Aviation Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s B

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies
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Aviation, Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s Bombay Cinema

Ranjani Mazumdar
BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies 2011 2: 129
DOI: 10.1177/097492761100200203
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Leadership Insights from Jaina text Saman Suttam
Article 129
BioScope
Aviation, Tourism and Dreaming 2(2) 129–155
© 2011 Screen South Asia Trust
in 1960s Bombay Cinema SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/097492761100200203
Ranjani Mazumdar http://bioscope.sagepub.com
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Abstract
In the history of Bombay cinema, the 1960s is a peculiar world marked by a reworking of nationalist
anxieties, sovereignty, the place of the woman, and the world of location and mobility. India’s defeat in
the border war against China in 1962 jolted the Nehruvian consensus of the 1950s. This was followed
by food shortages, currency crisis, and the eventual turn to the United States (US) for grants to
purchase food grain. It was as if the vast control regime set up in the 1950s, whose most visible
signs were the Five-Year Plans, national sovereignty, and self-sustainability, started to crack. The wild
abandonment of the 1960s seemed to lift this mood for the middle class, acknowledging their dreams
of travel. This article returns to the cinema of the 1960s to track both the opening of the global
and a fascination with urban infrastructure, tourism, fashion, and consumption. The arrival of color,
the widespread circulation of travel imagery, the promotion of railway tourism, and the explosion in
aviation congealed in creating a kind of cinematic tourism that was unique in the history of Bombay
cinema. Many of these films traveled to spectacular global cities like Paris, Tokyo, London, Rome, and
Beirut (An Evening in Paris, Sangam, Love in Tokyo, Around the World). Through this mobility the films
encountered the global currents of the 1960s and also played out anxieties around questions of love,
marriage, and erotic desire.
Keywords
Aviation, tourism, eroticism, infrastructure, aerial views, cinema
In the history of Bombay cinema, the 1960s was a peculiar world marked by a reworking of nationalist
anxieties, sovereignty, the place of the woman, and the world of location and mobility. This engagement
was negotiated through sites of travel, a fascination with infrastructure, and the mobilization of spatial
desire. The arrival and use of color, lighter cameras, and new technologies of sound created a desire to
break out of the physical confines of the studios. Travel across India’s landscape became a recurring
feature in films, with trains and automobiles as the chosen mode of transportation. Thus, the hill station
emerged in the 1960s as a picturesque space for romance. Exploration narratives abound in this decade,
with picnics, holidays, and other journeys forging an entirely new imagination of space. The presence of
Kashmir, its lakes, ravines, boathouses, mountains, and people was spectacularly highlighted in films
like Shakti Samanta’s Kashmir ki Kali (1964). The fascination with landscape became critical to a new
Ranjani Mazumdar is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi, India. E-mail: ranjani.mazumdar@gmail.com

130 Ranjani Mazumdar
conception of the “outdoor” that looked distinctly different from earlier films.1 While the train and the
automobile were mobilized for travel across India earlier in the decade, by the mid 1960s, we see the
emergence of a cluster of films that showcased travel to foreign cities like Paris, London, Tokyo, and
Rome. The most well known of these films are Sangam (Raj Kapoor, 1964), Love in Tokyo (Pramod
Chakravarty, 1966), An Evening in Paris (Shakti Samanta, 1967), and Around the World (Pachi, 1967).
These were box office successes which inspired other lesser known films remembered today only for
their songs, including Night in London (Brij, 1967) and Spy in Rome (B.K. Adarsh, 1968). This article
returns to Bombay’s global travel films of the 1960s to unpack the “postcard imagination” that brought
jet age aviation, tourism, consumerism, color film stock, fashion, and music into a distinct cultural
configuration.
As an icon of modernity, the picture postcard made its entry in Europe and the US during the second
half of the nineteenth century. Thereafter, its widespread circulation across the world was enabled con-
siderably by developments in twentieth century tourism. As a collectible souvenir, as a gift, and most
importantly as a form of communication between people placed in different parts of the world, the
postcard has served many functions, both concrete and symbolic. Some refer to it as an entangled object,
layered by sediments of traces, memories, and times (Rogan, 2005). While the technological advancements
in printing and photography shaped the aesthetic form of the postcard, the cultural and social markers of
the different times in which it was produced, have drawn historians to it (ibid.). The picture postcard is
an evocative form and the fascination with geography, fashion, architecture, celebrities, leisure sites,
infrastructure, and more can be tracked through the medium. However, in its classic and original function,
the postcard exists primarily as a communication between two or more people, known to each other.
Postcards that circulate between friends and family members contain the imagination and memories
linked to travel. What we see in Bombay’s global travel films of the 1960s is the emergence of what I call
the “postcard imagination” into a vehicle of symbolic transactions between people not known to each
other. The frozen image of the postcard is transformed into a kinetic force that invites the anonymous
spectator to touch and experience the sites on display. This force field of touch and sight in cinema is
usually defined as haptic visuality, a form of vision where the eyes are deployed as organs of touch.
Haptic visuality allows the spectator the opportunity to experience the multi-sensory dimension of
cinema (Marks, 2000). As I will argue in the course of this article, the cinematic traversing of particular
sites enabled forms of cultural and sensual exchange, making the images more than just the ideal tourist
destination.
Perhaps the most significant social and cultural change in the 1960s was the move away from the
overwhelming Nehruvian paradigm that had shaped the iconography of the post-independence decade
(Ghosh, 2001). India’s defeat in the 1962 war against China was critical to this moment, since it was
the first public shaming of the nationalist state (Maxwell, 1999). This was followed by other issues—the
failure of state planning, food shortages, the crisis of foreign currency, and the eventual turn to the US
for grants to purchase food grain. It was as if the vast control regime set up in the 1950s, whose most
visible signs were the Five-Year Plans, national sovereignty, and self-sustainability, started to crack
(Kaviraj, 2010). Internationally the Nehruvian regime had pushed for Third Worldism through non-
alignment and through Asian and African solidarity generated by the Bandung moment (Chakravarty,
2005). At the political/national level the space of the global got bracketed and filtered through these
prisms. In cinema however, consumerist imaginations of excess held sway and sought to break free from
the Nehruvian language of developmental consciousness. The nationalist limits on consumption, which
had dominated the 1950s, faced pressure from all around. The failure of the second Five-Year Plan and
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Aviation, Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s Bombay Cinema 131
India’s defeat in the 1962 war seemed to signify a loss of the national morale and a public mood of turn-
ing away from the more frugal economies of the 1950s.
The wild abandonment of the 1960s seemed to lift this mood of the middle class, acknowledging their
dreams of travel. While the visual display of wealth and consumption was always present in cinema, the
decisive entry of color in the midst of an acute economic crisis reframed the sphere of consumption.
Despite the devaluation of the rupee, foreign exchange was released for the shooting of the international
travel films on the condition that three times the money spent on the production would be brought back
to India. All the filmmakers signed bonds with the Reserve Bank of India for the release of currency.2
Foreign locations were incorporated into the narratives of the films as tourist site, as the place of romantic
possibility, and as the space of encounter with new forms of urbanism. In Around the World, the crisis of
foreign exchange was deployed as a narrative device to initiate a journey across the world. At a party, Raj
Kapoor is asked by a family friend to visit him in Tokyo. Kapoor responds with a moral problem about
using the country’s shrinking foreign exchange. The family friend promises Kapoor that his expenses in
Tokyo will be taken care of. The departure from India is staged to show Kapoor drawing only eight
dollars at the airport’s foreign exchange counter. Though Around the World was responding quite directly
to the 1966 devaluation of the rupee, the sequence makes clear that even the crisis of foreign currency
could not suppress the desire for travel.3
The international tourism industry in the 1960s overwhelmed the visual culture of the time.4 1967 was
declared the international tourist year by the United Nations with the slogan “tourism, passport to peace.”
This had been recommended by the Economic and Social Council on the basis of a request made by the
International Union of Official Travel Organizations (IUOTO), an NGO that had members from more
than 100 countries.5 In India, tourism influenced popular advertising, and travel became a recurring
motif in the marketing of various products. An advertisement for Hakoba saris shows a woman posing
in the foreground with a stationary plane behind her. The caption says “make a safe landing” (The
Illustrated Weekly, September 15, 1966, p. 61). Wills Navy Cut, a cigarette brand, sponsored a “made for
each other” contest, in which English-speaking married couples were asked to mail their photographs to
the tobacco company. The selected couple was then offered a holiday in Rome. The advertisement
carried three images placed in one row. The first shows a couple inside an aircraft, the second shows
Sophia Loren and Paul Newman in MGM’s Lady, and the third has a woman in a sari offering a Wills
cigarette to the Hindi film actor, Feroze Khan. The headline says “Win Fabulous Holiday in Rome,
Spend 7 Days in Rome—Visit Sophia Loren’s Dream Villa” (The Illustrated Weekly, October 9, 1966,
p. 14). Travel was also the primary visual motif in the advertisements of the View-Master which I will
come to later. Central to this imagination of foreign travel was the explosion in air traffic.
Aviation, Tourism, and the Cinema
In his history of global air travel, Marc Dierikx captures the imaginative force of aviation in the twentieth
century (Dierikx, 2008). Aviation, says Dierikx, drew into its fold international and domestic geography,
politics, trade, culture, arts, literature, music, and most importantly a mobile population. Aviation went
beyond the infrastructure of airports and aircrafts to operate most of all as a highway for the generation
of new encounters, adventures, and thrilling experiences (Boyer, 2003; Dierikx, 2008). How did this
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

