Bollywood and new beginnings | Rajal Pitroda | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Rajal is a Forte Foundation Fellow at London Business School. Before this, she founded a firm in LA to develop movie marketing campaigns. Rajal authored "Starstuck", a novel based on her experiences working in Bollywood and published by Harper Collins in 2011.

Thank you Sean.

My story actually starts with two films:

The first is "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham",
- it's a great name -

one of the most successful films
produced in India,

and the Oscar-winning
"Slumdog Millionaire,"

one of the most successful films
produced about India.

So when we look at images of these films,

we see two very different views
of the same country:

one is a fairy-tale, this nation built
on wealth and romance,

the other is a near calamity,

a place filled with poverty
and corruption.

Cinema offers us insights

into how we can perceive
a country and its people,

who they are, what they value,
how they see themselves,

as well as how others see them.

And from these images,

the view of India it seems
is either that of a musical or a slum.

So my own journey into the world of films
started in the suburbs of Chicago

where I was born.

I'm the second child
of two Indian immigrants,

and growing up in a joint family,

I was raised on stories told to me
by both my grandfathers,

one of whom left school in the fourth grade

to sell timber to the British
during the reign of the Empire.

The other worked for a local government,

and he would travel
to remote areas of India

in order to implement
the policies of the British Raj.

So as I grew up, I remember listening
to these stories of India in the 1940s,

and longing for a connection
to my own current story,

that of America in the 1990s.

I found this through film.

Through stories that were rooted
in the American experience,

and offered me a perspective

that were so different
from the stories of my origin.

However, it was the disparity
between these two stories

that served as a constant reminder to me

of the hardwork and the sacrifice
my parents had made to come to America.

Mainly, to offer
their children opportunities

that they themselves never had.

America was possibility, freedom,
and a place to make an impact.

My brother and I were raised
fueled by that desire:

the desire to give something back

to a country that had given
so much to our family.

I took this ideology with me
into my first job out of college

at a prestigious magazine
in New York City.

It was pretty much my dream job,

writing for a publication
that I had idolized as a kid

for its political, environmental,
and issues-driven content.

It was serious journalism,
but made accessible,

and that felt like it was
a real vehicle for change in my eyes.

However, instead of the fulfillment
that I had expected, I felt emptiness.

It was as if I was surrounded by people
who were more concerned

about how they, their brand,
and their legacy was perceived

instead of their content.

So that serious journalism
that I was drawn to,

its message felt lost and diluted.

I had built up this idea in my head

about what writing about social issues
could do in terms of creating an impact,

and instead, I was faced with the reality

that to me, that message
felt so out of reach.

So I quit my job.

I moved back home
with my parents in Chicago

and I was completely disillusioned.

I spent months there;
and finally, with nothing left to do,

I booked a ticket to go to
a friend's wedding in India

for a two-week trip.

Little did I know

that I would find my lasting connection
to stories and their impact

in the country of my grandfathers' birth

and through a medium
that I knew nothing about:

Bollywood.

So a few days after I got to India,

through friends of friends I was invited
to visit a Bollywood film shoot.

And it was like nothing
I had ever seen before.

I remember watching
as actors and actresses lip-synced

to these songs that blared
from speakers overhead,

and they were twirling together
in front of a green screen,

meant not to represent India,

but the mountains of Switzerland
or the pyramids of Egypt.

(Laughter)

So this was a story like none
I had ever seen before.

It was different from the stories
of my grandfathers

and from the stories
that I sought out in Chicago.

It was just the most
incredible thing for me.

Seeing something so unknown to me
was what pulled me in,

it made me want to learn more

about what the current story of India was,
and what it meant to its people.

So I set up a couple of meetings

with the few people that I knew
who knew people in Bollywood,

and at one of them, with
the Confederation of Indian Industry

which is an organization that works
to promote industry in India,

I was asked to write a report
on the state of the film business

So I stayed at first for a month,
then for three months,

and finally, for over two years.

I worked in International Marketing
and Branding for Bollywood films,

setting up meetings for Indian producers
in LA with their American counterparts,

putting together the first official Indian
presence at the Cannes Film Festival,

and organizing a conference
where Indian producers would get to meet

with Marketing and Distribution experts
from all over the world.

But this was where I realized
my own paradox.

I had thought that by addressing
social issues head on

by writing about them, I would find
my way of creating an impact.

But instead, it was in that moment
of my disillusionment

that I stumbled upon the fantasies,
and the fairy-tales of Bollywood,

and that was where I found my meaning.

Because Bollywood films, although
they are musicals full of song and dance,

they are important to a country
of over a billion people,

and there is one very simple
reason as to why: they give us hope.

But this is the paradox of Indian films,

because Bollywood films mirror
this dream of what India wants to be,

not what it really is.

And films like Slumdog Millionaire
limit our view of all that India can be.

So somewhere between these two stories,

between this homegrown fantasy,
and this imported fiction,

there lies a third emerging story.

And that is
of a growing Indian middle class,

of young people who have opportunities

that they couldn't have imagined
for themselves a generation ago,

of women who are charting
their own course in their lives,

and of a country that although is
in a constant transition and influx

is experiencing a renewal
of all that it really is.

And to me, these are the stories
that have the most meaning,

because these are the stories
that allow us to break down

our stereotypes of a people and a place,

they allow us to re-examine who we are,
and how others see us,

but most of all, these stories
reinforce the idea

that our own lives are good enough to be
the stories that we share with others.

So it's because of my own journey
that I am always inspired to ask others

to look past
what they know of their stories,

to re-examine how they see themselves,
and how others see them.

For me, that involved letting go of a lot
of the constructs I had in my head

about what impact was
and where I would find it.

Because although we all have

our own versions of a path
that we see in front of us,

or a story that we think
that we've written for ourselves,

it is sometimes that unknown story,

the journey we didn't think we'd take
that leads to our new voice,

it's that story that has us
shift past the fantasy and the fiction,

and finally to focus on our own truth.

Thank you.

(Applause)