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CURRENT ISSUE FEBRUARY 23, 2004
cover story CINEMA
AMITABH BACHCHAN Ageless Superstar
At 62, he plays the leading man in movies scripted for him and directed by people half his age. Meet Amitabh Bachchan in his second innings, the still-so-sexy patron saint of New Bollywood.
By Kaveree Bamzai
At 5 in the morning, when Mumbai is just stirring to life, one man begins his daily quest for immortality. After just three hours of sleep, he drives up to a suburban hotel in a metallic grey Mercedes S 320, gets into the gym and for the next two hours pumps iron, walks the treadmill and does cardio-vascular exercises under the watchful eye of his wife's trainer Vrinda Mehta. By 8.30, he is ready to report on the sets of one of the 10 films he has signed on for this year, in a scrupulously clean, Arctic cold trailer. "One day I looked at some pictures and saw my face and body. It was disgusting. So now I'm working out for the first time in my life. Within the next two years, you'll see, I'll have the body of a young man, I'll wax my chest and walk around wearing a waistcoat," says the country's most famous voice, throwing his perfectly groomed head back in a laugh that runs up to glimmer in his slate grey eyes.
Gentlemen of the Mumbai film industry, you are on notice. At 62, with back-to-back leading man performances as an eternal romantic in Baghban (in a role originally written for Dilip Kumar 15 years ago) and an angry old policeman in Khakee, Amitabh Bachchan is ready to carry the burden of New Bollywood on his shoulders-the right as much as the drooping left, the result of a surgery on a benign cyst in 1964 that accidentally left him without a nerve. A whole new generation, from Rituparno Ghosh to Rohan Sippy for whom he was the ultimate film school, is writing scripts for him, creating characters that take off from their chosen favourites, even giving up a year of their lives in a patient wait for him to fit them into his hectic schedule with no Sundays off. Movies, endorsements, public causes, social engagements, son et lumieres for the Ministry of Tourism and projects with Star TV and Sahara in March 2005.... A reinvented Bachchan is back in the hunt, trusting his instincts as he had never done. He is a new hero, the older hero, or maybe just the new old hero.
And he is loving it, as much as a perpetual pessimist can. Having wrestled with the demons of Bofors and laid the blood-thirsty ghost of ABCL to rest, he is still constantly looking over his shoulder. The intimate knowledge of failure is what drives him, fuelling his onscreen rage, propelling him into kicking faster, jumping higher and running against the wind. That, and most certainly and unashamedly, financial security for his family. "When you reach my age, you start to wonder whether the people you leave behind are equipped, at least practically if not emotionally, to handle the situation. You want to protect them from any damage," he says, quite simply (see interview).
Bollywood is more than happy to assist him. In the 1970s, he was Vijay, the nation's ragingly angry policeman; Amit, the brooding lover; the grime-stained coal miner upset with himself; and the comic "coefficient-of-the-linear" spouting Anthony Gonsalves. Now, having made tying a blouse on Hema Malini a Kama Sutra-worthy act, he is drawing a generation used to the boyish charms of Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan to the banked fire in his eyes. In Khakee, he has also made the most mainstream political film in recent times. In a story inspired by Mohammed Afroz's arrest under POTA in Mumbai in 2001, self-confessed nutty fan Shridhar Raghavan, who wrote the hard-hitting CID on Sony, has crafted a screenplay which gives Bachchan's character ample opportunity to attack the state. "Dushman ka na to koi naam hai, na chehra (The enemy has no name, no face)," says Anant Shrivastav, a DCP who has been kicked from one insignificant posting to another, who suffers from asthma, whose belly has begun a dalliance with gravity and whose jowls are not allowed to hide behind that trademark beard.
Khakee shows the victimisation of an honest Muslim for riots engineered by the state itself. Even Bachchan, who despite being on the UP Development Council and having powerful politician friends usually sidesteps political questions, says, "I was impressed by the frankness of the Muslim angle. As a common man, I thought it was very bold, very strong. These are words that are normally uttered behind closed doors."
