Ire in the Soul: Bollywood's Angry Years

a m HarperCollins Publishers India

Contents

Introduction Bollywood's Burden of Love

The Angry Young Man The Anti-Hero Angry Young Love

The Wild Cat and the Wimp Index

Introduction

AMANDA: But, why - why, Tom, are you always so restless? Where d o you go to, nights? TOM: I - go to the movies. AMANDA: Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom? TOM: I go to the movies because - I like adventure. Adventure is something I don't have much of at work, so I go to the movies. AMANDA: But, Tom, you go to the movies entirely too much! TOM: I like a lot of adventure. (The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams)

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opular cinema is currently in the throes of a second coming. Bogged down by the video and the television blight in the mid-eighties, it was suddenly engulfed in a state of emasculation, People had stopped going to movies; movie moghuls had stopped weaving their spells on screen. It was the proverbial chicken and egg situation where film makers blamed the vanishing crowds and the

Introduction

AMANDA: But, why - why, Tom, are you always so restless? Where d o you go to, nights? TOM: I - go to the movies. AMANDA: Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom? TOM: I go to the movies because - I like adventure. Adventure is something I don't have much of at work, so I go to the movies. AMANDA: But, Tom, you go to the movies entirely too much! TOM: I like a lot of adventure. (The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams)

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opular cinema is currently in the throes of a second coming. Bogged down by the "ideo and the television blight in the mid-eighties, it was suddenly engulfed in a state of emasculation. People had stopped going to movies; movie moghuls had stopped weaving their spells on screen. It was the proverbial chicken and egg situation where film makers blamed the vanishing crowds and the

2

Ire in the Soul

crowds blamed the bad cinema for the empty auditoriums in an industry which produces nearly 900 films annually. Here, where the film makers blamed the viewers for deserting the cinema and viewers indicted the film makers for the indifferent quality of films being churned out from the movie mills, even the allure of Amitabh Bachchan seemed to work no wonders. This despite the fact that his image had whipped up a mind-boggling charisma since Zanjeer hit the screen in 1973. Even that seemed to have lost its power over the popular imagination in the age of television. The debacle began with Ganga lamuna Saraswati, Toofan and ]aadugar and haunted the superstar throughout the end of the 1980s. But for Hum, the rest of the films made in the early 1990s - Akayla, lndrajeef - all failed to match the early hysteria of his films. The fog began to lift at the turn of the 1980s, when Mansoor Khan made Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. A small film with new stars and loads of melody, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak marked the beginning of a new genre in mainstream cinema. The anger of revenge and individual rebellion was replaced by the anger of love. Here was the time-tested story of love-against-odds, but the treatment was entirely new. Love became a synonym for rebellion and the lovers were no longer the mild dulcet pair of the 1960s who accepted everything, union and separation, as a quirk of fate. The success of Qayamat Se Qayalnat Tilk was followed by an unstinted applause for Tezaab, Dil, Smzaln Bea)afa, Maine Pyar Kiya, Aashiqui, Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahirz and the like. It was 'Action' all over again: cameras were rolling, tickets were selling, profits were spiralling and cinema was rising from its slumber once again. Until every other film became just another Qayillnat Sr Qayamat Tak - a pair of new faces, a load of music, now sounding insignificant, and love strewn with impediments. Cinema again began to reverberate with a sense of dija 71u.

