Source: www.bollywood-weddings.com
UNITED STATES, November 19, 2009: Kavita Ramdya’s debut book, Bollywood Weddings: Dating, Engagement And Marriage In Hindu America (Lexington Books), tries to answer the age-old questions, “Why do we fall in love with the people we fall in love with?” and “Why do we marry the people we choose to marry?” To answer these questions – the ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural, and financial qualities – and what our choice means in terms of expressing our national identity, Kavita Ramdya does an anthropological study of Indian-American Hindus in the tri-state New York area.
Kavita finds that Bollywood emerges as a significant force in formulating conceptions of love and identity. Bollywood culture – it’s fashionable aesthetic and symbolic representation of a modernized India – becomes the method by which American-raised Indian Hindus negotiate two diametrically-opposed value sets: that of pre-modern India and mainstream America.