They are also the words that need to be spoken. And who better than Bachchan, who articulated the restlessness of the '70's youth, apart from single-handedly middle-parting their hair. This time, his anger is directed against urban society's rottenness and those who tolerate it silently. His concerns are not personal, his inspiration completely indigenous. In the end, though, it is also a deeply cynical film, reflecting the times we live in, when corruption and criminality are a given, when ends justify the means. Prasoon Joshi, national creative director, McCann-Erickson India, and the man behind the Thanda Matlab campaign for Coca-Cola, feels it is Bachchan's ability to admit to his mistakes which makes him-and a character like Shrivastav-believable. "Like a political leader, people have followed his life very closely. They have seen him falling down and getting up. With him, empathy levels are very high." So if a Cadbury is accused of being infested with worms, who are they going to call? If the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare needs parents to send their children for polio vaccination, who will they ask for but the father figure who can appeal to the Barista crowd as much as to those in Badayun.
With box-office success (Baghban made almost double its Rs 14 crore budget and the Rs 30 crore Khakee is on the way to recovering its cost), Bachchan has also raised his price per movie to Rs 3 crore, the same as Salman Khan and just below Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh, who do fewer movies. His annual income is about Rs 40 crore but more than that he is creating immense possibilities for the older actor. About time too, says film scholar Rachel Dwyer, pointing out that Hindi films have no place for Jack Nicholson's wrinkly bottom or Al Pacino's controlled anger. In this, Bachchan may have been lucky that as a society we are ageing better, eating healthier and keeping fitter.
The actor himself is a triumph of will over weakness. He says he works at 50 per cent of his capacity. His internal organs are a warzone: a shortlist of his many ailments includes four squashed vertebrae, an accident in 1982 that left him clinically dead, three additional surgeries and as many holes in his stomach as in a golf course ("I've counted them," he says). Yet even now, he says, "When the camera starts rolling, my adrenalin starts pumping. I feel a rush of blood." Then, Grandfather of the Nation or not, he is quite unstoppable. "All I hope is that I am able to deliver a scene in front of youngsters and that it is received well," he says, sounding like an anxious father hen.
Yes, he likes to challenge himself, even when good manners insist he has to stifle a yawn or when fans persist in introducing him to their "Mrs". When he says he is constantly learning, it is not false humility. Milan Luthria, the director of the forthcoming Deewaar, where Bachchan plays a prisoner of war, says the actor becomes almost irritable if he is not told what to do. "Once he's told," he says, "he's extremely submissive." He also finesses his craft even if he does not have the best lines. Nikhil Advani, director of Kal Ho Naa Ho and associate director of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, recalls that Bachchan did not speak to anyone on the sets for two days in preparation for the scene where he throws Shah Rukh out of his home. Khakee director Rajkumar Santoshi says on the day of a big onscreen showdown in a police station, he built up his anger the whole day, being sullen and uncommunicative. In Baghban, says Ravi Chopra, who first directed him 25 years ago in Zameer, he worked for three days on the 12-minute climactic speech, requisitioning the services of old friend and much-loved wordsmith Javed Akhtar.
He is happiest when he is a beginner, excited about the possibility of a new journey. It could be practising the tango with Padma Lakshmi for Boom, which was cancelled because she walked out. It could even be learning sign language for the blind for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black, where he plays a teacher to a deaf-dumb-blind young woman (Rani Mukherjee). That innate deference to authority may come from his public school background (he went to Sherwood, Nainital). It may also come from his extremely reticent character. He is changing though, and he says, almost with a wince, that he feels he is going against his character by speaking his mind-"I may not have had the strength earlier. But what the hell, if I don't do it now, I never will."
For a person who spent a better part of his life at someone else's command, it is liberating. That sense of heady freedom is reflected in his adventurousness in clothes. "I often borrow Abhishek's shirts and jackets. We are the same size. We even pinch each other's shoes," he says. It is also reflected in his movie choices: on the anvil is a film by Prakash Jha where he will play the older man to a younger love interest.
