This volume brings together a series of essays that interrogate the notion of figuration in Indian cinemas. The essays collectively argue that the figures which exhibit maximum tenacity in Indian cinema often emerge in the interface of recognizable binaries: self/other, Indian/foreign, good/bad, virtue/vice, myth/reality and urban/rural.

Introduction: Meheli Sen PART I: POLITICAL AND TYPOLOGICAL FIGURES 1. Sensate Outlaws: The Recursive Social Bandit in Indian Popular Cultures; Bishnupriya Ghosh 2. What Happened to Khadi? Dress and Costume in Bombay Cinema; Anupama Kapse 3. Configuring the Other: The Detective and the Real in Satyajit Ray's Chiriakhana; Gautam Basu Thakur PART II: GENERIC MUTATIONS 4. Diverting Diseases; M. Madhava Prasad 5. Nevla as Dracula: Figurations of the Tantric as Monster in the Hindi Horror Film; Usha Iyer 6. Haunted Havelis and Hapless Heroes: Gender, Genre and the Hindi Gothic Film; Meheli Sen PART III: STAR FIGURES 7. 'The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships': Helen and Public Femininity in Hindi Film; Anustup Basu 8. From Superman to Shahenshah: Stardom and the Transfigurative Body of Hrithik Roshan; Nandana Bose 9. Con-figurations: The Body as World in Bollywood Stardom; Sumita S. Chakravarty PART IV: FIGURING (OUT) NEW BOLLYWOOD 10. Metafiguring Bollywood: (Brecht after Om Shanti Om); Bhaskar Sarkar 11. Bodies in Syncopation; Moinak Biswas 12. Between Violetta and Vasantasena is Toulouse-Lautrec: Cinematic Avatars and Bollywood in Moulin Rouge!; Kirsten Strayer Afterword; Anustup Basu