Page 157 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

144 << Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory

dot-com companies understood that their proximity to Bollywood and
personal relationships with filmmakers and stars distinguished them from
countless Bollywood websites that clutter the Internet. Further, it became
clear as I spent more time in the offices of various dot-com companies and
accompanied journalists to film publicity events that proximity was inter-
preted in exceedingly narrow temporal terms, as providing a sense of daili-
ness in the film industry’s imagination of overseas audiences. As Qureshi had
articulated it, “There is always an Indian online.” Let me elaborate by turning
to a conversation with Sanjay Trehan, manager of indiatimes.com’s broad-
band initiative.
Before arriving in Bombay for my first phase of field research, I had spent
a few days in indiatimes.com’s corporate office located in Gurgaon, near New
Delhi. Toward the end of a week during which I had spent time talking with
various members of the company’s corporate and research groups, I had a
chance to meet Trehan. “Lifestyle and entertainment are often the earliest
to adopt new media,” he began, before moving on to talk about Bollywood:
“Bollywood, of late, has realized that new media is critical. Every film has a
good website. The content is very rich, as good as any Hollywood film web-
site. But it’s early days for now, in India.” Acknowledging that indiatimes.com
was diaspora-focused, especially when it came to entertainment, he then
turned his attention to the mobile phone lying on his desk. “Have you seen
this clip from Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena (A Player and a Beauty, dir. Suparn
Verma, 2005)?” he asked. This video clip from a forthcoming Bollywood film
had been the topic of much conversation in the office that day, but I hadn’t
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seen it. “Here, take a look,” said Trehan, holding up the phone for me and
adjusting the volume. Even as the clip played, Trehan continued: “It’s a 1.4
minute MMS, an intimate scene, doing the rounds of the broadband library
in India. In fact, we’ve put it online on the indiatimes website. It’s a well-
orchestrated PR and advertising stunt that is creating tremendous word-of-
mouth buzz.” Putting the phone away, Trehan went on to offer his under-
standing of indiatimes.com’s role in mediating relations between the film
industry and audiences abroad: “NRIs miss Bollywood . . . so if we can show
them something that came from our television channel Zoom—a party, an
interview, a clip from a shooting, and so on, then that works. NRIs should be
able to watch what Indians in India are watching, and that’s why, like I said,
Bollywood now realizes the importance of the Web” (my emphasis).
As I have already shown, the diasporic bias that shaped the development
of the dot-com sector in India had defined the operations of film-related
dot-com companies as well. Trehan’s account is telling for it makes it clear
that dot-com professionals hoped that a sense of simultaneity, coupled with