highway produce novel perceptual regimes,

specifically in the context of India? What were the
intersecting forces that drew cinema into this
regime of sensations? How did the context of the
1960s impinge on this experience? These are ques-
tions that need some excavation and I will begin
this with an introduction to India’s premier airline
industry, Air India, which in the 1960s emerged as
a major player and inspiration for Bombay cinema’s
global travel (Image 1).
Air India was founded in 1932 by J.R.D. Tata as
Tata Airlines and became a regular commercial
service after World War II. In 1946, the airline
became a public limited company named Air India.
In the post-independence period, 46 percent of the
airline was acquired by the Government of India
and, in return, the airline was granted status to
Image 1. Air India’s mascot. operate international services under the name
Source: Author’s personal collection. Air India International. In 1953, the government
nationalized the carrier (Kohli, 2010).6 The first Boeing 707 arrived in 1960 and two years later, in 1962,
Air India became the world’s first all jet airline (Air India Ninth Annual Report, 1961–62, p. 10). Unlike
its situation today, in the 1960s Air India was one of the most dynamic airlines in the world. J.R.D. Tata
was keen to have the airline operate as a cosmopolitan and modern infrastructure for the country (Kohli,
2010). Even after the airline was nationalized, Nehru asked J.R.D. Tata to continue as the head of the
company (ibid.). The airline was also recognized for the aggressive campaign it had launched in the print
media to advertise its expanded services and routes.
The global travel films openly endorsed Air India either with exterior shots of the airline taking off or
announcements played on the soundtrack over interior shots of the aircraft. For instance, Shakti Samanta’s
An Evening in Paris opens with a narrator announcing “Ye Air India ki Boeing 707 Udan Hai jo Delhi se
Paris ja rahi hai” (This is Air India’s Boeing 707 carrier which is flying from Delhi to Paris.). The voice-
over continues and we are introduced to a diverse group of passengers. The voice is humorous and light.
The camera rests on Sharmila Tagore’s face and we are informed by the voice that she is disillusioned
with her experiences with love in India and is now on her way to Paris in search of romance. This extra-
diegetic voice is suddenly interrupted by an official airline announcer informing the passengers that they
are just about to land at Orly airport, in the world’s most romantic city. We transition to Paris by night
via a now well-known song from the film picturized on Shammi Kapoor. The credits roll over the song
sequence with Kapoor walking around the city directly facing the spectator as he sings:
Arre aisa mauka phir kahan milega,

Humare jaisa dil kahan milega,
aao tumko dikhla ta hoon Paris ki ek rangeen shyam,
dekho dekho, dekho dekho dekho,
An evening in Paris
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Hey where else will you get the chance

Where else will you find this heart?
Come let me show you one colourful Paris evening
Come and look, come and look, come and look
At an evening in Paris7 (see Image 2)
Paris is introduced by night as it glitters with life.

Paris emerges in Kapoor’s performance and in the
lyrics as a city of possibilities, mystery, and de-
sire.8 Crafted along with the opening introduction
to Sharmila Tagore, this opening sequence em-
bodies the tourist consciousness of airborne travel
and desire for European images of modernity. The
reference to Air India’s Boeing 707 places the air- Image 2. Shammi Kapoor introduces Paris by night in
line within this network of travel as the generator An Evening in Paris, 1967.
of cosmopolitan identity. A similar introduction to Source: DVD frame grab by the author.
Tokyo can be seen in Pramod Chakravarty’s Love in Tokyo where we arrive in the airline and the first
aerial perspective is offered from the point of view of the aircraft.
The radical transformation of commercial aviation in the 1960s has been acknowledged and docu-
mented by Dierikx. The combination of fast, large aircrafts and the reduction in fares turned air travel
into a much wider phenomenon over the course of the 1960s. This was also the decade when flight
attendants were adorned with designer clothing and airports transformed into new display havens.
Dierikx writes that the world of flight became attractive as a setting for advertising. Along with publiciz-
ing travel destinations, air transport imagery was mobilized to sell modern luxury goods such as cars,
perfumes, tobacco, drinks, and fashion (Dierikx, 2008, p. 74). Central to this assemblage was the emerg-
ing link between aviation and tourism. Dierikx’s account describes a new force-field of consumption,
eroticism, and lifestyle aspirations linked to air travel, a moment that was distinctly different from air
traffic prior to the 1960s. The jet magic was everywhere and Air India became an active participant in
this new world. Though a national airline, Air India was unique in its lack of nationalist anxiety. Nowhere
was this more visible than in the airline’s most successful mascot—the figure of the irreverent
Maharaja.
The Maharaja first made his appearance in 1946 when S.K. Kooka, the commercial director of Air
India, along with an artist named Umesh Rao, created the Maharaja as a cartoon figure (Karkaria, 1971;
Kooka, 1966). Air India’s own publicity documents of the 1970s say of the Maharaja
What began as an attempt to design for an in-flight memo pad grew to take Air India’s sales and promotional
messages to millions of travelers across the world. Today, this naughty Maharaja of Air India has become a world
figure. He can be a lover boy in Paris, a sumo wrestler in Tokyo, a pavement artist, a Red Indian, a monk... he
can effortlessly flirt with the beauties of the world. And most importantly, he can get away with it all, simply
because he is the Maharaja!9
The Maharaja was obviously one of the world’s least inhibited air travelers, whose distinctiveness was
acknowledged by the American Society of Travel Agents in 1959 which voted Air India first place in a
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

400-entry travel poster contest (Time, September 26, 1960). The range of posters and advertisements of
Air India available today testify to the unique and inventive promotional strategy adopted by the airline.
From a simple Maharaja in simulated miniature paintings to playboy images—the Maharaja had many
faces. In a series of print advertisements published in various magazines of the 1960s, the Maharaja
appeared as an unselfconscious and irreverent figure.10 One image shows him being irreverent about the
1942 Quit India movement, while in another he boasts about the five female dates who are hanging out
of his pocket. Other images show the Maharaja dancing with a Russian ballerina, flirting with a fashion-
able Londoner, impishly providing us with 12 good reasons to leave India, and as a family man, with his
wife and children, who cannot take his eyes off a fashionably dressed woman walking by (Images 3, 4,
5, and 6). Many of the Air India advertisements in Blitz mention the “P” form which travelers had to fill
out to get foreign exchange as they were allowed exchange only once in three years, testifying to the
acute currency crisis of the time. The advertising strategy, in fact, was to show the Maharaja as an in-
vincible figure who found ways to transcend different kinds of restrictions, like that of the “P” form.
Tourism was a potent and intoxicating force, which the airline tapped into through its advertising strategy.
Image 3. Air India advertisement 1967.

