The Masala Formula

A Bollywood film is built on the masala (spice mix) principle: pack romance, action, comedy, drama, and song into one movie that runs 2.5 to 3 hours. Hollywood sorts its stories into neat genres. Bollywood does the opposite and blends them, because its audience expects a single film to carry the full range of human experience in one sitting.

A song does not stop a Bollywood story. It happens because the story has reached a feeling too big for ordinary dialogue. A character who cannot say "I love you" out loud will instead sing it across a mountainside in the rain. Song becomes the language for whatever the plain script is too small to hold.