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The dragon dances to Indian tunes
Anuradha Bhattacharjee
Shah Rukh Khan is coming to town! announced the student breathlessly as she ran in to the class. Perfectly normal in India, but in China it caught me by surprise, especially when awareness about India had been generally quite low. The film My name is Khan had been watched 13,755 times on youku.com, 10626 on qqlive, Chinas equivalent on of Facebook and 7,864 on tudou.com, another popular movie website.
Ostensibly some enterprising Chinese students in the western countries have been regularly changing the English subtitles of Indian movies into Chinese for their brethren at home to enjoy, which has then been loaded on these websites. The number of views speaks for itself. My name is Khan is slated for a theatrical release in Beijing on November 30 with a Chinese soundtrack over 30 years after the last Indian film saw a theatrical release in China whose name no one remembers now. Rumour mills have been active spreading that King Khan is coming for the promotion. And we have also watched san sha da nao baolaiwu. The class chorused. After some furious keying and punching into the electronic dictionaries 3 foolish men was the presented as the translation. Aamir Khan starrer 3 idiots! 2,02970 views across the popular movie sites. Aal iz well has been played 96,353 times on one website alone.
I feel great when I can understand a few words and sentences from the original soundtrack and know the differences between what was actually said and the subtitle, said Li Sha, a journalist with a Chinese newspaper who has been learning Hindi for two years at the Indian Embassy-run India Centre in Beijing. I want to be able to present the lovely music from India to my Chinese countrymen, said Li Xin, who also learns Kathak at the Centre.
So strong is the interest in Indian dance and music that Zhang Jing Hui, a chartered accountant, has been learning Kathak for almost three years now under Ashok Chakrabarty of Lalit Kala Akademi at the Indian Embassy-run Indian Centre. She has performed at the Chinese NCPA several times, besides a host of corporate occasions. She identifies several similarities between the todas and tukdas of Kathak with the dance form of Xinjian province, especially the pirouettes.
Yu Qiuyang is a teacher of Bengali language in the prestigious Communication University of China. Besides her collection of Bengali books and classics, she shows me her collection of Hindi films. On the evening I call on her, she is practicing dancing from a song in Kisna. A kathak dancer at the Indian Centre, she rues, I have not yet reached the level of mastery of some of my other mates, but I am going to perform to this song at a friends forthcoming party. Corrie, a young music teacher comes to make my acquaintance in the train and tells me that she taught herself to play some Hindi songs on the piano in spite of a lack of notes. She cant tell me which songs because she does not know the lyrics and there is no piano at hand!
The proof of the Hindi music phenomenon gripping China came one evening as I was walking along the riverfront of Tianjin. Notes of Raat Baaqi come wafting through the air and on reaching the spot I see a mixed group of people dancing to it. On noticing me, some people come over to ask whether I am from Xinjiang, and insist that I join into their dancing when I tell them that I am from India.
But the ultimate treat is when one morning the phone rings and instead of Wei, nihao, followed by some Chinglish, it is Namaskar mera naam Wang Jifeng hai aur mera Hindi naam Salil hai. Aapka yahaan China mein swagat hai, the voice crackled in perfect Hindi tone, pronunciation and diction. Wang is the Director of the Hindi programming section of China Radio International, Chinas equivalent of Voice of America and a faculty at the prestigious Communication University of China. CRI runs programmes in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, besides a host of other South Asian languages.
Later that day I get to meet ten of the present batch of students of Hindi at the All of them have adopted a Hindi name as per Chinese custom. So I meet Sindhu, Salil, Vyom, Amber, Rahul, Naina, Sugandha, Kareena, Meera and Apsara. The motivation to join the course vary from the popularity and opportunities in the culture industry to the expectation of employment in light of the growth of the Indian economy, to opportunities in IT sector! But several Hindi graduates have found employment Kareena, Meera and Naina sing Jo rah tujh tak na pahunche, main usko chhod doon. They want to start a business translating Hindi songs and films into Chinese and marketing them legally.