Source: Author’s personal collection.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155



BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155


The official posters of Air India were equally dramatic. In one poster the Maharaja is being painted by
Mona Lisa herself. Another poster shows him as a tourist in Paris displaying pictures of the Maharaja
icon hidden inside his overcoat. The caption says, “pssst naughty pictures.” The most striking one is a
poster advertising travel to London where the Maharaja dressed as playboy bunny is waiting on an
English couple (Image 7).
Air India’s mascot was clearly distinctive and displayed a confidence that allowed the figure to carry
a blasé, irreverent and flirtatious iconography, quite distinct from the way national icons were represented.
In a context such as India the Maharaja as a cartoon figure with his burlesque masculinity could embody
transgression and eroticism in a way that was perhaps not easy with representations of the air hostess.
The irreverence often got the Maharaja into trouble particularly when a specific country was involved.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Image 7. Air India Poster from the 1960s.

In 1967, a letter to Air India from the head of the French Department at Osmania University complained
about a poster advertising travel to Paris which showed the Maharaja’s face floating above a set of
dancing female legs. The letter stated:
Your poster introduces travel to Paris by Air India. The word Paris is drawn in such a way that it represents female
legs in different dancing positions. As a Frenchman, I was deeply shocked by this limited way of summing up
my capital. This poster was not meant to be insulting, but it is not uncommon to associate France with a sort of
amorous France background. It would be better to avoid stressing the myth of France, the country of love and
of gay Paris. I would appreciate it if you could help destroying (sic) myths by deciding to discard this poster on
Paris. (Kooka, 1966)
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

The posters and printed advertisements of the Maharaja had squarely linked air travel with an irreverent
and erotic charge. The Maharaja displayed the confidence of the airline, charting a particular relation-
ship between tourism, eroticism, and exoticism. The airline’s strategic play with curiosity and the desire
for the magic of distant lands became the symbolic base for the full play of a tourist imagination in
cinema. In the global transformation of air traffic, Air India became firmly ensconced. It was not long
before the Maharaja’s fascination with cinema became known to the world. In 1966, Blitz carried a
humorous story on the introduction of in-flight entertainment. The article said the Maharaja had become
depressed because there was nothing new for him to experience. The courtiers tried to cheer him to no
avail and finally went out to find ways to make the Maharaja happy. They came back later to announce
the introduction of in-flight movie entertainment. The Maharaja, the article said, was very pleased. He
responded with “Excellent! An in-flight movie, a capital idea; I beg your pardon, a socialist idea! That
makes me an in-flight movie moghul! Ha Ha! And he clapped his hands in great glee” (Blitz, September
10, 1966, p. 19).11
The Maharaja subsequently appeared as a figure in cinema. Shakti Samanta’s An Evening in Paris
constructs an elaborate sequence in which the Maharaja appears as a sign, a cartoon figure, and a target
of jokes. A Frenchman expresses interest in Deepa (Sharmila Tagore) who is disillusioned with Indian
men. The Frenchman dons the clothing of the Air India Maharaja to propose marriage. Shyam (Shammi
Kapoor), the protagonist of the film, plays a trick and gets the upper hand when he persuades some chil-
dren to run to the Frenchman and call him “daddy.” Deepa is infuriated and walks away from the
Frenchman. The use of the Maharaja in the film is telling, not as a literal brand endorsement but as a
device that works through humor, jokes, and a side plot. This comic moment in the film leads up to a
visually spectacular song sequence simulating a ride through Paris—a ride that mobilizes cinema’s
ability to display, showcase, and carve out the wonders of the modern city. As Shyam sings “Diwane ka
Naam to Poocho” (Won’t you ask for the name of the love-struck one?), the city opens out like a map of
photographs and postcards. We walk, travel by car, and by tourist buses to see boulevards, lampposts,
bridges, and heritage architecture. Here is a panoramic vision that draws us into its circle and into
cinema’s sightseeing journeys and spatio-visual desire for circulation (Bruno, 2002, p. 19). The camera
strives for diverse viewing possibilities, and a series of tableaux shots creates the pleasure of travel. Paris
emerges as a space in motion within which romantic possibilities are enhanced through music and
choreography. D.N. Nadkarni was one of the few reviewers to recognize the powerful use of space in the
film. Nadkarni wrote of the film’s design as a strategy where
[…] the camera does not become a recorder of a routine travelogue but is used to be in, behind, under and above
things. It is basically a search for the new of what have you in the very heart beats of the world. Photographic
material is used to show life clearly and show it whole. (Blitz, November 4, 1967, p. 22)
Nadkarni’s account clearly recognized the role of the camera in evoking a postcard imagination for the
spectator through sensuous experiences of touch and sight.
Spatial Transgression, Regulation, and Indianness

An Evening in Paris is a simple story of a rich woman disillusioned with love in India who goes to
Paris to see what is possible. There she encounters Shyam, gets embroiled in a crime plot linked to a
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

villain (Pran) and discovers her long lost sister, Suzy, who appears in the film as her look-alike (also
played by Tagore). Suzy is a fashionably dressed nightclub dancer in Paris in contrast to Deepa who
invariably wears a sari. The plot is thin and quite marginal to the drama of space in the film. Reviewers
scoffed at the film’s “escapism.” Filmworld wrote “abounding in generous doses of exotic western
locales… an out and out escapist blues chaser made by a commercially conscious filmmaker, Shakti
Samanta” (Filmworld, January-April 1968). Most of all the same review referred to Sharmila’s
performance as “Sexciting” (ibid.). Blitz gave the film three out of five stars even as the review branded
it “pointless and plot less” (Blitz, January 20, 1968, p. 22). A pre-release story in Blitz said “Sultry sex
kitten Sharmila Tagore … seen for the first time in barest of attire, teams up with Shammi Kapoor in
An Evening in Paris” (Blitz, August 15, 1967, p. 30). Star and Style referred to the criminal waste of
foreign exchange and the plot’s inability to match the luxurious and picturesque locales of the film (Star
and Style, October 9, 1968, p. 31).
The use of foreign locations in An Evening in Paris was discussed widely in the film press. The most
significant pre-publicity move was the 1966 August issue of Filmfare which carried a bikini-clad photo-
graph of Tagore on the cover (Filmfare, August 19, 1966). Inside the magazine there were other
photographs of her in the same attire and the caption said “Before she flew out for the filming, Sharmila
gave us a preview of the costume—some beachwear and a lot of Sharmila. How did she feel in this
outfit? Rather unconventional for an Indian film star? ‘Oh rather like a pioneer’ she said (She respects
conservatism but is against prudery)” (Filmfare, August 19, 1966, p. 9). While Sharmila did not actually
wear a two-piece suit in the film, the image is now part of folklore, with most assuming the bikini was
in fact worn for An Evening in Paris; the first time an Indian film actress had taken such a step (Image 8).
The Filmfare spread was followed by con-
troversy (Ghosh, 2006). Tagore recalls how she
was warned by people in the film industry to
change track immediately. They were shocked at
how far she had gone.12 The sudden outburst of
opinion against the use of a bikini by a leading
actress had a profound impact on Tagore herself.
She never wore a two-piece suit again in public
and, in fact, in several subsequent interviews
apologized for her earlier act (The Hindu Metro
Plus, Monday, April 3, 2006). But the “bikini
fiasco” or publicity made one thing obvious—that
travel to foreign locations in An Evening in Paris
was tinged with a particular kind of desire and
boldness not common in the films of the time. This
is highlighted in an advertisement published in
Filmfare which shows Tagore in a nightclub
dancer’s attire, both in the foreground and in the
right-hand corner of the image, while Shammi
Kapoor’s smiling face dominates the rest of the Image 8. Sharmila Tagore on the cover of
frame. Right on top we have the caption “A film Filmfare, August 1966.
full of sex, songs and sensation” (Filmfare, January Source: National Film Archive of India (NFAI).
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

