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The Dream Maker - In the footsteps of his father.

In 1937 a young poet who was earning his livelihood teaching at a school in Allahabad got an invitation to recite his poems at a function in Bareilly. After he'd finished reading out his poetry, he went to the station, where a tall, lean man warmly greeted him.

"So at last you have come. You do not know how intense my desire was to meet you. Today I wanted so badly to hear your poems in your own voice. If you had not come, I would never have forgiven life for its cruelty," said the ardent fan. In the Tonga he kept holding the hand of the poet. He recited many lines written by the poet, and insisted that the poems concerned should be included in the poet’s selection the next day. "These have been written for me. Please do not disappoint me. I’ll never forget my debt to you as long as I live."

The next day when the poet rose to recite his poems at the gathering, he saw this man finding his way to the front row. To satisfy him the poet recited the poems he had asked for.

Back at the station for his return trip to Allahabad, the poet found the tall man, this time in a quiet mood, holding his hand and trying to say something but not quite getting to it. He could merely say that he was travelling by the same train. Tired after his busy schedule, the poet soon fell asleep.

Early in the morning he was awakened by the sound of several men talking loudly near him. The train had stopped as someone had jumped from the running train and committed suicide. The poet went to see the dead man. He was stunned to find the body of his tall, insistent fan, his face smeared with blood.

As the shattered poet was returning to his compartment, some questions hit him like a whip. Were his poems responsible for the suicide of this young man? Did they arouse his emotions so much that he could no longer control them, only end them? Did his poems afflict the audience with a deep pessimism? Was his poetry morbid? These thoughts disturbed the poet’s mind to such an extent that though he was being regarded as one of the most talented among the emerging poets of the country, he gave up writing poetry for a long time.

The poet was none other than Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Relating this incident at some length, in the second part of his widely acclaimed autobiography; Dr. Bachchan said that even for decades after this incident, the intense eyes of the unknown man kept staring at him.

Dr. Bachchan’s poems, which occupy a unique and controversial place in Hindi poetry, have always commanded a wide and devoted audience, and it is well that he has been so careful about the possibilities of an adverse impact. His eldest son, Amitabh Bachchan, acquired an even wider reputation as one of the most popular and talented actors in the film industry. He clearly reaches and influences a much greater number of people through the screen than a literary figure (however popular) could ever aspire to reach, in our country.

One wonders if Amitabh was just as concerned as his father, about the social impact of his work? The senior Bachchan, had earlier readily declined a lucrative offer made by W.Z. Ahmed to join National Studios as a lyricist and had also prevented his wife, Teji Bachchan from accepting the offer of becoming an actress in the same company. He did not appear to have been disturbed by the relationship between performer and society in the context of this other mass medium.

This is in keeping with the Indian tradition. Noble questions such as the artist’s responsibility towards society are often raised in the context of literature but neglected in the case of cinema which, having developed as low brow entertainment, has never attracted such `concern’ despite its much higher reach and influence.

Essentially, Amitabh Bachchan had fulfilled the same role for the mass audience, which the other stars of the commercial cinema had done. That of providing an identity figure around which dreams could be woven. In our highly romance-oriented commercial cinema, star images have frequently been built up around the concept of the ideal man for the female audience, and an ideal concept of masculinity to which the male audience in turn may aspire. Stars of different looks, mannerisms and temperaments have been built up to satisfy the different perceptions of the 'ideal' man (a lot of importance being attached to "looks" and the results are Dev Anand, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and others.

For one thing Amitabh is not handsome in the traditional sense of the Indian film hero. Generally the hero (from Dilip Kumar to Rajesh Khanna) has been expected to have somewhat slender build and a face which could evoke the sentiments of pity as well as the protective instincts of the family audience, an asset which, it was felt, someone like Amitabh Bachchan did not have. So the initial hesitancy on the part of Hindi film makers to accept him as a hero of any great commercial potential.

