Primary Colours

This post needs no introduction or preface. 

It is a compilation of the seven best colours of Bollywood. Simple. 

Feel free to disagree or suggest your own. 

Red 

On a sultry afternoon in a rich dowager's mansion in Goa, her grandson invited his girlfriend over. One thing led to another and soon they had toppled over into the swimming pool. One thing led to another and one Mr RD Burman walked in with his bag of tunes. With him, came one Mr Kishore Kumar Ganguly and one Ms Asha Bhosle. And there was a lilting melody going. 

But I only have a fleeting memory of all of the above. When Dimple Kapadia prances around around a swimming pool in a wet red saree, you dare not remember anything else.

Blue 

How do you get to know the feelings of an invisible man? Seema Soni, a crime reporter, had this problem. So she 'met' her lover in a bizarre park (which looked more like a obstacle course in Khadakwasla) and asked him the question. And to get the answer, she slithered, shimmered, simpered across the obstacle course as Laxmikant Pyarelal played a seductive tune.

That tune, playing in the rain and Sridevi serenading an unseen hero in a wet blue saree. Tell me honestly... how many of you imagined yourself there? 

Yellow

Inspector Amar was a dutiful police officer. He had no time for love (though he wasn't Lucky) and mingled with damsels only when they were in distress. So when a woman called him to a deserted construction site threatening suicide, he couldn't refuse. Or maybe he didn't want to refuse. Viju Shah played a tune of rain drops, strange ones which lit a fire.  

And in the song, Raveena Tandon wore yellow. And everybody became dirty fellows!

Orange 

Diamonds are least likely to be found in a Bombay Victoria. But No. 203 was special and soon a whole lot of straight and crooked characters were chasing the stones. And when the attention of one of the crooked guys had to be diverted, Bollywood employed the services of the best Attention Diverter of all times. 

When Saira Banu wears a towel-that-thinks-its-a-bikini (or a bikini-that-thinks-its-a-towel)  asks you to 'Thoda sa thehro', you bloody hell don't hanker after diamonds.

White 

There was some message in this film, about river Ganga becoming dirtier as it came down from the pristine mountains to the dirty plains. The form of the message was so memorable that the content somehow gotlost in transit. A city slicker jumped like a mountain goat on the rocks of Uttarakhand to catch a glimpse of the fabled Lady in White. 

For all of us carrying the sanitised image of the girl-under-waterfall from Liril ads, Mandakini burst on to the screen to change that for years to come.

Green

You are Heera. A notorious bandit comes calling to buy weapons from you. And to entertain your biggest client, you put on a show. Your snazziest moll - in a green bustier and pink pout - does a jig as booze flows, music is strummed and a good time had. There are two spoilsports in the background, lighting fuses but you don't know about them yet.

There is a dash of yellow in the green. But for me, that somehow got lost in the yellows of the background, the fire and the other costumes.  

Golden

Is it golden? Is it orange? Is it ochre?

Madhuri is dancing. Dancing like only she can. And you, dear sir, are pontificating about colours?