Page 195 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

182 << Conclusion

The first one is from Hari Kunzru’s novel, Transmission, which revolves
around Arjun Mehta, a software engineer in New Delhi. We learn that Mehta
is also a Bollywood fan and a regular at a basement cybercafé that supplies
7
him with bootleg films, film songs, and pornography. Body-shopped to
West Coast U.S.A., he navigates the racial and cultural fields of the high-tech
sector with great tenacity and verve, only to lose his job in unceremonious
fashion. Enraged and desperate to come up with a ploy to hold on to his job
and live in America, he exacts revenge by unleashing one of the most deadly
computer viruses ever conceived. As the code paralyzes and wreaks havoc
on computer systems worldwide, the only thing visible on screen is a simula-
tion—Leela Zahir, a Bollywood heroine, dancing suggestively.
The second story concerns an online fan community that has cohered
around the renowned music director A. R. Rahman (arrahmansfans.com),
and specifically the labor of a group of fans that wanted to ensure the suc-
cess of a Rahman concert in Bangalore. Working closely with the concert
sponsors, these fans managed everything from promotions and ticket sales
to stage construction and crowd control on the day of the concert (Octo-
ber 8, 2005). As part of their effort to gain recognition as the “official” Rah-
man fan group, they also decided to present Rahman with a gift—a montage,
composed of thumbnail images of all his album covers, which formed the
contours of his face. Faced with the prospect of buying expensive software, a
smaller group (some of whom run a design company called 3xus.com) went
on to develop their own software. After many sleepless nights of painstaking
coding, they finally got to meet Rahman and present the gift.
Acknowledging these fans’ perseverance, technical and marketing savvy,
and transnational network established through online activities, Rahman
and his team decided to collaborate with them to promote and organize con-
certs in different cities worldwide, evolve new modes of music distribution,
and work together to tackle piracy. As the moderator of arrahmanfans.com
pointed out to me when we met a few days after the concert, this story of fan
activity went largely unreported in mainstream media. Media attention was
focused instead on violent clashes between fans of Tamil film star Vijaykanth
and activists of a political party who took offense at Vijaykanth’s remarks
directed at their leader. Referring to these stories, the moderator remarked,
“We’re online, not on the streets. We would never venture into street battles,
and that does not attract media attention.” 8
The media world that the character Arjun Mehta inhabits in New Delhi
resonates with descriptions of spaces such as Palika Bazaar, an underground
market in the central district of Connaught Place. One of several sites in
New Delhi that Ravi Sundaram describes in his analysis of media urbanism,