Bollywood Jews

As kids we used to watch older Hindi movies from a pre-Bollywood era on television and have a blast, every time the Gargantuan body of comedienne Tun Tun floated onto the screen, to regale audiences with her brand of corny, physical humor.

Tun Tun's jokes fell flat on our ears, but it was her presence we guffawed at, we had a suspicion that she wasn't a "She," but a "He" dressed up as a she. In fact we were convinced that "Tun Tun" was none other than "Mahmood," the fat Charlie Chaplinesque jokester who was a comic staple in Hindi films.

It was quite common for men to do female roles in older Hindi movies, especially from the black and white times, because film acting was looked down upon as a thing that women of "ill-repute" did.

Shalom Bollywood, a new, eye-opening documentary on early Hindi cinema and the role of women therein, tells a riveting story of how it wasn't just men, but young Jewish Indian female dancers, women hailing from Jewish families settled in India, especially in and around the region of Mumbai, who played female roles in Indian movies from the early twentieth century.

I did not know that the famous actress Nadira was a Florence Ezekiel.

Yet another evidence of a strong Jewish DNA in Indian culture.

Going by the mindless and brainless douchebags that dominate today's Bollywood, the Jewish DNA might sound like a joke or a phantom of the past.

Jewishness in India

I remember "Nahoum," a hoary pastry shop tucked away in the din and bustle of Kolkata's "New Market." Later, much later, I learnt that the proprietor of "Nahoum" (a Professor of mine at the University told me the name is a derivative of "Noam") was Jewish. 

I learnt a bit more about the Jewish thread, its inception and its continuity, albeit in a state of great attenuation in both Kolkata and in India at large, from an English tutor in Kolkata. 

The tutor was a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (the "World Wide Hindu Organization") official and secretly confided in his students the Hindu fondness for the Jewish population of India--the latter helped them in firming their position against the Muslims, thereby affirming my belief in the proverb that "an enemy's enemy is a friend."

I was delighted to see the video that documents a discovery of Jewish food in India. The fact of a strong tradition of Jewish cuisine, hybridized into something else as evidenced by the video, and the presence of the remains of a synagogue, both in the beautiful city of Cochin, doesn't surprise me.

If you want to get a deeper idea of the Jewish strain in the coastal city of Cochin, go straight to Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land.