and Rajan (1993)
147 See section 6.3.8 for a detailed narration of the incident

243
amount of time with me. They also asked questions as to whether I would share their
responses with their parents or other elder people in the village, confirming that they were
sharing information that was not supposed to be a part of their everyday discussions with
all family members. Also adding to the insight, the manner in which women spoke about
restrictions on their film or media consumption showed how they use hidden transcripts
to share their power struggle in domestic situations. For example, Shivani (46) spoke of
how her family members restricted her consumption of films and television.148 Her tone
and the use of the phrase “Turant bhauyein tan jaati hain” (the eyebrows are instantly
raised) indicated how unhappy she was with the restrictions imposed by her family
members. As I showed at the start of this chapter, Kanchan (18) did raise questions about
her brother’s use of two smartphones and his refusal to buy her one. However, this
conversation took place only once her brother had left. The question was not posed with
him present in the room. The moment when the status quo was challenged was outside
the scrutiny of her brother, and in front of her mother, with whom she felt she could share
it. What women say behind the backs of men and other subjugating family members
constitutes the ‘hidden transcripts’ of their everyday lives. Interactions from my field
work suggested that in the case of women in Narwal, the ‘hidden transcript’ is only
“occasionally openly declared in the face of power” (Scott, 1990:6). In most cases, it
remains in the background of their domestic life. I suggest that discussions about their
engagement with Hindi films, comprising their lived experiences, are a major part of their
hidden transcripts because of the contentious nature of film consumption and their close
relationship with it.149 The point of departure from Scott’s conception is that hidden
transcripts in the context of my participants are disruptive or sudden, rather than sustained
or occurring in a routinised away. Hidden transcripts must be understood to include the
acts of non-cooperation, or open questioning of the status-quo by my participants, in
order to get the full picture of the transformative role that Hindi films are part of. These
interactions, stories, myths and rituals in which the women of Narwal participate outside
the direct observation of power holders (men and older women) largely exist within rigid
social structures.

An aspect of utmost significance is the role that Hindi film plays on women’s agency
within the family. If and when women questioned the norms around their media

148 See section 6.2.2 for the words she used

149 As I have delineated in section 6.2, women’s film engagement is contentious within the village

244
consumption, it was often “against considerable odds and with little guarantee that their
resistance could be very effective” (Jeffery and Jeffery, 1996:17). The ways in which
these women consumed Hindi film were diverse and, therefore, the nature of how they
strategised around their preferred film form was also contingent on it. Thus, women’s
agency was evidenced in different guises (ibid.).

Sketching the sustenance of power and also its erosion – or rather redefinition over time
– in a north Indian village shows some commonalities with accounts of other subaltern
or subordinated groups globally, but due to the complicated definition of women as the
subaltern, defining a conceptual model for ‘resistance’ poses several problems. I
understand this process of social change as the presence of a growing cluster of hidden
transcripts of women about their love for Hindi films, in which the powerful position of
the male gradually begins to be brought into question.

245
 Conclusion

My investigation of the long-term and multifarious modes of consumption of Hindi

cinema has revealed that films play a role in fulfilling the desires of rural north Indian
women in both their real and imaginative lives (chapter five). Hindi films not only expand
these women’s view of the world outside the village but also of worlds outside India. My
stay in Narwal exposed the strong influence of social values that authorise or forbid
certain activities for women, especially when these relate to the use of technology for
film consumption. My participants’ negotiations and resistances around their film-use are
not revolutionary or rebellious, but they are also not of an unnoticed or ineffectual kind
(chapter six).

As far as I know, my project is the first ethnographic study to specifically focus on rural
women as Hindi film audiences in North India. I discovered that age, gender, class, social
capital and family setting are the primary factors that affect women’s film – and more
broadly media – consumption, and the different media through which they engage with
film (chapters three and four). My thesis speaks to the gaps highlighted in my review of
the literature (chapter two) and attempts to sketch a picture that (I hope) is empathetic to
my participants’ lives. A constant concern was whether, in my writing, I was simply
stating the obvious or if I was looking at my participants with a lens so convex that I was
overlooking other significant aspects. This study discussed certain facets of rural popular
culture that were comparatively new and are political in nature. Although my study makes
no claims to be a feminist ethnographic work, it is in agreement with Vani Prabhakar’s
assessment that “all spheres of lives involving any relationship is [sic] political; that
millions of women are silently (and not always very successfully) waging a struggle
against the patriarchal and feudal forces that seek to confine and contain them”
(2004:258). The point I am trying to make here is that conducting a study in a rural area
as opposed to an urban location, complicates the picture. Hindi films may evoke similar
responses from both rural and urban women in terms of their preference for a genre/type

