Fiction in Films – Films in Fiction: The Making of a New English India

Whether English is really an Indian language or not may be difficult to answer. But English in India is surely a distinct and fast-expanding culture. In this first-every book on Indian English film, Sreetilak draws a colorful and accurate picture of the social life of English in India, showing the significant ways films and fiction in Indian English correspond to each other and respond together to the emergent new English India. The progress from the English-admiring gentry of Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane to the confident urban Indians of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding parallels the social evolution of Indian English culture. In fiction, instead of a laid-back Malgudi what we see today is the metropolises of glitz, sensuality and angst. The urban ambience and modern ethos that films and fiction in Indian English share correspond to the life in new English India.  With offbeat and illustrative examples from tabloid press, advertisements, music videos, television spoofs and a graphic novel-apart from the films and stories-Sreetilak analyses the Indian sensibility that responds to things English. He argues that as post-industrial societies will depend more on alternative forms of capital and power English will prove infinitely handy for India to deal in commodities of culture.