T : Titles & Title Songs in Hindi Films / Bollywood #AtoZChallenge 2019

Film-makers in Bollywood are crazy about numerology. They don't rely only on content of the film for its success. The title of the film is an equally important consideration. This consideration is not from the point of view of relevance though. But it is to get the mystical influence of the title right. That is Numerology 101 for dummies! This is a strange affliction but leads to several fascinating stupidly spelled film titles. 

In 2010 released a film titled "Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai". A harmless additional letter 'a' is added to Mumbai. And the film was commercially successful.  But things got weirder with its 2013 sequel titled "Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara". Mumbai got spelled correctly this time around, but the letter 'y' makes its presence felt at an unwanted place. Does it really make sense? By the way this sequel flopped. I think they didn't only change the spellings, but also the numerologist.

In late 2017, a film called Padmavati was supposed to release. It was based on the life of a mythical queen by the same name. Due to controversies around the film, the censor board cleared the film after suggesting several changes. One of the changes was to drop the letter 'i' from the title. This change had a logic that the story was based on an epic poem called Padmavat, written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. But this change meant that numerology of the title got messed up. So an additional letter 'a' came to the rescue and the film finally released in early 2018 as Padmaavat. Now censor board and the government of the day was trolled for dropping the 'i' on Twitter. But nobody called out the distortion made by the film-makers.

Stupid spelling is not the only way titles get corrected from numerology point of view. Some times totally not required qualifiers are added to the title either to correct the numerology or in cases where original title is not available. Sample few: 

• Daag - The Fire (1999 film; Daag means stain; not sure what is 'The Fire' going to do here)
• Zanjeer - The Chain (This 1998 film gave subtitles in the title itself.; Zanjeer means Chain)
• Ek Rishtaa : The Bond of Love (2001 film; Ek Rishta means One Relation; did you notice there is an extra 'a' in Rishta and a qualifier giving the synopsis of the film away?)

The cliches related to the titles don't end at having odd title names. There was another evergreen trend called 'Title Songs'. This trend has almost vanished in the last decade. Though this one was far more sensible. So film-makers in Bollywood used to have this one song in the film which had the title of the film in it. It resulted in some beautiful songs. Like the title song of the 2003 film Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come)

Interestingly that was the time when Karan Johar, the producer of this film, used to have all his films' titles starting with the letter 'k'. Some fascination with numerology! And did you notice that extra 'a' in the title here?

But what happens when a trend gets used forcefully? A 1995 film titled Surakshaa (the extraa 'a' is not going to leave us aalone) also had a title song which really made no sense. The song in the situation is needless. The word Surakshaa (which means protection) is forced into the song, with no melody and rhythm in mind. To make it sound like a song, even the word Surakshaa is pronounced with additional stress on that extra 'a'. Waatch the song below!

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My theme for this year's #AtoZchallenge is Hindi Film Industry / Bollywood cliches. You can read the theme reveal post here.

2017 Challenge Post from Letter T: Trains - A post where I got nostalgic about train journeys. Click here to read.

2018 Challenge Post from Letter T : Tamil words I learned in last one year - A post about my experiments with a new language. Click here to read.