246
or their dislike for particular themes or actors, but the difference lies in the way both sets
of women choose to consume, understand, and position films in their lives. The glamour
of the Hindi film industry itself does little to bring a revolutionary change in the lives of
my rural women, but the desire to be associated with it encourages my participants to
break some of the rules that constrain their everyday lives.

Building a film theatre in a village is not expected to be advantageous for theatre owners
as Hindi films need to recover large profits to match their production costs, and thus
tickets would be too expensive for a regular village viewer. While it is not mandatory for
my participants to see themselves in a film to be able to enjoy it, I suggest that if they
were able to relate more strongly to Hindi films, this might lead to the start of a
commercially viable rural viewership. Moreover, unlike men in Narwal who could go to
the city and frequent cinema halls as lived experience, my participants could not even
manage that small shred of connection to a filmgoing experience in a city theatre. As one
of my findings suggested, filmi indicates situations that lie outside women’s everyday
experience within the village realm. Extratextual forms of Hindi films can, to a large
extent, popularise films and fulfil the desires of my participants relating to films, like
fashion trends, travel aspirations, exposure to foreign countries, learning about new
cultures, and so on. However, sharing the values and ideology of the Hindi film by
actually watching full-length films cannot be perfectly substituted by ‘textually
disintegrated’ forms of engagement with film (Allen, 2011).

In the light of the above observation, my study finds itself at a moment in time that is at
a crossroads. On one hand, there is absence of cinema theatres, a situation that is not
expected to change any time soon, with various other manifestations of film, consumed
through new as well as old media, offering a film culture beyond viewership. On the other
hand, there are small yet significant technological initiatives that might change, entirely,
how films will circulate in rural spaces in India a few years from now. PictureTime, a
company that began its operation in 2015, has started travelling-DigiPlexes: its small
trucks can travel to remote areas and villages and in just a few hours erect a DigiPlex that
can seat up to 150 people. These are made of all-weather material, are air-conditioned,
and have comfortable seating resembling the multiplex theatres of the big cities. Inside,
they have big screens with Dolby surround sound systems (figures 7.1 and 7.2).

247
Figure 7.1 PictureTime's truck housing the portable DigiPlex (©PictureTime, source:
twitter.com/PictureTime4/status/668714617070354432)

Figure 7.2 PictureTime's DigiPlex from the inside in Delhi (©PictureTime, source:
twitter.com/PictureTime4/status/1078217469070839810)

248
Indian venture capital firms and corporations (such as Zenrock Comtrade) are investing
money in such DigiPlexes and they are expected to expand rapidly (Laghate, 2019). They
screen advertisements (social as well as commercial messaging) and also hold special
screenings for women and children in small towns and cities. Ventures like these, if
grown in number, are expected to introduce a new modality of film viewing practices and
there are plans for the company to venture further into rural spaces. When I came to know
about it, I was particularly interested in the implications this might have for women living
in these villages. Will such screenings bring about a change in the way women discuss
films among themselves in rural areas? Will it even be socially acceptable for them to
attend such screenings? Is this form of film viewing going to reduce men’s agency over
women’s film-use? Will special screenings in DigiPlexes be able to offset, to some
extent, the moral panic around women’s film consumption? These questions will only be
answered in a few years’ time depending on evolving film practices in rural settings like
Narwal. However, this does underline the importance of my study, which offers a unique
snapshot of a moment in time that will soon be over. In this globalised era where films
shape and perpetuate ideas of identity, gender, nationalism, and sexuality, and where
digital and mobile phone technologies offer unprecedented but not unlimited access to
film culture, this thesis has identified power structures within the village that affect
consumption of film itself.

