In trying to capture the power of Bollywood's commercial cinema, this paper looks at what is described in common parlance as an item number. The item number is a cine-segment comprising an item-girl/boy, a racy song, a vivacious dance and a surround of erotic and immanent exuberance. At one remove from the cinema hall, item numbers circulate as video clips and off-screen performances that recreate the cinesexual in social life. At this second level, the item number, re-fashioned through spectacular familial and social practices of the middle classes, draws its sense from diverse, gendered and changing micro- contexts of cine-heterosexuality.
