Even after so many years, Amitabh Bachchan’s entry scene in 1978’s Trishul still has the power to draw wild cheers and applause from the audience, as evidenced during its screening in the session on ‘Rise and Fall of the Masala Film’ by Rachel Dwyer.

Dwyer, a professor of Indian Studies and Cinema at the University of London, began the session, moderated by Mira Hashmi, with a slide presentation on the ‘ingredients’ of a typical Bollywood masala film, screening select clips as examples. The aforementioned scene accompanied ‘big star’ and powerful dialogues.

Dwyer maintained a wry tone of fond cheekiness towards the exaggerated and overall absurd nature of Bollywood masala throughout, as evident from her selection of scenes and commentary.

To highlight ‘melodrama’, she showed an amusing clip from Haathi Mere Saathi, in which Khanna weeps over his pet elephant’s death while a sad song by Mohammad Rafi plays on the soundtrack and another elephant uncages various tigers and lions in a zoo with his trunk.

Other ‘masala ingredients’ shown in the presentation were comedy (Lage Raho Munna Bhai), magic (Kal Ho Na Ho), love (Gangs of Wasseypur), location (An Evening in Paris) and finally, a mixture of all (Om Shanti Om).

In a quite engaging discussion with Hashmi and later the audience through open Q&A, Dwyer talked about resurgence of the masala film with Salman Khan’s 2010 blockbuster Dabangg.

Responding to Hashmi’s observation that today’s Bollywood films look too westernised and urban when in the past films were frequently set in a rural settings milieu, Dwyer said rural settings were indeed being featured in a lot of modern films, but in a more realistic fashion.

She cited Dabangg, Omkara and Gangs of Wasseypur as examples, which are set in modern UP.

On the staggering popularity of Amitabh Bachchan, Dwyer said “he communicates uniquely with his audience and connects with them on a deeply emotional level, something that is extremely rare.” She said while Amitabh had portrayed many different kinds of roles, his anger was one emotion that resonated with the underclass the most.

Dwyer said Amitabh gave self-respect and dignity to the society’s oppressed and the sidelined.

HANIF: In another session, Mohammed Hanif (author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti) drew a large group of fans. The panel discussion was on Humour as Subvertor, however because of the unexplained absence of Jugnu Mohsin, who was meant to be the moderator, the discussion did not remain in line with the topic.

Salima Hashmi and Salman Shahid took the reigns as moderators to fill in for Mohsin’s absence and asked Hanif and Beghairat Brigade’s lead vocalist Aftab Saeed questions about their work. Their answers were general quips rather than serious detailed replies and the audience was left laughing loudly at many points.

Aftab Saeed talked about the ban on Youtube and his video link on Vimeo. “I still wonder how difficult it has been for the government to ban that one radio channel from Swat,” he jested.

Hanif spoke about his experience as a playwright, specifically about ‘Marnay Kay Baad Kiya Hoga’. “I used to think it was a very funny play, but now in retrospect I don’t anymore, because I think we are already beyond the stage of death,” he joked.