A challenge that limited the scope of my study was the duration of my fieldwork.
Although I used ethnographic methods to address my research questions, I cannot claim
this study to be a conventional anthropological ethnography. My personal background
enabled an early familiarity with Narwal, but a few months are not enough to understand
the complexities of village life and the ways in which gender gaps manifest themselves
in everyday decision-making. A longer duration of fieldwork would have allowed me to
gather data in a more organised way, such as representative samples of women of various
age groups, classes, and castes. For this study, I had to mostly rely on my interlocutors to
point me to potential research participants.

Moreover, rural life in north Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan differs
greatly from that of states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and even Maharashtra in terms of
gender rules, rituals and socio-economic organisation. Although the economic and caste
inequalities plague most of rural India, I hesitate to generalise my findings from Narwal
to women living in villages elsewhere. A similar study carried out in different villages in

249
states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan would contribute greatly to the sociology
of women’s film consumption in rural north India.

My study also hopes to contribute, even if in a small way, to the field of Communication
for Development (C4D) and to throw light on the context within which ICTs can be
studied with regard to the rural Indian context. I question the findings of studies that, in
my view, have put forth quite a generic perspective on the technological transformation
that the ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) have brought into the lives
of women in rural India.150 Such studies have made convenient connections between the
advent of technology, rural women’s economic development and social change. The
reason I deem them convenient is that although the use of ICTs by women is broadly
acceptable to the village community, the most popular use-case of the media technologies
by women in this village, Hindi cinema, is still a transgression of the prevalent social
values. However, if there is one aspect that is bringing social transformation in
unexpected and unintended (by the rural social institutions) ways, it is women’s use of
Hindi films in this village. For example, in chapter six I discuss women’s position in
public spaces within the village as well as the households. I have shown how this rural
space is undergoing a long moment of change where the women of Narwal exhibit agency
through the use of multiple modes of film engagement. I have also shown how various
media forms attract varying degrees of attention from men and elders who seek to restrict
women’s media use. Women indulging in film-related creative media production,
devising strategies within the household, and reading about films through newspapers
and relatively older forms of film-related material, give rise to long-lasting social
implications. Not only women, but men too, willingly or otherwise, contribute to
women’s film use in several cases. Such findings can lay the groundwork for
organisations and policy-making that promote ICTs for social development in rural areas
in developing countries. This research highlights the nature of micro-level resistance that
enables women to take greater control over their everyday decision-making with regard
to their media usage as well as in identifying the key enablers for designing ICT-related
policies.

As long as women in Narwal continue to enjoy the pleasurable ‘irregularities’ that Hindi
cinema brings into their everyday lives, films will still matter here. I close with an account

150 For example, refer to Waheeda Sultana’s study on ICTs in the development of rural women across India (2006)

250
of what Rehana (19), who shares custody of a smartphone with her friends, told me in
context of watching film music videos on YouTube, “Everyone asks us to perform
whenever there is a wedding or any other (family) event. Where do they think we are
learning the dance steps from?”.

251
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 APPENDIX I
A sample of an interaction: The researcher and
the participant

Name: Soni

Age: 29 years

Caste: Yadavas of the so-called lower caste

Time of the interaction: 11.00 am

Members in the family: Husband, two daughters, a younger brother-in-law

Apparent financial condition: Her husband is a farmer with mid-level income.151 Her
brother-in-law is preparing for the upcoming village-level election and is financially
supported by Soni’s husband. Their house is bigger than the other ones in the vicinity.

Outside the house: I am on my way to Soni’s house after crossing the main village road.
The pathway leading to her house is not pukka.152 Cattle and goat are tied to pillars outside
houses on either side of the narrow lane. The walls of the nearby houses are all made of
mud. I reach her house, dodging my slippers from the fresh cattle-dung lying on the road.
I don’t see any children around. The timing suggests they are in school.

Details of the interaction: Upon entering the house, I see an open ceiling in the middle.
The walls of the house are made of bricks cemented together but no cement or plaster
over it. This house, in comparison to other houses in the vicinity, is pukka and spacious.
The interior is more traditional. The floor of the house is coated with a mixture of cow-
dung and water. This paste is spread on the floor traditionally in other Indian villages too
and is said to possess disinfectant properties, she explains, and she did it all by herself.
All women do it, irrespective of their background here, she says. There is an enormous
pile of haystack in a corner of the house and beside that, there is a small ‘study table’ for
her older daughter. There is a functional toilet, but it lacks a door. One of the corners is

151 Relative to the income levels in the village

152 Pukka refers to a unit that uses stone or cement to be built

268
covered on three sides by five feet of cemented bricks and there is a bucket of water
inside for use. All family members use the same toilet and it is kept clean.

