India's Bollywod chic
finds niche in New York.

It was a swell crowd at a 
recent dinner party in the Fifth Avenue apartment of Tracey Jackson, a screen-writer, 
and Glenn Horowitz, a rare-book dealer. The hosts had lured their guests 
with the prospect of meeting India's hottest new import. Not the requisite guru or 
swami, fixtures at society gatherings since Edith Wharton's day, but Aamir Khan, a 
superstar from Bombay's over-the-top film industry, Bollywood.

Khan, the leading man of "Lagaan," a colorful epic that opened in New York in May, 
has been called.India's Tom Cruise. Although he has toured the United States several 
times - as a singer performing hits from his films for throngs of Indian-Americans - 
this night Khan seemed a little unnerved. "This is my first time actually being 
invited to a party on Fifth Avenue," he said. "A year ago, it would not have happened."
Maybe so. But Khan's status as guest of honor among the urbane crowd was an indication 
that the gaudy style and excesses of Bombay's film industry are making inroads 
into non-Indian in America.

Since the 1960s, India's chief cultural export has been spiritualism, embodied in a 
pantheon of leaders from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to Gurumayi and Deepak Chopra. 
Today, the exports arrive in tbg form of film-inspired fashions, home décor and 
foods. Style-struck New Yorkers are embracing Bollywood style, which they once 
might have dismissed as kitsch.

"When you're living in a society that is always pushing towards homogeneity, 
flamboyance has an inescapable allure," said Gita Mehta, the Indian-born author of 
"Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India" (Doubleday, 1998). Bollywood-inspired 
style, she added, feeds "a tremendous hunger for everything that is over the 
top, rowdy, gaudy and noisy - everything in short, that is reflective of that mad celebratory 
chaos of India."

The riches trickling from India include lurid movie posters; wedding ensembles 
crusted with spangles and gold embroidery; T-shirts.irreverently splashed with
Hindu deities; and a mahasani,s ransom of gold bangles, eardrops and ckokers.

Warren-Tricomi, an upscale New York hair salon, introduced mehndi, Indian henna 
body painting, to meet a resurgent demand. In the salon's exotically decorated 
backroom, Melody Weir, a makeup artist, is creating new variations on this ancient 
ritual art. Instead of using henna alone, Weir embellishes her filigree designs with 
Swarovski crystals.

"The look is very Rajasthani," said Weir. "Henna and crystals are great fashion accessories," 
she said. 

It is mainly through films that a taste for exaggerated Indian style is spreading to 
the United States. The movie "Monsoon Wedding" by the New York-based filmmaker 
Mira Nair might not be a product of Bollywood, but it incorporates Bollywood-inspired 
dance numbers, costumes and music. The film is about the chaotic wedding preparations 
of a New Delhi family.

On the heels of the movies come the goods. Quick to capitalize on the movie's success," 
Vikram Nair, Mira Nair's brother, an Indian garment manufacturer, has introduced a 
collection of apparel and accessories.

"Indian culture has long been the rage in the other half of the world," Mira Nair 
said. "Finally it is coming our way, too."