Masala
cinema – a popular formula blending action, romanticism, violence,
music, dance and morals - has a daily audience in India of fourteen
million. Jonathan Torgovnik, who has been struck by this phenomenon
says, “In India cinema is just like a religion. In the same way as
people go to the temple to worship the gods they go to the cinema to
worship film stars who kill scores of people with one blow and fall in
love with beautiful heroines.” Torgovnik wanted to reach beyond the
usual Western irony of the clichés about this popular-national cinema
that is both predictable and implausible, to sensitively and tactfully
draw together all aspects of this phenomenon.