looks meaningfully at Deepa, his desire written on

his face. A playful repartee between them takes
place as they lean against the railing, the city vis-
ible in the background. Deepa responds to Shyam’s
desire for a kiss with the statement “Indian girls do
not kiss before marriage.” Shyam mocks this state-
ment with a feigned look of disappointment and
then takes out a ring to propose marriage to Deepa.
The entire sequence has a light-hearted, almost
ironic quality and “Indianness” appears like a
symbolic set of values that the film is unable to
cross (Image 10). The sequence in Sangam, made
three years earlier, is very similar except that the
couple is married and in Paris for their honeymoon.
Sundar (Raj Kapoor) and Radha (Vyjantimala)
have gone up the Eiffel Tower and are now looking
at the city from their privileged vantage point.
They see a young couple kissing on the floor below
them. Sundar looks meaningfully at Radha, clad in
a white sari. She smiles at Sundar but does not
relent. Suddenly some women look at the couple
and ask, “are you from India?” Sundar nods his
head and the women clap. Radha with her head
Image 9. Advertisement for An Evening in Paris. covered looks meaningfully at Sundar as if to
Source: National Film Archive of India (NFAI). reiterate the boundary identified with “Indianness”
which in this case is about the display of the kiss.
1968, p. 3) (Image 9). This advertisement encap- There are two things happening in these sequences:
sulates what the producers had hoped to achieve
with the film. It was as if foreign lands had enabled
an expressive charge to the body, circumscribed by
national sovereignty. Despite Tagore’s retraction,
the photographs circulated both before and after
the film, marking its genealogy through this potent
image of a bikini-clad cover girl.
The Filmfare photographs need to be placed
within existing discourses of female iconicity and
the desire for change unleashed by post-Nehruvian
expressions of consumption. In both An Evening in
Paris and Raj Kapoor’s Sangam, romantic mo-
ments are staged at the Eiffel Tower to make the
couples encounter white lovers kissing. An Evening
in Paris shows Shyam and a very fashionably Image 10. Deepa (Sharmila) and Shyam
adorned Deepa walking up the Eiffel Tower and (Shammi Kapoor) in An Evening in Paris, 1966.
finding a newly married couple kissing. Shyam Source: DVD frame grab by the author.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

first, Indianness is distinguished from Western values, but more importantly intimacy and desire pervade
the frame, bypassing the unwritten ban on the kiss in Indian cinema. The Indian couples witness the
foreign couples; they are clearly drawn to the idea and yet mark out their differences in terms of perceived
Indian values.
Madhava Prasad has argued that, in popular Bombay cinema, a prohibitive logic frames the presence
of the kiss for spectators but does not allow them to see it enacted literally on screen. Prasad elaborates
on different narrative techniques deployed to imaginatively evoke the kiss (Prasad, 1998, pp. 88–113).
The Eiffel Tower moment in An Evening in Paris is one of the sequences Prasad offers as an example of
how prohibition is thematized as cultural truth and duty. He argues that “the contrast provided by foreign
location, with its alien mores, serves to highlight the uniqueness of the national culture and the re-
sponsibility of the characters to uphold it” (Prasad, 1998, p. 90). Prasad argues that this presence of the
private in the public domain not only signals the formation of the modern couple outside of feudal
authority, but reinstates the role of the state in regulating the private (1998, pp. 98–113). For Prasad, the
threat of transgression is sidestepped by a counter assimilation strategy in which the family, the institution
of marriage, and the woman become the terrain on which the nation is provided with a unique identity
(Prasad, 1998, p. 90). It is possible to take Prasad’s argument in another direction. His analysis of the kiss
is staged against the backdrop of a report submitted by the Enquiry Committee on Film Censorship set
up by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1968. A former chief justice of Punjab, G.D.
Khosla, was appointed chairperson of the committee which submitted its findings in 1969 in a document
known widely as the Khosla Committee Report. But this was the culmination of a decade long debate.
While the Khosla Committee pondered on what was suitable for Indian audiences, the subject of
screen kissing pervaded film magazines. Star and Style carried a story titled “Kiss Kiss say the Producers,
Kill Kill say the Censors” (Star and Style, August 15, 1967, p. 34). This is followed up with “To Kiss or
not to Kiss” (Star and Style, October 31, 1969). The film critic, Kobita Sarkar, defended the use of the
kiss, while B.G.R. Krishnama, a resident of Secunderabad, wrote in a letter to the editor “apart from
being a foreign custom, kissing is a most unhygienic habit. It can spread germs” (Filmfare, August 18,
1967, Filmfare, September 15, 1967, p. 53). In the summer of 1968, actress Sadhna was quoted as saying
“kiss, kiss, kiss, but not on screen” (Star and Style, August 15, 1967, p. 35). But there were counter
opinions voiced by filmmakers like Shammi Kapoor, I.S. Johar, and Vijay Anand, who saw nothing
wrong in the use of the kiss (Star and Style, August 15, 1967, pp. 34–35).13 The debate on censorship and
obscenity had been going on since the silent period of cinema, but had acquired a particular intensity in
the 1960s around the kiss. Filmfare ran several editorials on the issue and articles appeared regularly in
other places like in Blitz, The Illustrated Weekly, and in the national dailies.
The atmosphere was clearly charged through the 1960s and formed the backdrop for the constitution
of the Khosla Committee which submitted its report with innumerable suggestions and recommendations
based on perceptions about what should or should not be screened in a country like India. The report
displays its own set of prejudices and latent conservatism but on one issue the committee’s recommendations
came as a surprise. This was related to the kiss. The committee explicitly stated that there was actually
nothing wrong in the depiction of the kiss if it suited the story. The committee also recognized that nudity
had a place in art and should not be curtailed blindly (Report of the Enquiry Committee on Film
Censorship, 1969, p. 93). The Film Industry, always critical of censorship norms, suddenly turned away
from this freedom, with many saying it would not be good for Hindi cinema.14 Thus, on behalf of a reader
of the magazine, Mother India, the editor Babu Rao Patel, who was then a member of the Rajya Sabha,
asked Mr I.K. Gujaral, the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, a provocative question about
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Sangam’s overseas release. Patel insisted that “as many as 113 passionate kisses between Raj Kapoor
and Vyjantimala” had been shown along with “many semi-nude and suggestive lust laden bedroom
scenes.” The assumption here was that for its international release, Sangam had skirted censorship
requirements. Patel felt this portrayal was detrimental for the nation’s image abroad and wondered
why the government had not acted to censor such representations (Mother India, 1970, p. 34).15 It is
indeed intriguing why Babu Rao Patel was so agitated about Sangam in 1969 when the film was released
in 1964.
The two moments in An Evening in Paris and Sangam discussed earlier appear as ironic and playful,
clearly encapsulating the divided opinion on the future of the kiss on screen. Both films were made
before the Khosla Committee was constituted but perform their ironic response to regulation, self-
imposed or otherwise, through a perceived encounter between two supposedly different cultural trad-
itions. With the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of technological modernity, both sequences
generate an ambivalent disposition—drawn to issues of desire, and yet working within a paradigm of
Hindi cinema’s notions of national culture. The foreign locations hold the possibility of adventure and
new ways of expressing desire. Rather than reading these moments as coherent, ideologically moored
articulations of the nation, I see them as cultural maps of a specific kind where a “narrative geography
of emotions” attaches eroticism to space, actively engaging in the seduction of architecture and what
Giuliana Bruno refers to as topographical architectonics (Bruno, 2002, p. 234). A filmic visit results in a
filmic evocation of passion and desire. It is the language of space that produces disturbance, reinvention,
and a hybrid map of conflicted emotions. This erotic charge cannot be easily subsumed within a settled
ideological reading for it is the mobilization of the senses in the course of a geographic encounter that
defies such logic. Tagore’s appearance in a bikini on the cover of Filmfare before the shooting of An
Evening in Paris and the deflection of the kiss and reiteration of “Indianness” in the Eiffel Tower
sequence of the film, need to be viewed in their combined articulation. What Prasad reads as an ideological
need to establish the uniqueness of the national culture, emerges as a deeply ambivalent space, working
creatively to generate alternative maps for the articulation of desire.
Such alternative maps of desire acquired many forms in the global travel films. In Love in Tokyo Joy
Mukherjee and Asha Parekh encounter a nightclub in the course of their romance where non-Indian
couples are shown in passionate embrace, close dancing to soft music. It is the sight of passion in an alien
land that triggers sexual desire in the couple. Since the couple is not married, sexual desire is staged,
obliquely expressed, and then deflected. As Mukherjee sings of the passion igniting the two, a sudden
burst of rain drives all the couples to seek shelter, with our two protagonists free to experience the rain
with their romance. The lyrics are charged and looks of deep desire exchanged. The sequence ends with
the hint of a kiss blocked off by the camera panning across a tree. Almost the same strategy is deployed
in An Evening in Paris which uses the Moulin Rouge nightclub district to stage the desire for physical
union. The camera moves across the club facades glittering with neon lights as fire crackers explode
against the night sky. Tagore and Kapoor sing a duet, expressing their passionate desire for each other.
The camera moves under a water tunnel, shows a neon advertisement for tours to the Eiffel Tower, then
introduces a young Parisian boy playing the guitar in a boat. Kapoor and Tagore are now languorously
lying in the same boat; the song continues and ends with the couple moving towards a kiss just as the
camera tilts down to the water reflecting the lights of the city. While Hindi cinema has always negotiated
the realm of sexual desire through songs, in the global travel films of the 1960s, foreignness and know-
ledge of sexual transgression associated with certain sites played a pivotal role. Tokyo and Paris are sites
of desire, erotic love, and mobility, curtailed or even enhanced by the narrative’s push to mark out
Indianness as different.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

