Putting the Fun into Fundamental
Episode 2: Bollywood Goddess
In the second episode of Channel 4's series, Putting the Fun Into Fundamental, Elliott Gerner hits the trail in India to report on how an obscure film, shot on a low budget, became a sensation. In 1975, Jai Santoshi Maa featured the Hindu goddess Santoshi Maa and became a surprise hit as well as a religious phenomenon. Not only did the film break box-office records, it is still broadcast every Friday on national television.
As this minor goddess became a major icon, worshippers treated cinemas as temples, taking their shoes off at the door, and throwing money and flower petals at the screen. Until the film’s release, Santoshi Maa was not very well known but its spectacular success made her a household name all over India.
As her fame grew, Santoshi Maa’s temple in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, expanded and the number of her followers increased dramatically. Women across the country began observing Fridays as the day of worship of Santoshi Maa. One way of worshipping her is to fast in a particular way – avoiding sour food such as citrus fruit, on 16 consecutive Fridays. Gerner offers to try this out, hoping that the luck that catapulted the original film into the stratosphere will have the same effect on his pitifully low-budget programme.
But while Santoshi Maa brings luck to some, she also brings misfortune to others. Although the film is one of the biggest grossing Bollywood hits, some of those involved in it seem cursed, and have ill fortune or poverty in the years since it was released. Anita Guha, the actress who played the goddess, now has a facial skin disease and the film’s producer now makes his living as a poor, if cheerful, wedding singer.
But the moral of the story is that modern technology can rejuvenate an ancient tradition. Cinematic special effects can look like real miracles. And, as Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachan points out, the big screen has a magical quality that mimics that of belief. Indeed, Anita Guha finds that she herself is now seen as a living incarnation of the goddess and is still worshipped, with believers bringing sick children to put at her feet, just as they do at Santoshi Maa’s shrine.
