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dabba (New York, USA)

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Shah Rukh won but he’s no longer a Baazigar

Prediction - This post will get me more eyeballs than anything else I have written on PFC. The original title was “Strange Love: Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love SRK,” but I put my Producer hat on, and chose this for obvious reasons. Yet another warning. This post can be accused of a lot of things, but good journalism will not be one. This is anecdotalism at best, and naval gazing at worst, but considering the state of journalism today, I may not be that far off the mark. There is no research done whatsoever. There are plenty of books out there that do that. Please to be reading.

Saal - San Unnees sau 92 (tees ke oopar hindi main ginney nahi aathi)

After yet another move, I was starting to get familiar with my new town, new school, and my new avatar. Start fresh with a clean slate. I had been a brooding, morose kid in the previous town; perenially depressed about the state of the world and those around me. I was fairly optimistic about my chances (full disclosure - I am smart), but always worried how those kids that weren’t as smart as me would make it. Seriously. The economy had recently been opened up, but I didn’t know what that meant. Caste based reservations had increased, something about a Mandal Commission and I didn’t know what that was about either. There had been 3 or 4 PMs in the previous 3 years. There was an election every blaady year. And then some mosque somewhere was torn down by some people, and school was closed.

I had given up watching telly the last few years because it was depressing. Seeing that DD logo and hearing the theme music made me want to slit my wrists. Part of it of course was because the lights would be turned off in my household when people watched TV, save for the one 20 W bulb in the kitchen to save electricity. I am a turn-on-all-the-lights kinda guy, so I avoided being home and spent those hours constructively; I loitered. I had never watched Fauji or Circus but had heard of this actor peeps would talk about.

His first film that I watched was Dil Aashna Hai, on one of those cable channels that play pirated movies. I remember 3 details about that movie. It was directed by Hema Malini; Divya Bharathi was in it (it may have been her last movie); and there was this guy who effervesced throughout his short part in the film. It may have been uncalled for but he did it anyways. Kinda like those hot towels they bring you in fancy restaurants; you don’t need it but it’s still refreshing. The next movie of Shah Rukh’s that I watched was Baazigar.

“Baazi Harkar jo jeetta hai, usay kehte hain Baazigar”

This summarizes the SRK of that era and perhaps why I took a fancy to him. I never cared for his movies but it always left me feeling better. The characters he played or rather they way he played his characters was like a Loser. But there was a big difference. This Loser wanted things or people, he wanted them badly and chased after them (much like you and I) with great velocity and enthusiasm, and in the end didn’t get them (also like us), but unlike you and I, he took it with a dimple, a twinkle and nary a Rinku.

In Baazigar, he pushes off the terrace and kills, an actress that had perhaps the best smile after Madhuri, makes her sister fall in love with him to avenge his father, and ends up dying in the end. Yet, I found it strangely uplifting because he had to die (since he pushed Shilpa over), but he got what he wanted, or almost did. I watched a few more of his films around then that seem to fit the above narrative and can be summarized for sake of analogy as - Shah Rukh wants to eat Cake, but he doesn’t have any. He pursues cake with ruthless and charming ambition; And then one of two things happens - He gets the cake, but must choose between eating it or keeping it; Or, he gets the cake briefly and someone takes it away from him or he dies. Sometimes all three of the above happen in the same movie. And I always loved it.

I never knew if he would succeed, and didn’t care if he died or lost. He tried damn it! This went on for a coupla years but in between, one more curious transformation had taken place. When I was younger, I had lived in a part of Bombay that made Govinda’s Virar look like Beverly Hills. I had never been to Bandra or South Bombay or any of those posh places and didn’t have friends in those circles either. In 1993, I went to Bombay to visit a very close friend whom I had met in the previous town that I had lived. He was a South Bombay brat of the best kind; he had an utter disdain for the SoBo brigade since he had never lived in Bombay but had a domicile and Colony friends there. By their own admission, these guys and girls had recently started watching hindi movies. That may seem unremarkable to you, but this is a big effing deal. I’ll tell you why. It is the equivalent of stuck up white people getting down with hiphop in the movies. These folks were above Bollywood, and certainly didn’t mind letting others know that; suddenly they were watching Hindi movies and listening to the music. This meant that it was cool to watch something of Indian origin. And that was bad news.

Two years later, I was at college in a different town and I watched DDLJ. I loved the movie and I knew one thing. That was the end of the Baazigar, although I could not have articulated it then. Let’s look at what happens in the movie. Raj wants cake, Raj pursues cake, and in the end Raj gets cake. Maybe it was the collective desire of an entire nation to see the boy next door (you would have to travel through some pretty amazing space-time wormhole for Raj of DDLJ to be your boy next door) win after years of losing.

The next SRK movie I saw was Something Something Happens. My worst fears were confirmed. He got to have the cake and eat it too. That has been the story of every Shah Rukh Khan - The Superstar movie after that. You don’t think so? Let’s see -

Mohabbatein - He gets to teach Amitabh a lesson, his philosophy wins, 3 couples get to be in love and Ash shows up as a ghost all the time. He never really lost her!

Yes Boss - girl and the promotion?

That movie with Madhuri and Karishma - something & something.

KKKG - Family and wife.

I don’t begrudge the new Shah Rukh because the old one was there when I needed him and we don’t need each other any more. There is another parallel to SRK’s superstar persona or Raj/Rahul that he plays in the movies. I think it’s the Tom Cruise Superstar persona. I will probably be pilloried for making the comparison, but here it goes anyway. Tom Cruise characters (with the exception of Magnolia; even in Vanilla Sky they had to cop out, which was quite different from the original Spanish film) have everything, but they want more, and we are happy to see them get it!

You may point out many films before DDLJ that don’t fit my narrative, like Guddu or Zamaana Deewana and still more after DDLJ, but like OK says, Fish it. Another thing they teach you in journalism; never let the facts get in the way of a good story.