The imaginative power of spatial encounters is also staged through forms of masquerade. In Sangam,
Vyjantimala performs a cabaret to seduce her husband and prevent him from going to see a cabaret. In
An Evening in Paris, the masquerade is literalized through the figure of the double, the long lost sister
who is a cabaret dancer in a Parisian nightclub. In Love in Tokyo, Asha Parekh dresses up as a Sikh boy
for most of the film. In a scathing review published in Filmfare the critic said, “Love in Tokyo could more
truthfully be titled ‘Sex change in Japan or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bearded lady’”
(Filmfare, September 2, 1966, p. 33). What I am trying to suggest is that spatial exploration also gen-
erated a play with identity, sexuality, and the body. Performatively charged moments drew attention to
the way the female figure could discard set identities and either take on the gestural economy of the
forbidden or underplay gender through cross dressing. In an environment that is removed from habitual
diffusion, significant things can be achieved because uncommon space becomes the site of immense
possibilities.
In her exploration of corporeality, feminist scholar Elizabeth Grosz shows how architecture and the
body are mutually constituted to rework presumptions and habitual understandings of time and space.
This is particularly relevant for architecture, urban planning, and geography. To highlight the spatial
dimension of corporeality, Grosz employs a reading strategy in which scattered thoughts and images are
drawn into unusual linkages and alignments, thereby rethinking how architecture might be located within
a constitutive coupling of the body and space (Grosz, 1995). The appeal and power of desire, says Grosz,
lies in its capacity to rearrange and re-organize the body’s forms and sensations, to make the body dis-
solve into something other than the rhythms of habit (Grosz, 1995, pp. 204–205). Desire can produce
unknown sensations, untapped energies, unthought of alignments, and encounters with regions not
known (ibid.). In these encounters with distant and foreign lands, such as in the global travel films of the
1960s, we witness both an optic and a haptic reinvention of space. The spectator is invited to experience
the encounter and corporeality is reaffirmed through the sensuous force of cinematic travel. The nego-
tiation of the kiss, the performance of masquerade by the female protagonists, the use of architectural
sites to mediate sexual desire, and the production of scandalous spectacles as extra-cinematic discourse,
combined to rewrite the affective map of the nation with a different and complex plane of desire and
emotion.16
The Color of Cinematic Cartography

The complex channeling of desire as cartographic possession of modern space is worked out explicitly
in Raj Kapoor’s Sangam. Like Mehboob’s Andaaz made in 1949, Sangam showcased a love triangle
between two men and a woman. Sundar (Raj Kapoor) and Gopal (Rajendra Kumar) are best friends in
love with the same woman, Radha (Vyjantimala), who ultimately marries Sundar, the man she does not
love, because of circumstances beyond her control. Unlike An Evening in Paris which used Paris as the
backdrop for its romantic encounter, Sangam drew on foreign locations for its honeymoon segment
which in many ways proved to be critically transformative for the narrative. A series of advertisements
published in Filmfare prior to the release of the film highlighted the triangular story. One version carried
the caption “These Three Shared Immortal Love” (Filmfare, November 23, 1963). All three stars are
present in the advertisement and travel is highlighted through sketched impressions of either snow-
capped mountains, boat rides, or the Eiffel Tower. Another poster had the Saanchi Stupa built in the third
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

