17: Discovering Shakespeare in Bollywood, with Jonathan Gil Harris
Today Shakespeare is considered as part of highbrow literature but in his own day it was the quintessential ‘masala’ entertainment. This is why when author Jonathan Gil Harris was watching the film Lagaan in 2001, he came to realize that a lot of Bollwood's masala films resonated deeply with Shakespeare's work. In this episode Harris talks to Sandip Roy about his book, Masala Shakespeare: How a Firangi Writer Became Indian, explains to us the ways in which Indian films are closely related to the work of Shakespeare and how the 'masala' genre celebrates India's cultural diversity.
