MOBILITIES ON SCREEN: DELHI METRO IN BOLLYWOOD (2005-2017)

Airlines, trains, buses, and metro – they have all appeared innumerable times throughout cinematic history worldwide, revealing fascinating insights about our perceptions of public transportation, mobility and the city. Bollywood, too, has shown urban transport; screen portrayals intrinsically linked to plac e and time. In 2002, Delhi, India, witnessed the advent of the Delhi Metro, forever changing the visualization of the city. The article focuses on Bollywood's cinematic imagination of the Delhi Metro space and traces its representation on the silver screen . How do these depictions reflect our evolving relationship with urban transit? What social, cultural and mobility experiences of Delhi residents and the metro commuters have they drawn on? Through an in-depth, critical analysis of this metamorphic technology's representations in select Bollywood films from 2005 to 2017, attention is drawn to the culture of mobilities and immobilities in the city depicted on-screen through the lens of the Delhi Metro.