The break-free spirit is in his range of interests, from text messaging dirty jokes to his son to holding impromptu tea parties in Leh with two suitcases full of snacks for the predominantly under-30 cast and crew of Farhan Akhtar's Lakshya. "It is stupid to be sitting up in your room all by yourself," he says. It is also in his emergence from the shadow of his industrialist-politician friends. He now often drives out alone to attend premieres, music launches, even restaurant openings. "Amitji can never say no to anyone. He knew Amar Singhji (Samajwadi Party general secretary and Bachchan's 'younger brother') had helped me out financially. He could have manipulated me. But he never did," says Santoshi. His son's friend, director Apoorva Lakhia, agrees that he carries his fame as a public trust: "He makes sure everyone gets three minutes of his time. That's when your world stops." He should know. He is waiting till 2005 for Bachchan to star in his film Just Punjabi.
Perhaps the fascination with Bachchan has something to do with pedigree. Bachchan has often said he was made by his father, the renowned poet Harivanshrai Bachchan. His interest in philosophy, poetry, learning and life are an inheritance he treasures. "I remember once when he was ill at Willingdon Hospital in Delhi, I would sit and recite his poetry and ask him the meaning of each and every line. In the hustle and bustle of our lives, I don't know where I have kept those notes. If I could within my lifetime read and understand whatever he has written, it would be salvation. The entire essence of life was in his writing," he says.
For Bachchan, the poet will always be alive. His room is still as it was. "I have put his portrait there. His belongings are there. The Ramayana is played there every morning. I've just cleaned it. Habitually, every time I go up to my room or come down, I go in to take his blessings, even if it is at three in the morning." Every night after he gets back from work to his new home Jalsa, he meets his family, completes his paperwork and then goes back, just yards away, to Pratiksha, his old house, to be with his mother. "Unfortunately, she is not mentally all there," he says, "but every morning, I tell her everything that is happening. I don't know whether she understands what I'm saying but sometimes when she says 'don't be late' or 'have you eaten your food', that gives me a lot of hope. So even though she is 85 and I'm 62, I'm still like a baby in front of her."
Therein perhaps lies the secret of his eternal youth and, shall one say, his eternally vulnerable sex appeal, mixed with memories of the edgy bad boy of Deewar and the dangerously polished patriarch of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (what film writer Jessica Hines calls the horsehead-in-bed kind of menace). To be able to be a good son to his parents and a buddy to his son, to be a good director's actor and a good product's ambassador. Someone who can relate to red trousers and to Giorgio Armani ("Or whatever four Italian designers dictate is good taste," he says). That's what makes grown men like Jhankaar Beats' director Sujoy Ghosh turn into a puddle when he agrees to work with them and that is what makes a fine specimen of muscular masculinity like Sanjay Dutt snap to attention and flick away his cigarette the minute he spies Bachchan.
Like Phantom, when Bachchan walks, lightning stands still.
------Box 1--------------
2004 Roles of HONOUR
1 AB TUMHARE HAWALE WATAN SAATHIYON: Plays soldier in Anil Sharma film.
2 WAQT: A RACE AGAINST TIME: A film by Vipul Shah, who says, "I knew I would make it only if Mr Bachchan said yes."
3 DEEWAAR: LET'S BRING OUR HEROES HOME: Breaks out of the mould of a tycoon in Armani suits. He is a prisoner of war in Pakistan.
4 RANVEER: The shooting for the ABCorp film, co-starring Abhishek, begins next month.
5 BLACK: Plays teacher to Rani Mukherjee's deaf-blind character in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film.
6 DEV: Plays a jugalbandi with Om Puri in Govind Nihalani's dream project, a sequel to Ardh Satya.
7 THE NEXT YASH CHOPRA MOVIE: Has guest role as an Indian father in the cross-border romance. Co-stars Chopra staple Shah Rukh Khan.
8 LAKSHYA: Plays Colonel Damle in a role written by old favourite Javed Akhtar.
9 ZAMAANAT: The l0-years-late film co-starring Karisma Kapur.
10 KYUN? HO GAYA NA!: Is the comic "Uncle" running an orphan-age. Focus in the Aishwarya-starrer
Edited By Aarkayne on 1077223996
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