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blogs, and various social networking sites. Indeed, this is a shift that is not
lost on the film industry, as Zoya Akhtar’s take on the mahurat in Luck
by Chance (2009) so clearly reveals. Of course, a mahurat scene in a film
that offers glimpses of the Bombay film industry’s cultures of production
is no surprise. The main ritual element—filming a scene involving the
hero and heroine of the Rommy Rolly-production—unfolds on a lavish set
built for the occasion and in the presence of the director, producer, a range
of production crew members, friends and family of the stars, and media
journalists.
However, what is particularly striking about this representation of the
mahurat is its acknowledgment of how television has come to mediate and,
in the process, redefine the scope and scale of this production ritual. Tell-
ingly, it is through the television set in a struggling actress’s (Sona) one-room
apartment that we first hear about the mahurat for Dil Ki Aag. As Sona set-
tles down in front of her television, an anchor on a television channel called
Glam 24 invites us to the mahurat, informing us that the new heroine (Nikki)
was none other than the daughter of 1970s superstar Nikki Walia and that the
hero, as always with Rommy Rolly productions, would be Zaffar Khan. At
the end of the minute-long mahurat scene, the hero and heroine walk down
the stairs to join the producer and director, ready to offer sound bites to a
group of journalists from various television channels.

The mahurat scene in Luck by Chance, a telling indication of the extent to which televi-
sion has come to mediate the film industry’s imagination of the audience.