century (located in the state of Madhya Pradesh) placed on the left and London’s Big Ben, the Leaning
Tower of Pisa, and the Eiffel Tower on the right. The three protagonists stand at the center and the
caption says “Ageless as Asia, Exciting as Europe” (Blitz, June 27, 1964, p. 23). Here ancient civilizational
iconography is placed alongside the iconographic imaginary of Western modernity, generating a sensory
map using architectural forms. Sangam was one of the biggest hits of the decade earning a huge amount
of foreign exchange from its release in the overseas market (Screen, Friday, July 2, 1965).
In a detailed analysis, Madhava Prasad locates Sangam as a text that aspires to settle questions of
marriage, love, and domestic discord by ironing out the central conflict between male friendship and
romance (Prasad, 1998, pp. 81–87). Sundar, as an army man, is placed as a representative of the state
whose control over the woman foregrounds the enmeshing of the private with the public. Through this
enmeshing the state acquires an absolutist position, which anchors the film ideologically. Prasad in fact
sees the use of foreign locations in Sangam as irrelevant to the central narrative drive of the film (ibid.).
However, it is this segment that transforms Radha’s interior world as she begins to fall in love with her
husband. I want to concentrate on this honeymoon segment of the film as this is where travel is deployed
for a specific purpose.
Radha and Sundar’s marriage is followed by a passionate wedding night scene which transitions to a
long shot of an Air India plane against blue sky and then we are in Europe for the couple’s honeymoon.
The sequence begins in Rome with panoramic images of the city overwhelming the frame. Radha throws
a coin at the Trevi Fountain, a major tourist spot in Rome, to make a wish—happiness for Sundar and
peace for herself. They are constructed as a couple against this architectural panorama, their intimate
world of love nurtured by these wanderings. The physicality and passion of the relationship is displayed
during a boat ride in Venice, when a sudden movement of the boat makes Radha literally fall into
Sundar’s arms. He asks her “are you happy” and she replies with “very much.” When Radha asks Sundar
the same question, the reply is “top of the world,” a spatial metaphor that soon gets attached to the Eiffel
Tower. A woman deeply in love with another man now begins to fall in love with her husband against the
backdrop of this European cityscape. The language of love and desire becomes the language of tourism
and the cartographic possession of spectacular sites (Image 11). This moment transitions to Gopal in his
home reading the happy account that we have just witnessed, captured in a letter sent to him by his
friend. We hear Sundar’s voice spilling out of the
letter pleading with his friend to join them either in
Paris or Switzerland. The postcard landscape ex-
perienced by the couple metamorphoses into the
tourist’s descriptive language. A traveler’s imagina-
tion is evoked here as Sundar’s voice expresses his
excitement at the prospect of going up the Eiffel
Tower. The love for his wife goes hand in hand
with his excitement with the foreign landscape.
The sequence ends with Gopal smiling at a typical
honeymoon color photo showing the couple in a
boat, mailed to him by Sundar. In many ways the
sequence mobilizes both the desire for travel and
Image 11. Sundar (Raj Kapoor) and Radha the need to possess the memory of travel. Sundar’s
(Vyjantimala) in Sangam, 1964. language of love collapses the city and the woman
Source: DVD frame grab by the author. into one.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Sangam’s Europe serves as a convenient shorthand that reinvents a loveless marriage into one
consumed by passion. Radha is susceptible to the illusions of the city and it is in the course of this spatial
seduction that the past is exchanged for the spectacle of tourism. There is a hedonistic aspect to this
transition in Sangam, since Radha trades her pain for the pleasures offered by the city. In the language of
philosophy, hedonism is described as a worldview drawn to the idea that pleasure is the “greatest good”
(Feldman, 2002; Heathwood, 2006; Mendola, 2006). In ethical terms, hedonism sees productive pleasure
as the “correct” way to be and distances itself from pain. Grief, anguish, and despair are identified with
pain and with forms of action that are perceived as “wrong.” In Sangam such transference of experience
is articulated through an embracing of ecstasy, eroticism, and the delights associated with travel. Radha’s
relationship to the idea of marital duty unfolds within a landscape of pleasures—the “good wife” also
finds peace and happiness in the sensorial world of global travel. Her act of “goodness” is bound up with
the pleasures of tourism and the object world that it offers for sensual and visual enjoyment. The
wanderlust aesthetic is the mode through which Sangam explicitly lays out the Parisian shop windows,
mobilizing the tourists’ gaze for commodity spectacle. Touristic strolling is framed against glass window
displays as the couple walks through a dazzling world of offerings—bags, fashion, household gadgets,
cafes, and musical instruments (Image 12). A little tiff over what should be bought leads to a discussion
about the financial pressures faced by tourists. A turbulent interiority is transformed into wish images of
desire, romance blooms in this universe of tourist sites, and plot gives way to traveling pleasures. Travel
in this context operates as a metaphor that involves a voyage of the self (Bruno, 2002, p. 81). From the
panoramic sweep that marked the first encounter with Europe to the wondrous experience of being at the
Eiffel Tower and then the street level view of city walkers—what emerges is the incorporation of spatio-
visual desire. The painful memories of the past slowly fade as new objects and technologies of pleasure
enter the frame.
Sangam explicitly links desire to photographic imaginations of sites and spaces. This is conveyed
evocatively in the use of the honeymoon photograph as an archive of memory. Equally the film uses the
photograph to destabilize normative domestic relations and gender identity. This is staged in the couple’s
hotel suite. Sundar is shown skimming through a glossy photo catalogue that lists the city’s nightlife.
Photographs of cabarets and revues stoke Sundar’s imagination (Image 13). Radha emerges from the
Image 13. Sundar (Raj Kapoor) skimming through a

Image 12. Radha window shopping in Sangam. photo catalogue in Sangam.
Source: DVD frame grab by the author. Source: DVD frame grab by the author.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

bedroom ready to leave with Sundar but he turns to her and says that only he will go, as the revue is not
meant for “decent” (shareef ) women. What follows is a playful argument as Radha walks into the bed-
room and locks the door so Sundar cannot leave. A few minutes later we hear the sound of bagpipes and
the door opens to show Radha dressed like a cabaret artist. She sings the now well-known song from the
film “main kya karun Ram mujhe Buddha mil gaya”—Hey Ram, what can I do, I am stuck with an old
man. Radha’s provocative masquerade is performed to prevent her husband’s visit to the revue. The hotel
suite turns into an erotically charged space where the photograph of the revue stokes the masquerade and
the passion that follows (Image 14). The imagination of a life outside the hotel at night is mediated by its
impression conveyed by a photograph in a travel guide and it is this impression that produces sensual
experiences of space. The sequence ends with the idea that the couple has sex, not displayed directly on
screen but alluded to through the use of off-screen space. Both the photograph mailed by Sundar to
Gopal and the catalogue image appear in color, a rare event given that color photography was still not
available widely in India.
The importance of color in Sangam did not
go unnoticed. One reviewer said, “extraordinary
length, spectacle, lush color, eye filling décor,
handsome parade of top notch stars and a story of
the widest possible appeal with a good sprinkling
of sex and romance go to make a blockbuster”
(Filmfare, July 10, 1964, p. 7). Sangam was Raj
Kapoor’s first color film and while the reviewer is
talking of celluloid, Sangam’s release takes place
in the midst of widespread advertising for still
photography’s slow passage to color. Agfa had
started advertising color film within India since
the mid 1950s but the prohibitive costs limited its
Image 14. Radha masquerading as a cabaret artist in use to the publishing world and professional photo-
Sangam. graphers.17 By the mid 1960s, the advertising for
Source: DVD frame grab by the author. color had increased along with the consolidation
of tourism discourses. Agfa was renamed ORWO and the advertisements constantly referred to the magic
of color. In a sense Sangam carries a preview and a trace of the world to come in the 1970s when color
photos would become more widely available for consumer use. While the honeymoon color photo of the
couple exists in Sangam as a record of personal memory, the glossy travel catalogue references certain
sites of the nocturnal city. The images provide the sensory connection that is then imaginatively embodied
in Radha’s playful performance of the cabaret to seduce her husband. The viewer is drawn into a spectacle
of pleasure and desire. In moving away from her past as the site of anguish, Radha is supported by the
hedonistic pleasures offered by the arrival of color. Color introduced a new sensation, a new kind of
cartographic imagination, and a new expanded horizon for the articulation of consumption practices. The
use of color photographs in Sangam clearly marked the celluloid moment as significant and was also
strikingly present in the changing design strategies of all kinds of print advertisements.
In an advertisement of Paachi’s Around the World, five box-like frames are brought together with the
largest and most prominent showing Raj Kapoor’s smiling face behind a globe, the Indian subcontinent
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

displayed in the foreground (Star and Style, July 15, 1967). The smaller boxes are advertised in different
colors—red, yellow, purple, and mustard. Each color frame carries a city title and an iconic monument,
London Bridge for London, the Eiffel Tower for Paris, the Colosseum for Rome, and an impression of
the Kyoto mountain peak with a woman dressed in a Kimono for Tokyo (Image 15). The main caption
of the poster says “Great for Going Places.” The combined effect of colors, destinations, and the thrill of
visual conquest, mediated via the globe, foreground the powerful affinity between tourism and cinema
that emerged in the 1960s. In this poster, the postcard imagination is recognized; its promise of access to
a place that can only be dreamt of is guaranteed and rendered imaginatively to the viewer via the use of
the map and color. In a single frame the language of cartography is highlighted to mediate the universe
of the film.
The poster of Around the World was also coded quite explicitly to reference the style used for ad-
vertising the View-Master, a device invented in 1939 as a substitute for the postcard, which gave viewers
the illusion of three-dimensional scenes. View-Masters were available at camera stores and later at
stationery and gift shops.18 The View-Master went through a series of revisions and finally became more
widely available for consumer use in the 1950s. In India, the View-Master was displayed as a magical
guarantor of the experience of color, even as the early advertisements were printed as black and white
images (Image 16). From the early 1960s, the View-Master advertisement also started appearing in
color. Initially marketed as a device that allowed

people the chance to possess their favorite stars,
animals, and monuments, the View-Master be-
came increasingly enmeshed in the accelerated
touristic fascination of the 1960s. In one of the
advertisements, the tagline says “Your Passport to
the World” (Filmfare, April 2, 1965, p. 46). On the
right side we see monuments identified with certain
sites—the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Leaning
Tower of Pisa in Italy are imaginatively placed as
a series of photographic images available in the
View-Master show reels. The caption on the left
side of the image says:
Experience the thrill of travelling through the realism

of 3-dimension stereo pictures. View the lands you
have wanted to visit. Bring back memories of far
away spaces. Let View-Master full colour stereo
pictures be your passport to the world. View-Master
reels on Travel, adventure, children’s subjects are
available. (ibid.)
While this was a black and white advertisement,

the language of color, of travel, and of the symbolic
transactions, enabled by picture postcard forms, is Image 15. Advertisement for Around the World, 1967.
encapsulated here in a virtual navigation of tourist Source: National Film Archive of India (NFAI).
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Image 16. Advertisement for the View-Master, 1965.

