BOMBAY Not long ago, my old college classmate Nikhil and I sat down in front of his large television screen as he carefully unwrapped a brand new DVD. I don't own a digital video player, but Nikhil had told me the picture quality had to be seen to be believed. He said films came so vividly alive that it was better than being in a movie theater.

I accepted his invitation for another reason. The newly released DVD was not of a new film, but one we had seen together as students in 1973. It was "Zanjeer," one of the first major hits of the Indian megastar Amitabh Bachchan. We wallowed in nostalgia for the full three hours.

There was Amitabh, slim and beardless, his eyes blazing, his voice mellifluous; the lovely actress he fell in love with and proceeded to take away from the cinema, Jaya Bhaduri; that unforgettable character actor, Pran, charisma oozing from every pore; and the irreplaceable Iftikhar, who played so many policemen with such straight-backed rectitude that he indelibly shaped the Indian public's very image of an Indian police officer.

"Zanjeer" had no pretensions to being great cinema, but it was well-acted, well-plotted entertainment, an outstanding example of a certain kind of Bollywood blockbuster typical of Bombay's film industry. And for Nikhil and me it was marvelous reliving the simpler pleasures of another time.

But if the experience already meant more than just a cinematic diversion, it offered another pointer to me of what Bollywood had come to represent in Indian society. In the film, Pran played Badshah Khan, a red-bearded Pathan Muslim who exemplified the values of strength, fearlessness, loyalty and courage. This was just a year after the bloody birth of Bangladesh in a war n which most of the subcontinent's Pathans were on the other side.

Yet far from demonizing the Pran figure, the filmmakers chose not just to portray a strong Muslim character but to make him the most sympathetic presence in the film after the hero.

This would not have been possible in many other countries, but Bollywood has tended to be consistently good at this sort of thing.

That other 1970s megahit, Amar Akbar Anthony, for instance, was an action adventure film about three brothers separated in infancy who are brought up by different families - one a Christian, one a Hindu and one a Muslim. As adults, one is a smuggler, one a street fighter and one a policeman.

How they rediscover each other and turn the tables on the villains is why the audience flocked to the film in their millions; but in the process they also received the clear message that Christians, Hindus and Muslims are metaphorically brothers, too, seemingly different but united in their common endeavors for justice. When I wrote the novel "Show Business," some critics were surprised that I would follow "The Great Indian Novel" with a work that dealt with the trashy world of commercial Bombay cinema. I did so because to me, Indian films, with all their limitations and outright idiocies, represent part of the hope for India's future. In a country that is still almost 50 percent illiterate, films represent the prime vehicle for the transmission of popular culture and values.

In India, popular cinema has consistently reflected the diversity of a pluralist community. The stories they tell are often silly, the plots formulaic, the characterizations superficial, the action predictable. But they are made and watched by members of every community in India. Muslim actors play Hindu heroes. Good and bad are always shown as being found in every community.

The film world of Bollywood embodies the very idea of India's diversity in the way in which it is organized, staffed, and financed and in the stories it tells. I am all for escapist entertainment, so long as it serves to communicate the diversity that is the basis of the Indian heritage. It offers all of us in India a common world to which to escape, allowing us to dream with our eyes open.

The writer is author, most recently, of the novel "RIOT." He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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