These initial perceptions as everyone agrees now were quite wrong, and Amitabh, today has perhaps the largest number of fans among all film stars, but this success, it may be noted, involves a different kind of image building. The goody-goody image of the lover boy was not for him. Amitabh had provided the identity figure around which lakhs of girls have built their fancies but this romantic perception has not been the most important aspect of his strength as a hero of mass appeal.

The kind of image building that has been the strength of Amitabh Bachchan and to which his appearance and voice have been exceptionally well suited is best illustrated by his role in Yash Chopra’s 'Deewaar'. Although other Amitabh films may have been bigger hits, in terms of the sociological significance of the film star, it is this film which has been the most significant because of the tremendous impact on the audience of the role played by Amitabh. While people flocked to see 'Sholay' (which running simultaneously with 'Deewaar' was a much bigger draw at that time) for sheer entertainment. 'Deewar' had a smaller but much more committed audience. Most of whom came again and again to see Amitabh in this supreme role and relate their story with the man of grit and determination, the man who against heavy odds graduated from rags to riches, the man, moreover, who had the guts to fight injustice. These are also the most important aspects of the angry young man image of Amitabh Bachchan, firmly established in 'Deewaar' and relived in a number of other films including 'Muqaddar Ka Sikandar'.

In 'Deewaar' a shoeshine boy grows up to become a dockhand. He bashes up nearly a dozen gangsters who have been fleecing porters of their meager earnings. He is then picked up by a top-notch smuggler and, in an even more unrealistic way, proceeds to carry out smuggling operations all alone with the finesse and confidence of one who has been trained all along for this task. He is soon honoured with the chair of kingpin smuggler.

In a memorable scene the shoeshine and the porter of yesteryear, now dressed dandily, swivels around on his chair with an aura of triumph – he is the king and the world is at his feet. In another remarkable scene Amitabh, paying an inflated price, purchases as a present for her the building on whose construction his mother had been forced to seek employment to bring up her children. Along the way he acquires an extremely glamorous girl friend, who also considers it her good fortune to share the inner turmoil of the angry young man. And everywhere a lucky number hamal’s badge protects our hero from all earthly dangers.

True, he meets a sad end, but the high-risk, high-reward life he is seen leading as a smuggler is so attractive as to capture fully the imagination of shoeshines, porters and several others on the footpath. Let us not overstate the dangers of such films. Kids of course are not going to turn criminals just because they see 'Deewaar'. But surely an impressionable young mind with all kinds of unfulfilled desires may respond more favourably to any chance of joining the criminal world after this kind of media glamorization.

In 'Muqaddar Ka Sikandar' too, Amitabh rises from a shoeshine boy to become a rich and daring young man. Here, However, he is supposed to have accumulated his wealth by informing the police about the activities smugglers, and getting rewards, How exactly he accomplished this dare devil task and survived the gangsters is too inconvenient a detail for the film maker to bother about, and instead Amitabh is shown dividing his time equally between flirting with a courtesan and brooding about a (lady) teacher. No danger of crime promotion here, but the kind of blatant wish-fulfillment which these vague and incredible scripts and the films based on them indulge in is a highly reactionary influence turning the boys on the footpath from their real problems to fantasizing about a rise to fame and fortune.

Amitabh is also a great avenger of injustice, but he accomplishes this in a typical filmic style. Not to be bothered by the tedious procedures of going to the police or the courts, this human dynamo taps his vast reserve of energy to take on any perpetrator of injustice all alone (in some multi-starrers he may take the help of one other person) Even when playing a policeman, he adopts his own unconventional methods of dealing with criminals attack him he does not even bring it to the notice of the police.

Of course the ways in which he fights injustice or seeks revenge are quite incredible, suiting only a superman of the screen, but they do touch a responsive chord among a people who are frustrated with or at least familiar with the many delays and problems in seeking justice through conventional channels. Violence has its own direct appeal, but it acquires a special significance in an unjust society where so many of us, unable to get justice, have to spend a lifetime nursing pent-up grievances and emotions. Here again, needless to add, the only healing touch that the typical Amitabh film provides is that of wish fulfillment, an escape from the real problem of asserting ourselves to get justice done.