Letter to BS: Grow up, Bollywood! Have guts to make a Parasite-like movie

The recent Oscar award for the best film to the South Korean Parasite raises a question: Why has Bollywood, which has a longer history and greater output, not managed to get even a nomination for best film till date? The answer lies in the fact that our films are made for box office collections, which means catering to the lowest common denominator. These films are made to show off stars rather than the quality of the story, screenplay, dialogues etc. The most important reason that Hindi films are made is to get various industry awards. Every manufacturer, film magazine, TV channel, print outlets has its own awards. Thus most top actors are guaranteed to get two or three awards a year without even bothering about the quality of the films which win them these awards.
 

Will Bollywood have the courage to have just one award ceremony like the Oscars with no sponsors? When one person gets an award, everyone else will have to go empty handed... till the next award season. Only then will they start paying attention to the quality of films. Today, our Bollywood awards functions are like sporting events for school children, where no one is disappointed and everyone walks off with a prize or certificate just for participation. That is why every award function competes to institute new inane categories to satisfy as many as possible. And most functions are nothing but mutual admiration societies. Does anyone in Bollywood have the guts to make a Meryl Streep-like speech? Grow up, Bollywood.
 
T R Ramaswami, Mumbai

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