A literature festival might conjure up images of fusty old professorial types discussing the intricacies of Shakespeare or foreigners explaining the difficulty of working in translation. And, while Jaipur has plenty of that, day 2 of the festival saw crowds gathering for reasons more familiar to the wider public – celebrities and sex. Bollywood loomed all over ‘filmy Friday,’ with audiences lining up half-an-hour ahead of time to grab seats for sessions featuring legendary actors Shabana Azmi and Sharmila Tagore as well as festival regulars Javed Akhtar and Prasoon Joshi. “Back in the old days people were really star crazy,” Tagore insisted. “Those days when they saw us, we were really mobbed.” Predictably, in spite of her claim that things had changed, the Kashmir Ki Kali star was unable to make her way off stage without security having to hold back adoring fans. The cinema has seen the emergence of the ‘item’ girl – a stereotype that was squarely in Shabana Azmi’s gunsights during a session on sex in Indian cinema. “Women ought to fight the film industry’s motive of making an ‘item’ of them,” the renowned actor said. “Women should be represented as they are in normal life: working middleclass with a lot of responsibility.” Lyricist Prasoon Joshi diagnosed the Bollywood tendency squarely enough to prompt titters from the audience. “In India everyone is crazy over breasts,” he said. “That’s why they have those strange camera angles and women coming out of the water dripping wet… (but also) Everyone in India wants to make a mother out of the women.”
