Bollywood in Hollywood

What's common between Silicon Valley and Bollywood? They are both notional entities rather than geographical units. Neither of them exists on a map; they exist in the mind. There are no road signs pointing to them. They have no zip code or pin code, their residents are not counted in census, and they are not written into law or statute as a corporation, municipality, town, or city.
Hollywood is different.It exists as a distinct Los Angeles district. It's got official borders and a zip code. It's got a chamber of commerce and an honorary mayor. And of course, there is that famous, wavy hillside sign in high white letters, something both Silicon Valley and Bollywood lack ��� both the hill and the sign.
There are several stories about how Hollywood got its name. The popular explanation is that it is derived from the California Holly that grows in the region. An apocryphal story, which now sounds politically incorrect, credits the coinage to H J Whitley, a land developer known as the 'Father of Hollywood.' He and his wife Gigi were on their honeymoon in the area when they came across a Chinese man driving a rickety old wagon. Asked what he was doing, he is said to have replied in faulty English: "I up sunrise. Old trees fall down. Pick up wood. All time haully wood."
Bollywood has no such yarn to its credit. It was derived as a knock-off of Hollywood because India's primary film industry was located in what used to be Bombay. Although some of its leading lights resented this name, it has stuck. Bombay becoming Mumbai has not changed Bollywood to Mollywood.
It's not exactly breaking news that Hollywood and Bollywood have been playing footsie for some time, although the courtship has become a little more ardent lately with the Ambani foray. There have been sporadic dalliances with joint productions going back years, even decades, but nothing so large or intense. One crossover movie was even titled Bollywood Hollywood.
But what's got movie mavens in splits is news that a Bollywood producer has signed up Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger together for a film titled Incredible Love. It's the first time the two will have featured in the same movie. The thought of Terminator and Rambo prancing around trees essaying schmaltzy songs is causing hoots of laughter among those familiar with standard Bollywood fare.
Incredible Love, to be filmed fully at Universal Studios, is said to be the story of an Indian stuntman who makes good in Hollywood and sets out looking for love. Unless they have already done so (doubt that), there is indeed a real-life story that can be woven into the script. Indeed, the first Bollywood-Hollywood crossover hero was a young lad named Sabu Dastagir who was from a mahout family in Mysore, and was cast as an elephant rider in the 1937 film Elephant Boy, based on a Rudyard Kipling story.
Sabu went on to live in the US, starring in Jungle Book (in which he predictably plays Mowgli, the junglee boy) and The Thief of Baghdad. Taking up US citizenship in 1944, he joined the US Air Force as a tail gunner, flying several dozen missions during World War II and winning the
Distinguished Flying Cross. He later married the actress Marilyn Cooper, and they remained together for 15 years till he died at a young age of 39.
Arresting story, worthy of greater inquiry and documentation of the kind Hollywood is lately famous for. Knowing Bollywood though, they will reduce it to another treacly song-and-dance travesty, with or without Messrs Stallone and Schwarzenegger.