ABSTRACT
The genre of fairy tales in Bollywood is to write about the work of Homi Wadia. Homi Wadia initially joined Wadia Movietone, the studio and company his brother Jamshed B. H. Wadia established when Homi was barely 22. The canonical version of Aladdin which was readily available to Homi Wadia and his script writers was Sir Richard Burton’s translation. With Aladdin began what could be called a rebirth of the Arabian Nights fairy tale for the Indian in modern times. The success of Aladdin and Alibaba persuaded Wadia to offer a tale that was part of many Arabic–Persian legends but did not have an established or definitive source text. This tale is “Hatim Tai,” a story about a legendary knight of sixth century pre-Islamic Arabia, regarded as the exemplary figure of boundless generosity. The Hatim Tai story is not part of the Arabian Nights canon Homi Wadia’s film transforms it into a seemingly Arabian Nights narrative in the Indian fairy-tale imaginary.
