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By Aneesh J
It is a strenuous procedure to write about a man who’s been entertaining the subjects of a country for 50 years. 50 years is the life-time span of many individuals living in this frenetic world, and dying, as has been revealed by statistics highlighting people dying of heart attacks when working out at gyms, jogging, and what have you. [Just recently, we heard Bhai’s body-double dying at 50.] And here’s a man at 80 still getting films, working in films, in projects that carve out a role for him. He is a cultural Haley’s comet, who’s used in films to up the prestige of a project; a man who’s earned himself such a place that he’s beyond box office conundrums. It pays, in myriad ways, to have the Bachchan star in your film as endorsed by gifted film-makers like Bhansali or Santoshi or Sujoy or Shoojit or Ramu.
Reams of print have been spent, blogs have been over-filled with words flowing out of the dictionary as though one was listening to a clip-accented Tharrorsaurus; hence, I thought maybe it was time to bring out a connectivity I shared with AB, right from childhood to adult-hood, and now, hopping on to the ‘40s ‘Bullet Train’ reluctantly.
1> The first memory of AB was SHAKTI, of all movies. I was hardly 5 when I watched the movie with my whole set of Kakas and subsets of relatives. Those were the days when we would go to a theater 5 days before a Bachchan’s film released and book tickets for the family; as though it were a family outing in one of Mithun da’s beautiful Ooty restaurants. I understood nothing of the movie, obviously, but that one scene, where Dilip shoots AB, and AB just falls down saying, ‘YEH wohi hai jisne meri maa ko mar diya; Akayla jee sakta hoon, toh akayla mar bhi sakta hoon.’ Legend, in my town, goes that I cried for 2 hours non-stop. Why, how, I do not know. But I was damn convinced that AB was truly hurt and was dying. My kaka then took me to a paan shop and showed me a picture of AB from Filmfare or whatever magazine it was, and told me, “Look you dumbo you, the man is still alive.” And that was enough to convince me that the man who I didn’t know, at all, and who I saw only on the screen, was still there, suavely dressed and ready for action as ever.
2> I think I inherited this AB bhakti from my mother. SHARAABI, and NAMAK HALAAL, were the next two targets. SHARAABI was playing in that magnificent theater in Bangalore, Santosh – I was in Bangalore then – maybe I was in the 3rd or 4th standard; and it might have been the umpteenth re-run of an AB film to rake in the moolah for the chai-wallahs and bhutta selling gentlemen in front of the theaters, and of course, for the theaters as well: And that too, it was at 10 AM in the morning, only 1 show, that ran for weeks together, and I, happened to develop high fever and vomiting right at 9:45 AM having traversed all the way on a Vijay scooter with my Mom, my Dad and myself hanging on to dear eternity. You see, riding all the way from Malleshwaram to Majestic isn’t a joke; just as from Thane to Churchgate, whatever line you take, and whatever ‘fast’-local’ you take. And then my mom was like, ‘You handle your whiny son, I am climbing the stairs to watch ‘Sharaabi.’ And that’s it! It took almost 10 minutes for my Dad to comprehend the situation, and I was gloriously sweating and vomiting…Finally we made it to the jam-packed theater, listening to abuses from all since we were seat-trotting. I didn’t understand anything, but laughed like crazy at AB’s shenanigans with “Ek Aap hai, aur woh Saale badmaash The”. This was the closest my mom came to being selfish, in regards to her son.
3> Namak Halaal: Father came from the bank dead tired, it was NAMAK HALAAL in its’ golden jubilee run; and both Mom and I had wanted to watch it desperately. Mother being a hard-core traditionalist, for whom family mattered above anything else, what struck her, and stuck with me as well in my adult-hood, was the utter devotion of AB to his grand-father, Om Prakash. No arrogance, a complete, so-called, ‘Dehati’, AB was a one-man conqueror of this film despite the film starring a power-house performer like Smita. In each and every scene, AB portrays the essence of ‘Namak’ of loyalty, to extreme and ludicrous proportions, that only an actor at the zenith of his talent can dream of. His monkeying around behind the ‘sophisticated’ Shashi, dropping alcohol left, right, and center of him not just because he won’t drink, but because he won’t let his boss, Shashi drink, is brilliant. Bachchan plays a so-called village fool, but the joke is on those city-bred fools.
4> Shaan: One of the COOLEST films ever to be made in the Bombay Film Industry, boasting of a galaxy of stars, AB comes last in the song, but boy, does he stand out as the uber-coolth guy amongst all with his mannerisms and his clothes, and the panache? And his pairing with Parveen is pure gold; so is Shashi’s with Bindiya Goswami. ‘SHOLAY KE BAAD SHAAN’ was used as a sword to downgrade SHAAN compared to SHOLAY. But SHAAN did well on its own merits. But SIPPY, post SHOLAY was never the Sippy pre-Sholay, and it is understandable that the trade was expecting something bigger than SHOLAY. Alas, master-pieces are not planned, they just happen. I still remember myself standing in front of the mirror, trying to shove my shirt collar into my mouth as a child, imitating AB in the famous hotel scene. And the wonderful thing that is revealed about his insecurity is, in this particular song, AB is the last to be shone the light on after Bindu, Bindiya, Shashi, and Johnny Walker. But who stands tall in the poster and the title song?
These were my formative years of engagement with AB. I understood his humongous aura and talent only later on, when things began making sense to me. In my adult-hood, I watched AAKHREE RAASTA, and was dumb-founded, so much so, that the Tamil-film industry oriented critic of the THE HINDU, had to confess that both Bachchan and Hassan are two sides of the same coin: AB just has risen above the challenge, and working with a director who doesn’t understand a word of Hindi, has simply blown the screen away with his role that was previously performed by Hassan. [I do not have the link for that but I will try to search for it.] SILSILA, TRISHUL, DEEWAR, ABHIMAAN, these were later, but the above films I mentioned, were the films that got me damn interested in AB.
Hopefully, I get time to write about them, as well as his post-KBC phase as well.
P.S.: Some notable write-ups on AB by distinguished writers…follow the links below the main piece…
https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/yash-kgf-director-prashanth-neel-says-sholay-and-amitabh-bachchan-influenced-him-a-lot-news-190907
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20221017-amitabh-bachchan-at-80-still-the-shahenshah-2009134-2022-10-06
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