The majority of children like watching cartoons. Dalia Ezzat was raised in Cairo and enjoyed Bollywood movies as a child. When she was four years old, she became obsessed well with genre. Her aunt, who lived near a Cairo movie theatre that screened a lot of Bollywood films, took home a VHS tape of “Mard,” a movie featuring Amitabh Bachchan, the Indian cinema’s giant.
“It was a standard Bollywood formula movie,” she adds, “where the villain saves the day and has Robin Hood-esque qualities, a lady in distress, five songs, and a bit of history.”
“I was hooked right away,” she recalls. Her parents would drive towards the video store every week after that to rent a new Bollywood movie. Dalia — as well as the rest of the family — would videotape it every time her mother did it at home.
Despite the fact that Egypt has long always been Arab world’s movie powerhouse, Bollywood films have always been a favourite here. Many movie theatres inside the 1980s and 1990s would play the newest Bollywood hits. This came to an end when, in such an effort to encourage the local movie business, the Ministry of Culture imposed rules that made it unprofitable for distributors to screen Indian movies.
Despite the fact that they were no longer upon that large screen, they continued to be broadcast into Egyptian households via television.
A few years after her first film meeting with Bachchan, when she was 10, the man himself came to Cairo, as well as Dalia was ready to greet him inside a new costume with a new haircut as well as a bouquet of flowers. She passed out when it was time to shake his hand.
There were a lot of satellite stations broadcasting Bollywood movies there at time, but several of them lacked subtitles. Dalia would not be discouraged, and she would repeat everything she heard the performers say. Dalia’s mother eventually enrolled her in Hindi courses at such an Indian cultural centre to teach her the basics. She has become fluent in both languages at the age of 32.
Dalia’s interest is shared by many others. Amitabh Bachchan is a name that practically everyone in Cairo recognises. In Egypt, at least three channels broadcast Bollywood movies 24 hours a day.
“People would call out to me ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ or ‘Sharukh Khan’ [two of Bollywood’s most popular actors] if I’m strolling along the streets of, say, the Khan el-Khalili [Cairo’s major bazaar],” says Rakesh Kawra, cultural attaché at the Indian Embassy. “Given the language barrier, I’m shocked people here know so much about Bollywood movies.”
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