“They lie who say they don’t want to be like him”

Mr Bachchan is a hermit...a monk. His destinations are his characters. He travels and lives those parts just the way we live in our homes…safe, with a deep sense of belonging. And yet he doesn’t remain in that place. He is constantly, film after film, character after character, seeking salvation, seeking the truth…the intense (Shoebite), the profound (Pink), luminous (Piku, right), hilarious (Gulabo Sitabo) truth that dissolves his previous identity and frees him even further.

He seems like a man who has renounced all that he owns, left only with his art. Bhashkor Banerjee is not a project he has signed on for motivation or work; he doesn’t need that after a glorious cinema-defining journey. What he is doing perhaps is to find an entirely new understanding of himself, of the world he is a part of and so intensely that he can give up, leave behind, detach from that Bachchan forever.

When he plays Chunnan Mirza (Gulabo Sitabo), he is perhaps letting out his inner offender that we all have but keep hidden…he is letting it out because he does not want it to come in the way of his journey. His method, his rehearsing lines, his discipline…we all know it. What we don’t realise is that every time he does that, he leaves behind a lesson for all of us. They are all lying who say they don’t want to be like him.

The Bachchan universe has no pretensions, no worry or hurry to acquire more. It is instead a reference for the generations to come, a ready reckoner on how to be an artist. It is a colourful LEGO set you can build your careers with. All directors, writers, technicians have used it.

He built whatever he had to… name, fame, wealth, whatever we understand as a successful career, long back. Now, he’s making sense of his birth, a blessed one. ■