The decade of the larger-than-life angry young man was dead and buried in the Eighties. Amitabh Bachchan has since survived with some powerful acting in unconventional roles and a carefully acquired television persona. He is a star in his own right. He has delivered hits with the uncanny regularity of a news-hawker distributing morning papers. He has enticed directors into creating roles tailor-made for his age and wrinkled face. He has rivaled his son's foray into multi-faceted acting with scintillating portrayals of new millennium characters like Sexy Sam. He has continued to attract a fanatic following and often-unwarranted tax raids.
For an achiever of his stature and towering personality, real-life tearjerkers should be best kept concealed within the confines of his Juhu bungalow. We will definitely follow the medical bulletin demystifying the bruises on his colon when he is being treated at the Lilavati Hospital. But which person in his right senses will want him to carry the paparazzi around with him in a whirlwind tour of the temples all because his son's fiancé is a Manglik?
Not that Bachchan was readily lending himself to the role of the Pied Piper when the mob of cameras invaded his privacy. It was his trusted friend Amar Singh, who was whispering the Bachchan family's itinerary with the volume of the loudest permissible stage-aside. Whether it would be Varanasi today or Vindhyachal tomorrow was critical information flowing out of Mr Singh's happily indiscreet mouth. There are some men who live for the media and by the media. Amar Singh fits that description aptly. Even the Bachchans appeared quite comfortable carrying out their darshans and rituals in public glare and the enlarged public company of Amar Singh. Bachchan has recently denied any Martian provocation for these pilgrimages but if it weren't for an astrological scare, the family would hardly have embarked upon this crazy journey from one deity to another.
What really seeped through this entire business of bizarre temple hopping was the medieval ethos, which the Bachchan family subscribes to and proudly chooses to be a victim of. Everybody has a right to a fair share of astrology and superstitions. But those with iconic status also have public responsibilities. They ridicule themselves when they dump these concerns in the popular domain and try to make their fear of a Martian bahu as fashionable as an Armani suit or a tinted Ray-Ban. It is indeed more than ironic that Aishwarya had acted in a film, which the director Gurinder Chaddha had named, Bride and Prejudice.
That is not the only high point in the Theatre of the Absurd that the Bachchans played out. With every passing day, the Big B appears to have been snared in a time warp. He breathes out the venom of an angry old man with the preposterous rage of an obsolete patriarch. He thinks he scores points with the non-multiplex, big screen audiences with the image of a grumpy, no-nonsense man who decides for the rest of his family. But with Amar Singh in tow, he increasingly looks like a Don Quixote charging at windmills in the company of a Sancho Panza.
And to his credit, he plays the role of the loyal Karan to perfection. Even after dozens of children have been slaughtered and probably cannibalized by a couple of savage criminals in Nithari, he stands by Mulayam Singh Yadav and praises the Uttar Pradesh government for a low crime rate. Mulayam Singh is as indefensible as a gross mathematical error and Amitabh Bachchan plays the devil's genuine advocate with a sincerity that only hell-raisers will find touching.
Worse, at a recent awards function, the family did a public stocktaking of its myriad achievements and innumerable contributions to Bollywood. Jaya Bachchan publicly welcomed her bahu who she thought was a darling. Poor Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai sat through that self-laudatory speech with embarrassed patience. Amar Singh was probably the only one in the audience who clapped with juvenile satisfaction. The applause from the rest in the auditorium was more an expression of relief.
If the Bachchans excel in projecting themselves as the family with a perfect set of Indian values, Shahrukh Khan is fast acquiring the title of the nation's Upstart No 1. King Khan keeps forgetting that there is too much of the stereotype in him and, however much he apes the Big B, versatility can never be his forte. Smart repartee and black humour can make him look intelligent but only fleetingly. His insecurities are almost transparent and his desperation shows through when he stoops to attack Amar Singh at the same film awards function where the Bachchans staged their family show. Shahrukh Khan will never forgive God for creating a Bachchan before his career was born. He will forever try to leap across that exceedingly long shadow occupying his path. In this war between insecure Bachchans and an unsafe Shahrukh, King Khan is more like a practiced knife-thrower. He will never be a swordsman.
It is enough to dismiss Khan's antics in a single paragraph. Not that there is any intention of belittling his achievements. Only he is yet to come of age, yet to bloom into a star which more than twinkles. But what really matters is how stardom has been extracting its price from both of them. Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan have both become leading men who, in their real life, irritate more than they entertain. It's time we ask them the impertinent question. Icon or Hai Kaun?