sites. Another advertisement printed in color said, “Pictures come startlingly and colourfully alive in the
magic realism of 3D” (The Illustrated Weekly, March 26, 1962, p. 48). The View-Master was aggressively
marketed during the 1960s through advertising in magazines such as the Illustrated Weekly, Filmfare,
and others. But what made the View-Master significant was its photographic language of color, performing
the role of a sign that addressed the difficulties involved in Indian cinema’s transition from black and
white to color. Unlike Europe and the US, India had to depend on imported color stock for its films
which in the context of a serious foreign exchange crisis exerted tremendous pressure.19 It was this con-
solidation of color photography, new technologies of image viewing, and the insatiable desire for travel
and tourism that came together in the advertisement for Around the World. There was absolutely no
desire to evoke the story; rather the sensuous language of adventure and thrill framed the imaginative
world of the advertisement. Film became the ideal place for 3D enhancement of spatial cartography. The
cinema, as Tom Conley suggests, foregrounds issues of mental geography (Conley, 2007). While this
may be true for most cinematic experiences, the global travel form highlighted a particular thrill that
traversed the imaginative landscape of cinematic cartography in color.
Aerial Visions, Infrastructure

In an engaging discussion on Le Corbusier’s fascination with aviation, Christine Boyer maps the inter-
relationship between aerial photography and cartography (Boyer, 2003). The aerial view allowed for a
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

spatial imaginary to play over the surface of the map. One could then “trace out routes to follow, dream
about places to inhabit, or project specific visions onto the lay of the land” (Boyer, 2003, p. 103). For
Corbusier, aviation linked up with the idea of a future plan, a poetic engagement with buildings and
infrastructure. Aviation meant the opening up of new horizons, shaping the future of technology, forging
new links and forms of exchange between nations. Corbusier used the term “epic of the air” and saw
aviation as the harbinger of a new world. The aerial view held a combination of fear and desire for
mastery, a mastery that could only be achieved through the power of machines. Human sentiments such
as fear and panic had no place in this scheme; they existed only to enhance the desire for mastery. Thus,
for Corbusier the aerial route emerged as a force to carve out a technologized and planned future (Boyer,
2003, p. 115). Since the 1950s the aerial vision became established as a widespread form of looking at
technological urbanism where buildings and infrastructure were privileged. The postcard imagination in
Pramod Chakravarty’s Love in Tokyo draws from this model (Image 17).
An Evening in Paris and Love in Tokyo were
both written by Sachin Bhowmick. Love in Tokyo
is the story of a runaway woman played by Asha
Parekh who is trying to avoid a marriage that is
arranged by her uncle. Joy Mukherjee is also in
Tokyo in search of his missing nephew. A light
comedy, Love in Tokyo brings together an as-
sortment of characters to create comic encounters.
Above all the film displays everything about
Tokyo—from its hypermodern architecture to its
urban infrastructure, its costumes, playgrounds,
technological achievements, and even its Geisha
quarter. Since Asha Parekh is a runaway woman,
she masquerades as a young Sikh boy for a sub- Image 17. Aerial view of the city in Love in Tokyo,
stantial part of the film. The poster of the film said, 1966.
it was the first Hindi film to be shot in Japan and Source: DVD frame grab by the author.
carried the headline “They were both Indians but they met in Japan and found love in Tokyo” (Filmfare,
August 5, 1966, p. 2) Another poster published in Blitz said, “Pramod films take you on a joyride to
Japan to see world’s most fascinating city Tokyo” (Blitz, August 8, 1966, p. 22). The film was rich in its
navigation of Tokyo’s urban form and displayed a particular fascination with aerial views. As in An
Evening in Paris, Air India was highlighted as the vehicle for new encounters introducing spectators to
escalators, bullet trains, malls, cars, and the television. The Maharaja appears in the film as part of an
Indian Emporium’s display of artifacts in Tokyo.
The script of the film mobilized gags and chase sequences primarily to provide a tour of the city.
Sachin Bhowmick recalls how he was taken to both Paris and Tokyo before he wrote the scripts of An
Evening in Paris and Love in Tokyo. The locations had to be woven into the structure of the story and
Bhowmick worked with the impressions he had gathered during his trips.20 The stories were then
secondary to the spatial dynamic of the films. Bhowmick’s account explains why Love in Tokyo kept
introducing devices and strategies to mount its kinetic spatiality and aerial perspectives. The aerial view
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

is deployed first to enter the city of Tokyo. The sequence starts with interior shots of an aircraft and then
we see spectacular aerial views of the city with the airline attendant’s voice introducing us to the “Land
of the Rising Sun.” The camera view from the aircraft literally swims over the sinuous lines of Tokyo’s
overpasses. Similarly the title song of the film begins with an aerial view of the Tokyo tower and then
moves to capture the romantic pair through street-level movement (Image 18). In a comic sequence
Mahesh (Mehmood), a friend of Joy Mukherjee, accidentally collides with a scientist working in his lab,
overturning a large test-tube with black liquid. Mahesh finds himself standing on the liquid and suddenly
discovers that he can fly. This primitively mounted trick photography sequence takes the spectator on a
flying tour of Tokyo as Mahesh simulates a very basic and primitive superman vision, defying the laws
of physics. Mahesh witnesses the city’s traffic, its trains, and even saves a child from being run over
(Image 19).21 Finally, the aerial vision is also linked

to a fight in the air between the hero and the villain
towards the end of the film. This is when the pro-
peller of the copter slices off the villain’s arm and
allows the hero to land safely. The thrill of being
close to danger and yet having the pleasure of
looking down at the city weaves in the dialectic of
collapse and transcendence that is so central to the
aesthetics of the aerial view.
The obsessive desire for aerial mapping in Love
in Tokyo was geared to showcase a planned city
and its infrastructure and technological achieve-
ments. While the aerial view is also used to some
Image 18. Asha Parekh and Joy Mukherjee in Love in extent in An Evening in Paris and Around the
Tokyo. World, it is travel and spectacle viewed from the
Source: DVD frame grab by the author. sky that overrides the discourse of infrastructure
present in Love in Tokyo. The film’s aerial im-
agination was to a large extent framed by Japan’s
own position in the global arena of the 1960s. The
miraculous economic recovery of Japan in the
post-war period is now something of a legend
(Flath, 2000). A country devastated by bombs and
loss of human lives had by the mid 1960s become
the most powerful capitalist economy in Asia.
Japan’s presence outside its own territory was
identified to a large extent with electronic goods
and cars. Japanese women were used in advertise-
ments for transistors and toasters that were pub-
lished frequently in several magazines in India.
Sachin Bhowmick recalls how Japan’s meteoric
rise and power in the 1960s had played on his mind
Image 19. Mahesh (Mehmood) flying in Love in Tokyo. during the writing of the script.22 The framing of
Source: DVD frame grab by the author. space in the film was clearly governed by this
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

desire to project the idea of an invincible force.