There is a “chaarpaayi”, a traditional clay “chulha”, three plastic chairs stacked up near
another corner. I can smell the fresh cattle-dung outside and hear the sound of goats and
calves tied to the neighbours’ houses.153

Just when I enter the house, Soni’s husband is about to leave. I know Soni through him,
and I have obtained his approval to converse with her in their house. He greets me with
enthusiasm, and Soni is standing behind him, wearing a faded but clean-looking yellow
saree with one of the corners of the fabric in between her teeth to hold the fabric from
falling off her head. It is a mark of respect to cover your head with the ‘Pallu’ when
around an elder or a revered guest. I am four years younger to her in age. But she prefers
calling me ‘Didi’.154

Her husband starts talking to me after a brief greeting. He says, “You can talk to her
(Soni) about anything you want. You will get a good idea about the village life here
because she comes from an extremely poor family. Her village is nearby and it is so
financially backward that they do not even have a post office there. So, it is evident that
she is not educated. But she is happier in this village now. She will tell you everything
you want to know.” He bids goodbye and walks out. Soni does not say anything. She
turns away quickly and I am unable to gauge her reaction. I am unsure whether she felt
embarrassed or is used to being spoken about like that. But given that it is not unusual at
all, I do not ask her about her husband’s words. She quickly gets a chair for me from the
corner and herself sits down on the ground. I insist on sitting on the ground with her. She
insists otherwise and confesses softly, “We live in a village, what if someone enters the
house and see us like this? You must sit on the chair. I am very comfortable on the ground.
What will someone think if they see us? They will say that the Bahu has made the guest
from the city sit on the ground. It will not look good.” Her tone is concerned and polite.
She does not mention our caste difference, but her husband mentioned it a few times in

153 Chaarpayi is a four-legged bed made out of weaving jute rope on wood, and chulha is a small earthen stove, usually
made of bricks or clay/ mud
154 Pallu is the edge of a saree that is placed over the head as a mark of respect, and didi is the Hindi word for elder
sister

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his conversation on his way out. This might be the reason she does not want to sit with
me.

She tells about her two daughters who have gone to school. She wakes up at six in the
morning and prepares tea and breakfast for the day. After feeding her daughters, husband,
and brother-in-law, she gives food to the goats and calves that they own. She then gets
children ready to go to school and then starts working in the kitchen again – preparing
lunch. It is one task after the other. I offer to help her cut the vegetables and she insists
politely that I just sit and talk to her while she cuts them herself.

I ask her if she enjoys music, films or television. She says, “We don’t have television at
home. There is no computer in the house too. Simi’s (her older daughter’s) father might
buy it this year when our daughter’s exams are over. But he has his phone (smartphone)
and we all listen to music through that sometimes. My older daughter goes to the
computer shop and gets some videos or songs downloaded in her father’s phone. I chide
her so that she studies properly, but she enjoys watching films sometimes on his phone.
He allows her to do that when he is at home and does not need the phone. I have so much
work that I hardly have time for anything else. My daughter gets the content and then
shows it to me if she likes it. She likes action movies too, as does my younger daughter.
Both of them sometimes also go to our family friends’ place to watch television in their
house.” I ask Soni, “But what about you? What do you enjoy in what the kids show you?”
She smiles lightly and is silent for a few seconds as I sense she does not fully understand
what I said. I ask a different thing this time, “Does Simi’s father (Soni’s husband) know
what you enjoy watching/ listening to?” She blushes and tucks the corner of the fabric
between her teeth again. She explains, “What will I say to him even if I want to watch
something? I hardly watch anything. I do not even go to the city. I hardly go there. I am
not allowed to go out much. They ask me to stay here and look after the household and
the kids.”

There is a long pause and I insist on helping her with the vegetable-chopping again. This
time, she lets me chop some tomatoes.

