Animals in Indian movies

Haathi Mera Saathi (1971) was a hit movie that featured an elephant – the hero was Rajesh Khanna, heroine Tanuja and whether the popularity of the movie was due to the presence of the stars or the elephant could be a matter of debate.

Apart from that, animals like monkeys and dogs have appeared briefly in many movies apart from snakes because snakes or nags are a much loved topic of Indians – these snakes provide an opportunity to the heroines to perform the snake dance swaying to rhythmic and, at times, haunting music. The snakes are believed to be reincarnations of couples separated by evil men and they return to seek revenge on those who had wronged them.
Then there have been the tigers – invariably, long shots of the big cats are first taken and then merged with close-ups of the hero wrestling with dummy tigers.
Dogs have also been seen in Bollywood movies – there was a pomeranian Tuffy in the movie Hum Aapke Hain Kaun starring Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit. It not only umpired a cricket match but did baby sitting and played Cupid.
However, in contrast, the 1985 film, Teri Meherbaniyaan, had a dog named Moti. It avenges the death of its master, Ram (Jackie) and his wife Bijli (Poonam Dhillon) by hunting down the killers and tears them to pieces.
Such movies ae unthinkable today because of censorship and restrictions imposed on animals by PETA and their likes.
Animals in Indian movies play insignificantly small roles unlike Bollywood movies where they hold prime pace – like monkeys in ‘Dunston comes to town’ or ‘Monkey trouble’ or dogs in ‘101 Dalmatians’, elephants in ‘Hatari’. Then there are the ones like ‘Jaws’, ‘Anaconda’, ‘Pirhana’ and ‘Ratatoulle’ where animation adds a new dimension to the storylines. (to be continued …)
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)
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