About the AuthorDiptosh Majumdar Diptosh Majumdar is the former National Affairs Editor, CNN-IBN....Read Morefirst published:March 06, 2007, 19:50 ISTlast updated:March 06, 2007, 19:50 IST
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You can't have 21st century icons smelling of decadent, putrescent stardom and proudly declaiming that the world revolves only around them. You can't have a really big star ingeniously pushing each of his personal affairs into the public realm and expecting you to sympathize with his million woes. You can't have another star jabbing at his predecessor because he is so full of himself and because he firmly believes he is the best. Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan are oversized dinosaurs. They dominate the Indian mindscape because the idol-starved nation will not let go off the Jurassic Age.
The decade of the larger-than-life angry young man was dead and buried in the Eighties. Amitabh Bachchan has since survived with some powerful acting in unconventional roles and a carefully acquired television persona. He is a star in his own right. He has delivered hits with the uncanny regularity of a news-hawker distributing morning papers. He has enticed directors into creating roles tailor-made for his age and wrinkled face. He has rivaled his son's foray into multi-faceted acting with scintillating portrayals of new millennium characters like Sexy Sam. He has continued to attract a fanatic following and often-unwarranted tax raids.
For an achiever of his stature and towering personality, real-life tearjerkers should be best kept concealed within the confines of his Juhu bungalow. We will definitely follow the medical bulletin demystifying the bruises on his colon when he is being treated at the Lilavati Hospital. But which person in his right senses will want him to carry the paparazzi around with him in a whirlwind tour of the temples all because his son's fiancé is a Manglik?
Not that Bachchan was readily lending himself to the role of the Pied Piper when the mob of cameras invaded his privacy. It was his trusted friend Amar Singh, who was whispering the Bachchan family's itinerary with the volume of the loudest permissible stage-aside. Whether it would be Varanasi today or Vindhyachal tomorrow was critical information flowing out of Mr Singh's happily indiscreet mouth. There are some men who live for the media and by the media. Amar Singh fits that description aptly. Even the Bachchans appeared quite comfortable carrying out their darshans and rituals in public glare and the enlarged public company of Amar Singh. Bachchan has recently denied any Martian provocation for these pilgrimages but if it weren't for an astrological scare, the family would hardly have embarked upon this crazy journey from one deity to another.
What really seeped through this entire business of bizarre temple hopping was the medieval ethos, which the Bachchan family subscribes to and proudly chooses to be a victim of. Everybody has a right to a fair share of astrology and superstitions. But those with iconic status also have public responsibilities. They ridicule themselves when they dump these concerns in the popular domain and try to make their fear of a Martian bahu as fashionable as an Armani suit or a tinted Ray-Ban. It is indeed more than ironic that Aishwarya had acted in a film, which the director Gurinder Chaddha had named, Bride and Prejudice.
That is not the only high point in the Theatre of the Absurd that the Bachchans played out. With every passing day, the Big B appears to have been snared in a time warp. He breathes out the venom of an angry old man with the preposterous rage of an obsolete patriarch. He thinks he scores points with the non-multiplex, big screen audiences with the image of a grumpy, no-nonsense man who decides for the rest of his family. But with Amar Singh in tow, he increasingly looks like a Don Quixote charging at windmills in the company of a Sancho Panza.
And to his credit, he plays the role of the loyal Karan to perfection. Even after dozens of children have been slaughtered and probably cannibalized by a couple of savage criminals in Nithari, he stands by Mulayam Singh Yadav and praises the Uttar Pradesh government for a low crime rate. Mulayam Singh is as indefensible as a gross mathematical error and Amitabh Bachchan plays the devil's genuine advocate with a sincerity that only hell-raisers will find touching.
Worse, at a recent awards function, the family did a public stocktaking of its myriad achievements and innumerable contributions to Bollywood. Jaya Bachchan publicly welcomed her bahu who she thought was a darling. Poor Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai sat through that self-laudatory speech with embarrassed patience. Amar Singh was probably the only one in the audience who clapped with juvenile satisfaction. The applause from the rest in the auditorium was more an expression of relief.
If the Bachchans excel in projecting themselves as the family with a perfect set of Indian values, Shahrukh Khan is fast acquiring the title of the nation's Upstart No 1. King Khan keeps forgetting that there is too much of the stereotype in him and, however much he apes the Big B, versatility can never be his forte. Smart repartee and black humour can make him look intelligent but only fleetingly. His insecurities are almost transparent and his desperation shows through when he stoops to attack Amar Singh at the same film awards function where the Bachchans staged their family show. Shahrukh Khan will never forgive God for creating a Bachchan before his career was born. He will forever try to leap across that exceedingly long shadow occupying his path. In this war between insecure Bachchans and an unsafe Shahrukh, King Khan is more like a practiced knife-thrower. He will never be a swordsman.
It is enough to dismiss Khan's antics in a single paragraph. Not that there is any intention of belittling his achievements. Only he is yet to come of age, yet to bloom into a star which more than twinkles. But what really matters is how stardom has been extracting its price from both of them. Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan have both become leading men who, in their real life, irritate more than they entertain. It's time we ask them the impertinent question. Icon or Hai Kaun?
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