I ask, “Do your kids encourage you to listen to music? Do you talk to them about what
they like?”

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“No. They say, “Mummy ke paanv bohot chal rahe hain” (meaning: she is out and about
a lot these days).155 My younger daughter says, “You go outside with father but forbid
me to do the same”. But I go out mostly only for social obligations and to the temple.”

“Ah! I see. Speaking of social obligations, what about weddings? Do you enjoy the
festivity in the weddings? What kind of music do they have there?”

“It is only at weddings that I mostly get to engage with music and dance as entertainment.
People replace tunes in Bhajans (songs of devotion) with filmi tunes. If a girl was getting
married before, there were folk songs, and traditional wedding songs. They are still there,
but the young girls do not memorise them anymore. For them, wedding music is all about
films these days. And films have so many nice wedding songs. But I do not enjoy when
they mix film music with devotional lyrics. This should not be mixed up. But half the
tunes I hear in such events, I am not even aware that they are from a film until my
daughters tell me.”

“Have you seen the picturisation of these songs? Any actors/ songs/ lyrics that you
recognise or remember?”

“No, no! Where will I see them? I only see the dances that our girls (young girls in the
village) perform at these weddings. They select the songs, the dance, and the dresses. We
mothers are losing all control these days”, she nods her head and smiles.

“Do you believe it is a bad thing?”

“Not really, I like how happy they look. Times are different now. Our times were good
too, but girls have more freedom these days. My daughters are very tej (meaning: sharp).
It is good. They look cheerful.”

She gets up to put the chopped vegetables in a vessel to cook the curry. Just at that
moment, two ladies (presumably from the neighbourhood) enter and start talking to Soni
about some upcoming Pooja the following week.156 They are looking more at me than
her. Perhaps they are suspicious of our conversation, or just curious. I tell them my name
and ask theirs. They do not seem to want me as a part of their conversation. I can sense

155 This sentence has a negative connotation attached to it, it is a sly remark by Radha’s daughters on their mother
156 Religious ritual

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the urgency from their side to ask Soni questions about our interaction. I ask for her
permission to leave and promise to come by the next day.

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 APPENDIX II
Points of discussion with my interview
participants

BASIC INFORMATION

1. Name

2. Age

3. Marital status

4. Occupation

5. What is your routine

a) At home

b) Part Time work (2-4 Hrs.)

c) Full Time work (more than 5 hours)

ECONOMIC CONDITION

6. Pocket Money or Disposable salary? Amount ___

7. Effect of demonetization on your pocket money:

(a) Very affected (my spending on entertainment reduced greatly)

(b) Not that affected (it is still the same)

(c) Not affected at all

8. How many hours of usable electricity do you get? ____ Power backup? Yes/No

9. How many times do you visit outside the village in a year or month? _____

SOCIAL CONDITION AND FAMILY

10. Members in the household ____

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11. Favourite member of the household _____________

12. Does caste matter? (only to lower caste)

13. Who are the other members of the house?

14. What do you do on your birthdays?

FRIENDS/ SOCIAL CIRCLE

15. What leisure time do you have?

16. Do you have many friends? ___

17. When do you spend time with friends? ___

18. Do they feel they can easily watch films or listen to film songs? Are there parents
alright with this?

COMPUTER CLASSES

19. Has anybody else in your family ever taken computer classes? (Formal or
informal)

20. Who encouraged you in your household to take these up?

21. Who is paying for it?

22. What do you expect to get out of it? (a) Employability (b) Learning new things
(c) Internet

MEDIA USAGE

23. How do their husbands (according to them) access films and/ or its products?

24. How do their brothers (according to them) access films and/ or its products?

25. How do their sons (according to them) access films and/ or its products?

26. What is being consumed?

27. Who is consuming it in a household? Who likes to watch what?

(a) Father

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 (b) Mother

(c) Son/ brother

(d) Sisters-in-law

28. How are they consuming it?

29. What devices are there in the house? And how many?

(a) TV

(b) Laptop

(c) Smartphone

(d) Newspaper

(e) Radio

(f) Other (specify)

30. Do family members have access to films? Or its products, such as film music,
videos, newspapers, television programmes on film music?

