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... Bollywood. I took a well-known but arty filmmaker once to meet an underworld contact. Within five minutes the latter, till then the soul of caution, was bragging about the crimes he had committed, his methods of torture and so on. Towards the end of the meeting came the predictable request: ‘‘I have a brother, he’s not bad looking. If you have a chotta motta role....’’ The underworld’s fascination with Bollywood was understandable. For the average gangster, badly educated and little exposed to the world, Bollywood represented the height of glamour and achievement. Moreover, the chaotic and unprofessional ways of the film industry, with large amounts of unaccounted money, was the perfect playground for him in the legitimate world. Equally understandable was Bollywood’s fascination with the underworld. Criminals have always provided fodder for stories apart from reflecting social trends. Bollywood’s cosy relationship with the underworld points to a moral crisis In the late seventies, the dramatic arrest of several smugglers during the Emergency and their subsequent release and ‘reformation’ before Jayaprakash Narayan, in a sense legitimised the interest and spawned a spate of films and extensive press coverage. With the violent gang wars that followed, the interest intensified. Raakh, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, Nayakan, Satya, and a host of other films, explored the gangster psyche with varying degrees of accuracy and success. The underworld as a subject was tempting for many filmmakers also because it made the rare combination of realism and popular appeal possible. Till the late eighties, the relationship between Bollywood and the under...