Bachchan still going strong at 70
There was a welcome break from the incessant spotlight on new corruption scams when the entire nation seemed to come together to mark the 70th birthday of its biggest cultural icon.
DAYS before Oct 11 when Amitabh Bachchan, voted in a BBC poll as the star of the millennium, turned 70, everyone seemed to rejoice in the multievent celebrations. For a moment, wrongs of the political class were forgotten as the print and audiovisual media noted every detail in the journey of Bachchan from a struggling actor in the late 60s to super stardom a few years later.
And what a spectacular journey it has been! For over four decades, Bachchan has dominated Bollywood as a colossus. Most of his contemporaries have long retired, and even his own actor-son Abhishek, and the latter’s actor wife and former beauty queen, Aishwarya Rai, seem to feature less and less in films now.
But there seems to be no dearth of meaty assignments for Bachchan, the Indian film industry’s most enduring “angry young man”. He still gets top billing on the boxoffice, much to the chagrin of star-actors half his age who envy the fees and the fan following he commands. His endorsement fees for commercial ads are among the highest even now.
It is not that Bollywood has not had its share of competent actors. In the earlier era, you had Dilip Kumar who won universal acclaim, particularly for essaying tragic roles. The “tragedy king”, as he was called for playing the loser in love on screen, ruled the marquee from the 1950s through to the 1970s, with his contemporaries like the late Dev Anand, and Raj Kapoor forming the trio of top stars. Shammi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Manoj Kumar, Shashi Kapoor, etc. represented the next generation but they failed to attain the success notched up by the DilipRaj-Dev trio.
After living it rough in search of work in Bombay for a couple of years, Bachchan got his break in the celebrated journalist-authorproducer-director Khwaja Ahmad Abbas’ low-budget film, Saat Hindustani. It was a small role but it attracted notice for he stood out as an actor among the six other young actors seen in the film, which conveyed the message of national unity in diversity.
When Abbas’ art-house film failed to do much for Bachchan, he continued to make the rounds of producers. At one stage, he even contemplated going back and becoming a business executive, which he was before coming to Bombay. But the generosity of the late comedian Mehmood helped him get a couple of fresh assignments.
Sunil Dutt’s Reshma Aur Shera, where Bachchan played a deaf and dumb young man, was notable for his acting chops. Mehmood’s own Bombay to Goa saw Bachchan get the better of several more experienced actors in the emoting department.
However, it was on the recommendation of the ace villain Pran that the late producer-director Prakash Mehra cast him with great reluctance as the lead in Zanjeer. Mehra had earlier offered the role to Dev Anand, Dharmendra, Raaj Kumar, etc., but for some reason they all declined. The film was a huge box office hit and won Bachchan the best actor award. Besides, it firmed up his image as “the angry young man” of Bollywood.
He never looked back after Zanjeer and soon after a string of box office hits, he went on to become, as a popular magazine described, “a one-man industry”, occupying “one to 10 slots” in Bollywood. Every actor past and present faded before his enormous talent.
Though not blessed with the Roman-god good looks like Dharmendra, Bachchan nonetheless out-performed all his rivals in the acting department with his deep baritone voice and plastic face.
His range and repertoire was so vast that film critics freely acknowledged that he had surpassed the best of even Dilip Kumar. He excelled in all manner of roles, though he admitted that he did some indifferent films only for commercial reasons.
After dominating the industry for over two decades, advancing years made it rather incongruous for him to play the “angry young man”. A mid-career lull saw him try his hand at film production under his own banner, but the venture failed miserably, causing him huge losses.
Earlier, he had tried his hand at politics, becoming a member of parliament at the insistence of his old family friend, the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Here again, he felt inadequate and eventually chose to quit his parliamentary seat in a bruising controversy.
After lying low for a decade or so, Bachchan’s career revived miraculously at the turn of the century. His decision to play the anchor in the popular Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), modelled on the American TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, proved an instant success. For five days a week, Bachchan wowed the entire nation with his mesmerising voice, his easy conviviality with the contestants and the studio audiences and, above all, with his natural talent to tantalise viewers before revealing whether the answer to the question he had put was right or wrong. So popular was the KBC show that a full decade later it is still running three days a week on nightly TV.
A word about the festivities that marked the 70th anniversary bash. The high-point, of course, was the dinner that his actor wife Jaya Bachchan, and Anil Ambani, his well-known industrial friend, jointly hosted at a large ground inside a film studio. An earlier plan to hold it at a five-star hotel was abandoned in view of the large number of guests.
Barring an exception or two, the entire Bollywood fraternity led by the 80-plus Dilip Kumar, who arrived in a wheelchair with his actor-wife Saira Banu, and another wheelchair-bound actor, Shashi Kapoor, who had played second string to Bachchan in many boxoffice hits, was present to felicitate Big B on his 70th birthday.
Meanwhile, the saturation coverage in the media focused on Bachchan’s 40-plus years in the limelight. There were interviews galore with the birthday boy, each tracing his origins as the son of an English language college lecturer who wrote poetry in Hindi, his frustrations as a struggler and the eventual rise as the unchallenged Bollywood colossus.
Asked about his best five films, Big B demurred; pressed by the interviewer, he named at least two which are relatively new. In Paa and Black, every cine buff would tell you, Bachchan delineated such difficult roles that they cannot see any other Bollywood actor, living or dead, doing them. That is the ultimate tribute to a stupendous talent, who, fortunately enough, continues to be flooded with fresh assignments even at the age of 70.