31. TV viewing

a) Per day b) Per Week c) Per Month d) Few times a year

32. Film viewing

a) Every day b) Once a week c) Once a month d) Few times a year

33. Mobile use ________ Model name_____________

34. Extras (if using mobile, circle)

Touchscreen , Internet, Camera, Whatsapp, Social Media

35. Most used media _____________________

36. Regular used media

(a) Newspaper

(b) TV

(c) Internet

(d) Radio

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 (e) Others ___

37. How do you access films? ___________________________________

38. How do you come to know about the latest fashion? ____

39. How do you come to know about the latest songs? ____

40. Do you share your passion of films with any family member? Who? ________

ON THEIR ‘IDEAL’ FILM AND MEDIA’S ASPIRATIONAL VALUE

41. Parameters for an ‘idea’ film according to you?

(a) Favourite actor/ actress

(b) Location

(c) Drama

(d) Romance

(e) Film songs

(f) Popular

(g) “Clean”

(h) Aspirational?

(i) Nationalistic

(j) Cheap tickets

(k) Easily downloadable

(l) Easy access

(m) Your partner/ family members prefer it too

(n) Non-violent/ violent?

(o) Available on TV

(p) Good fashion

(q) __

(r) __

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 (s) __

42. What is entertainment for you?

43. What do you consider to be filmi?

44. Celebrations, festivals, how have they changed over the years? Festivals like
Ganesh Chaturthi & Durga Puja, how have these celebrations changed over the years?

(a) More festive

(b) Less festive

(c) Same as before

45. Why do you think this has happened?

(a) Films

(b) Awareness

(c) Capitalism

(d) Community economic progress

46. Have you wanted to go to any place shown in any movie?

Movie__________ Place _______________

47. Have you wanted to own any dress seen in a movie?

Movie_____________________ Actress________________________

RELATIONSHIP WITH FILM STARS

48. Favourite actor (2-3)

(a) __

(b) __

(c) __

49. Favourite actress (2-3)

(a) __

(b) __

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50. Latest movie that you

(a) Watched ___

(b) Would like to watch ___

(c) That you liked ___

(d) That you didn’t like ___

51. Film that inspired:

(a) Patriotism ___

(b) Family values ___

(c) Romance ___

FILM MUSIC

52. What kind of music do you like?

(a) Bollywood contemporary

(b) Old hindi film songs

(c) Bhajans

(d) Other (specify)

53. How do you access your favourite kind of music?

54. How do you access film music?

55. What kind of music would you like to be played in the weddings?

56. Given a choice, would you like to have your own music system?

57. Do you like listening to music alone or with someone? (do you enjoy company
while listening to music?)

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 APPENDIX III
List of participants cited

1. Achala, 19 18. Kishori Devi, 76

2. Anamika, 40 19. Lata, 48

3. Anu, 18 20. Madhu, 42

4. Anushka, 18 21. Madhvi, 20

5. Archana, 32 22. Maithili, 48

6. Ayasha, 20 23. Malti, 42

7. Babita, 22 24. Manisha, 10

8. Barkha, 21 25. Mansi, 18

9. Binti, 19 26. Meena, 21

10. Chhavi, 22 27. Naazneen, 34

11. Deepika, 27 28. Nandini, 43

12. Durga Devi, 69 29. Nandita, 52

13. Fatima, 47 30. Neeta, 21

14. Geeta, 25 31. Neetu, 23

15. Jaya, 22 32. Neha, 22

16. Jyoti, 21 33. Poonam, 50

17. Kanchan, 18 34. Priyamvada, 35

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 35. Radha, 42 48. Shweta, 22

36. Rajni, 27 49. Sneha, 22

37. Ranjana, 23 50. Sudha, 43

38. Rehana, 19 51. Sugandha, 38

39. Renu, 38 52. Suman, 40

40. Ritu, 28 53. Sunita, 42

41. Santoshi, 64 54. Surili, 20

42. Sapna, 28 55. Sushila, 28

43. Saraswati Devi, 67 56. Swati, 20

44. Sarita, 40 57. Vibha, 32

45. Saroj, 38 58. Vineeta, 29

46. Seema, 20 59. Vinita, 42

47. Shivani, 46

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