Super Bollywood?

There's also superhero/heroine fiction in India. Below is an excerpt from a history of sf I'm working on.

--Brantley

<<Samit Basu’s Turbulence (2012) is close in concept to George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards, but unlike Martin’s series it’s a one-man show. Basu (1979-), a native of Calcutta, brings a multicultural perspective to his fiction, but also a seriousness of purpose. His superheroes and superheroines – some are actually villains or become villains – derive their powers from dreams during a flight from London to Delhi: they become whatever each most wishes to be. But wish-dreams cover a lot of territory, and not just the traditional flight or super-strength.
Aman Sen, a geek who becomes the informal leader of one group, can tap directly into the Internet and all forms of electronic communication and commerce. Rogue Air Force Commander Jai Mathur, by contrast, is out for personal power – first in the cause of his country against Pakistan but later for its own sake. In the inevitable showdown, Sen’s allies include Uzma Abidi, an aspiring Bollywood actress who has the seeming gift of luck; Tia, a Bengali housewife who can create duplicates of herself; and Sundar Narayan, a scientist who can come up with fabulous inventions, but only in his sleep. Defecting from Jai is Var Singh, an Indian Air Force pilot who can fly and is practically invulnerable, and whom we first meet hovering over a Pakistani nuclear weapons installation, preparing to go on the attack:
A young man of great presence, of power and dignity, which is only slightly diminished by a passing migratory bird’s recent use of his shoulder as a pit-stop.
Only he’s interrupted by a cell phone call from somebody warning him that it’s a suicide mission even for him; that it isn’t actually sanctioned by the Air Force; and that far from assuring India’s triumph it would trigger World War III. Vir’s distracted enough to be spotted by the enemy, barely escaping Pakistani jets and missiles and…
With his fate still uncertain, cut to Bollywood, where Uzma encounters (besides movie people) Buddhist monks moonlighting as DJs. There are plenty of comic touches like that, but when she is drawn into Aman’s orbit things start to get serious. Besides trying to recruit Vir and others, and put together a league of superheroes, he believes he can bring peace and justice to the world by electronically robbing from the rich (whether corporate plutocrats or drug lords) and giving to the poor. Only the results aren’t what he expects:
Aman’s victims have not taken their financial losses as a sign to begin leading simpler, purer lives; they have simply resolved to make more money, quickly and brutally. Crime rates have shot up all across the world. Untold thousands of people have been robbed and killed, some over negligible sums.
Meanwhile, there’s another supervillain out there who can whip up deadly flash mobs, and he still has to deal with Jai, who sends Indian gangsters (some themselves superpowered) against his new base. His forces barely fend off their siege, and the end game unfolds in London, where Aman dons a powered suit of armor left him by Sundar – only it isn’t enough, and runs down after a while. Even Vir can’t take Jai on single-handed; but in a novel twist, it is Uzma who saves the day with a power she hadn’t known she had.
Yet the world is still a mess as they all ponder what to do next, and a new crop of superheroes is springing up – nobody knows who or what has been behind the transformative dreams. There’s plenty for a sequel, Resistance (2014), which takes some of the action to New York – home of a Superhero Tower. Basu also brings in more global culture riffs, like attacks by sundry monsters on Tokyo, which are fought off by ordinary humans riding mecha. Aman, Jai and Uzma all return, and there is a plot by a conglomerate called Utopic to establish a new world order – which the heroes manage to thwart .>>