Aag later turned out to be a colossal bomb (a so-called Flop-E-Azam, a pun from Om Shanti Om (2007) on the name of India's biggest historical epic Mughal-E-Azam), but we did get to meet Varma and get our pictures taken with Sushmita Sen. She was very sweet with H, a seven-year-old who had no idea who she was: a former Miss Universe and an icon for millions.

My Name is Anthony Gonsalves is a modern-day B picture, as our guide apologetically told us; he was trying to convey that the soundstage we were seeing was nothing special, nothing like the legendary studios at Film City. We were terribly impressed anyway.

The movie is a crime-comedy-romance—and another box-office bomb, as are most Indian films—that owes its title to a tune from a beloved 1977 film, Amar Akbar Anthony, a huge hit for director-extraordinaire Manmohan Desai. Amar Akbar starred Amitabh Bachchan; while showing Amitabh’s face on the screen I sometimes ask my film classes to identify him. I had a student raised in Lahore who grew up with the face, but the star is always a stranger to everyone else. He is probably the most well-known movie star in the world. All Indians know him (and that’s a fifth of the world’s billions right there) and his fame is world-wide except among non-Indians in the US.

One fascinating aspect of the classical Bollywood film is the “item girl” and the “item number.” The item number is tangential to the plot: it’s a musical number inserted into the action to add some color. The item girl is often tangential to the cast: she might be a big star appearing in a musical cameo, or she might be a relative unknown leading the ensemble to add some sex appeal. Sometimes the item girl becomes a star; sometimes the lead actress becomes a much bigger star because of her dancing. (Madhuri Dixit took this route in 1988’s Tezaab when she stole the movie with her turn in “Ek Do Teen.” Any time I’m able to sneak in a Madhuri reference I'll do it.)

The “Anthony Gonsalves” tune that is picturized on Amitabh in Amar Akbar Anthony was one of several hits from the film; at the time Bollywood created most of the hits on Indian radio. As we were driving away from the studio in a van full of Indians H began to sing “My name is Anthony Gonsalves,” the first line of this song that she'd often heard around the house. By the second line the whole rest of the van was singing along.