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Not so long ago, I recall myself sweating it out by using our city buses, standing in front of long queues in the hot tropical sun, and using up my parent’s hard-earned pocket money to buy tickets for a Hindi movie starring a Shah Rukh Khan, an Aamir Khan, a Salman Khan, etc. Every weekend, my friends and I either opted for a local language movie (non-Hindi) or just dropped into a theater to check out a Hindi movie. We all understood Hindi better than the local language in that state, but that is not the point. If we had the money and there was a movie with a well-known male lead actor, we would just hand over our parent’s money to the guy at the ticket counter. After coming out of those movies, we debated for about an hour at max on how we each felt about the movie, by then reached a restaurant, gave some more money for a tasty lunch or dinner, and went back to our rented bachelor rooms and forgot about them for the next week. The next weekend would come, and we again followed our standard protocol. I was never bothered about who directed those movies or who was the story writer. What mattered was who the male lead actor was, followed by who was the female lead actor, followed by who was the music director. In other words, the dominance of the lead actors and music directors was too much of a weight on the balance to tilt it any other way, and there was no counterweight that even dreamed about tilting it any other way.
Fast forward to 2026. Looking back over the last decade, Indian cinema’s balance seems to have mounted some balancing weights. First came the “World Wide Web” on a table. Then came the same “World Wide Web” in our pockets, next to our beds, between our near and dear, and literally everywhere. Finally, there are two strong contenders who are in fact the heavyweights. They are “YouTube” and “OTT.”
OTT versus Theatre – A lot of fast food versus a good diner
I am not sure of others, but I am going to take some liberty in assuming that Indian cinema is a major source of entertainment for most Indians. For all others, my sincere apologies. Back then (1990s), it never bothered me whether the movie had a good story, a good screenplay, a good dialogue writer, a good cameraman, or a good director. Rather, it was whether the posters on many of the city walls had familiar faces (lead actors, some known villains, and some known comedians). The rest all was, frankly, some beautiful calligraphy occupying space on the poster. I enjoyed whether they had repetitive stories, illogical action sequences, god-like constant elevations of male lead actors, talented acting, or good-looking faces & bodies spouting dialogue. It did not matter whether it was an actor swaying his arms (or bodies) during songs or whether it was actors fighting the goons. I was lucky I had the money. I had friends (and still have them). Posters back then were always up on the city walls and city centers. It was a casual affair. And I seem to have enjoyed it all and relish it to this day.
So, what changed, and what has made me write this love letter to all those crazy dudes and dudettes of the 1990s? Let me start with bifurcation of the Indian cinema experience. First, it is the flexibility of playing the waiting game and watching it wherever I want, whenever I want on my smart tablet, smart mobile or my smart TV via the “OTT” heavy weight. Next is what I have lately realized. These are movies like Dangal, Baahubali, RRR, Animal, Pushpa, KGF and now Dhurandhar. This list may change for the rest of 1 billion Indians, after leaving out the 0.4 billion non-movie lovers.
Lately and rather unconsciously, I realized that I have been keeping movie accounts in my brain’s volatile and nonvolatile memories. It seems to have collected the names of all those directors I have mentioned above and a few others. I have to say that I may forget the story writers but surely never the directors. This mental account alerts me that it is worth going to the theater for the directors who have made it part of my non-volatile memory. The volatile region has also built a logic to make me play the waiting game and watch other movies on “OTT,” which most of the time I watch for as long as my patience allows. In other words, it is almost like the lead actors who had occupied my sole movie-related memory in the 1990s have gone down the list and have been upended by directors and story writers. With competition from “YouTube” heavyweight (which I lately have started to lighten), I only have so much of my valuable time between theater-worthy cinema and the rest. Has the Indian cinema’s balance tilted?
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