Ben shared an image of the tapes on a listserv and was promptly contacted by Sandy Dahari, a video editor who’d just been “shocked back to adolescence.” Sandy recalls, “I was no longer a 37-year-old Providence transplant, but again a Guyanese-American pre-teen intensely perusing titles in a small Indian-owned video store in New Jersey. I would’ve never thought to see these kinds of tapes again, not in 2026.” Back when young Sandy was grabbing these bootlegs five for $10, they were the only way to access films of the 60s and 70s—a Bollywood golden age not yet available on DVD. No YouTube.

In contrast with American individualism, musicals told stories of unrequited lovers, familial strife, and diasporic struggles while underlining cultural principles like honoring parents and remembering one’s homeland. Herein lies a tension: “South Asian-Americans, like all immigrants, are demanded to assimilate, to make ourselves palatable. Simultaneously, elders, guilt, and nostalgia demand that the culture and values of the homeland take precedence. To be of the diaspora is to be between.” Between-ness is fuzzy, and here the lo-res quality of bootleg video recalls a specific moment in time, while also addressing the wobbliness of existing between cultures and generations.