Japan in the 1960s was what China is in the
twenty first century. It is not difficult to see why
Tokyo emerged in Love in Tokyo as an infrastruc-
tural dream, a spatial imaginary of inspiration and
projection. Japan was what India wanted to be,
which the film enacts via a symbolic transaction
with Tokyo’s urban form and technological world.
The aerial view in Love in Tokyo encapsulated a
postcard frame with bullet trains, highways, the
television, the helicopter, and the Tokyo Tower
(Image 20).23
The longing for colorful images in the 1960s set
in motion a powerful perceptual economy. The Image 20. 20 Aerial fascination in Love in Tokyo.
assemblage of tourism, air traffic, film technology, Source: DVD frame grab by the author.
film gossip, advertising, photography, currency crisis, and censorship created a template for symbolic
transactions across these different domains. The result was a global configuration that would transform
cinematic experiences of space and time. Through an examination of the workings of this imagery, I have
aimed to raise questions about the way travel iconography was deployed to destabilize cultural contexts.
If the Maharaja playfully provided irreverence to the nationalized infrastructure of aviation in India, the
film industry responded to the desire for tourism with the pleasure induced by color and music. The
multiple conduits of exchange and intersection in an economy going through a serious crisis produced a
tangled web—a collision of infrastructures, bodies, and spaces. The cinematic event constituted by this
assemblage contained within itself sexual and erotic play as well as aspirational desires for infrastructural
consolidation and control. Despite the crisis of foreign currency and the expenses involved in air travel
for most Indians in the 1960s, the cinematic imagination evoked heterotopic fantasies. Sex, drugs,
counter culture, and music swept the big European and American cities in this decade. This is not a
world that we see in the travel films from Bombay, but it is an imagination that lurks in the shadows,
fuelling both the fantasy and the anxieties marked in the films. The decade, marginalized for its
hedonistic desire for pure sensation and spectacle, remains the most unstable in its iconography and its
mythologies. We need to return to the decade afresh, to that moment when the postcard imagination takes
a full-blown cinematic form.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Ravi Sundaram, Shikha Jhingan, Sabeena Gadihoke, Shohini Ghosh, Shaswati Mazumdar,
Neepa Majumdar, Debashree Mukherjee, Corey Creekmur, Kalpana Ram, Goldie Osuri, and Philip Lutgendorf for
their comments and suggestions. Priya Jaikumar and Vanessa Schwarz gave me valuable references that helped with
the research. I must thank Christine Gledhill for suggesting that I look at the haptic elements of the films discussed
here. Mrs Joshi, Lakshmi Iyer, and Aarti Karkhanis at the National Film Archive of India (Pune) were exceedingly
helpful with pointing out sources. I am grateful to Ankur Khanna for his invaluable help in Bombay. I would also
like to thank Richard Allen for letting me present the first version of this article at New York University in 2009.
Ravi Vasudevan and Rosie Thomas provided excellent editorial suggestions.
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

Notes
1. Throughout the 1960s the “outdoor” appears as a news item. Most films had an outdoor shooting stint which
was announced in the studio news beat section of Screen, Movieland, Filmfare, and Star and Style.
2. Interviews with Ashim Samanta and Sachin Bhowmick, Bombay, January 2010. Ashim Samanta is the son of the
late director Shakti Samanta and is currently running his father’s company. Sachin Bhowmick is a scriptwriter
who wrote the scripts of both Love in Tokyo and An Evening in Paris.
3. For information on the devaluation of the rupee in 1966, see “Devaluation: Pros and cons, report of a symposium”
in The Illustrated Weekly, August 14, 1966, pp. 10–19, 34–35. Also see Sen (1986).
4. For an interesting account of tourism as cultural practice, see Frow (1991).
5. See the website of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (unwto.org/en/about/history). The UNWTO is a
specialized agency of the United Nations and serves as a global forum for tourism policy. The UN also released
stamps as a gesture to mark the International Tourist Year. See The Illustrated Weekly, July 30, 1967, p. 61.
6. JRD: As Air Indians Remember is a compilation of essays, letters, and photographs relating to J.R.D. Tata’s
relationship to the airline industry set up by him. The collection is compiled by M.S. Kohli. For information on
the Jet Fleet, see Air India Ninth Annual Report 1961–62. Marc Dierikx’s (2008) account provides information
on how Air India was granted a loan by the World Bank to purchase its Jet Fleet.
7. Translation of song by Shohini Ghosh.
8. In her analysis of this sequence, Sumita Chakravarty refers to the way Shammi Kapoor is positioned as a tour
guide for the audience. See Chakravarty (1996, pp. 210–211).
9. “The Maharaja”, retrieved from http://home.airindia.in/SBCMS/Webpages?The-Maharajah.aspx?MID=196
10. All the advertisements have been collated from Blitz, Illustrated Weekly, Star and Style, and The Times
Annual.
11. For information on in-flight entertainment and modern air travel, see Govil (2004).
12. In conversation with Sharmila Tagore, Delhi, February, 2011.
13. Star and Style, August 15, 1967, pp. 34–35; Johar (1969).
14. See Wadia (1970, cited in Rashmi, 1970). Also see Rashmi (1970). Both articles provide an account of the
industry’s reaction to the Khosla Committee recommendations on the use of the kiss.
15. Sixth session of the Fourth Lok Sabha, August 21, 1969–August 29, 1969, published in Mother India, “The
Answers they gave Me”, February, 1970, p. 34.
16. This is what Bruno refers to as the “atlas of emotion.”
17. For an account of issues related to the transition to color, written during the 1960s, see Johnson (1966). Johnson’s
account is based on color debates in European and Hollywood Cinema. Also see Monaco (2001). See editorials
and reports in Filmfare, April 29, 1966; Filmfare, July 6, 1966; Movieland, Friday, October 3, 1969.
18. The View-Master was invented by William Gruber. It was marketed first by Sawyers, a postcard and greeting card
company. The View-Master was known for its ability to view stereo images using Kodak’s color transparencies.
For a comprehensive account of the View-Master, its history and changing models, see Ann and Sell (2000).
19. The transition to color in India was slow since the country did not produce color film stock at the time. The
currency crisis made the import of raw stock extremely difficult, an issue that was the subject of much debate in
the film press. Filmmakers depended on international companies like Technicolor and later Eastman Color for
raw stock. The tussle with the government on taxation and relief for imports was widely discussed in Screen,
Movieland, and Filmfare.
20. Interview with Sachin Bhowmick, Bombay, January 2010.
21. Shanti Lal Soni’s Mr X in Bombay (1964) has sequences that resemble the one in Love in Tokyo.
22. Interview with the author, January 2010.
23. Throughout the 1960s, cinema remained the dominant entertainment form since television as a domestic con-
sumer item made its presence felt only in the early 1970s. Yet, during the decade, discussion on the arrival of
television appeared in several magazines. Television was introduced as part of the fourth plan and it was the
BioScope, 2, 2 (2011): 129–155

economic crisis linked to devaluation that delayed its entry. Newspapers and magazines were expressing a
general curiosity and fascination with television even as the earliest advertisements for television as a consumer
item were available only from the 1970s. So television was still a wonder for most people in India and it was this
fascination that fueled the introduction to the television in Love in Tokyo. The staged fascination with television
drew on the affective force field generated by its arrival, available in the press in India.
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Aviation Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s B

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BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies

Aviation, Tourism and Dreaming in 1960s Bombay Cinema

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Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

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Aviation, Tourism, and the Cinema

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highway produce novel perceptual regimes,

Arre aisa mauka phir kahan milega,

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Hey where else will you get the chance

Paris is introduced by night as it glitters with life.

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Image 3. Air India advertisement 1967.

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Image 4. Air India advertisement 1966.

Image 5. Air India advertisement 1966.

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Image 6. Air India advertisement 1967.

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Image 7. Air India Poster from the 1960s.

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Spatial Transgression, Regulation, and Indianness

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looks meaningfully at Deepa, his desire written on

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The Color of Cinematic Cartography

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Image 13. Sundar (Raj Kapoor) skimming through a

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color. Initially marketed as a device that allowed

Experience the thrill of travelling through the realism

While this was a black and white advertisement,

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Image 16. Advertisement for the View-Master, 1965.

Aerial Visions, Infrastructure

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