Introduction

3

Then there was the grand arrival of the Khalnayak, the anti-hero. Films like Khalnayak, Baazigar, Darr seemed to have lifted the curtain on an entirely virginal terrain. Here, for the first time, there was a hero who was irresistible because he was bad; a plot that was engrossing because it was crooked and a treatment that appeared fresh because it dared to venture into the grey areas of the psyche. The terrorist of Khalnayak, the demented lover of Darr and the shrewd homicidal hero of Baazigar who maintained his charisma hespite ruthlessly flinging his beloved from a high-rise building: these became the icons of the changing times. The 1990s then bear witness to a scenario, when the crowds are returning to cinema on the one hand. And on the other, cinema is being imbued with a sense of exploration. No superstars, no super showmen, just pure cinema, where a film succeeds on the strength of its storyline, dramatic content, characterizations, music - in short, on its overall appeal. An age when Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, traditionally described as a family social, runs shoulder to shoulder with Karan Arjun, the timeless pot-boiler that revolves round the leitmotif of revenge through rebirth. An age when a n actor like Nana Patekar is able to create a furore at the box office with his fiery rantings in Kmntiz~eeralong with the scintillating presence of the new stars on the horizon - Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgan, Salman Khan. A period when stalwarts like Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai co-exist with the brat pack of new direcLors like David Dhawan, Sooraj Barjatya, Mansoor Khan. A decade when the Supreme Court realizes the importance of cinema and indicts it for its ill-effects on the personality of the real life criminal Auto Shankar who blamed cinema for his excesses (murdering six prostitutes for which he was served the death sentence in 1994 and was hanged in 1995) during his defence.

The present st~td\lis an attempt to cnpt~rrc> the glor-vr:I( popular Hindi cincrna; to look bchinii thc pllai~tasmngori~~ and find out ~ v h ) the . n~ag-ic~.\.orks.M'li:~ does Ti~mlike to go to the rnox1ies again and again? Far ad\.cnturc alone? The discussion is centre-d arouitd co~~ternporar!-mainstream cinema and colrers the iast three dt.cades ;vhicli have been divided into three broad categories: the age 01 the angry young man, angry young love and the cinema of the anti-hero. Since the ht-.roine has al~\ravsbeen an s ~ , i.; ~isc.t~aratt1 integral part of the cinematic c l i s c o ~ ~ rthere discussion c j i i the changing hues of the heroine's irnpi~rtance in poy~tlarcjnema.

Bollywood's Burden of Love

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a n cinen~achCingea pcoplc, 1' soiiet); an incli\.ld~~al? Does the moving iinngt. ha\,c the poTver to il-icjnic sl~iits in stands, ideologies, \,aluc. s)~sti~rns? Is 1' iilrn ll\i)r.c, thari fantastical form? - A mctnphor i\,ithout meCining? During tl-ie C;rcat Ucprc~ssionin tlte lL130s,ilic i\rnc>ricCl~l print media was full oi ijrst pcrson accounts of h01v i ~ i d i viduals were copi~;g1vit11 scarcitl.. Tlic~rr'ln in tht>i ~ l l o ~ ~ r ing manner. "We were prCictisingtor a chorus and ,I littlc bo\., ; l i ~ ) ~ t 12-ye'irs-old, Tvns in the tront li11c1. F1tl is ile,ll~in his overalls, but didn't 1ta1.c. n i ~ ~ 011 c i ~under t l i c l ~ l t . He, 1 ~ ~ standing in the lint1 \vl-ic>na11 at once, 111. pitilled ior\v;lrd in a dead faint. 'This \\.as t ~ v cofcic>ckin the c~iti.r~loon... I ie had not had anything tc, eat siiiccs the d a y before." "Five l-iuncircd s'11c)c)I cI1ildr~1-I,nos L i \ r i t l l liagg~irci faces and in tattereil clothes, pnr;ltic>~i through C llii'tgo's d o w l ~ t o ~ vst'ctio~t n tc: cjemcind th.h~c%111 [?I-0\ride them ~ vti1i f o o L i." "1 lo\,c: c\ljlcjrcxil cll~ii1 Iitl\'t' 0!tt,!1 ;\r'inti.d 10 11;1\,0

children of my own. But to ha1.e one now, as I a111 going to, is almost more than I can stand ... I have four step children, so there are six in my family. I need fruit and vegetables. I need rest. I need yards of material for shirts and gowns. I have n o blankets. I need baby clothes ... I hate charity...but my condition now not only forces me to take charity but even ask for it."' "Mrs. Schmidt took her five-year-old son Albert into the kitchen and turned on the gas ...'I don't know what I am going to give the children to eat,' said a note she had written for her husband. 'They are already half starved. I think it best to go into eternity and take little Albert al~ng'."~ The most persistent image of the Depressiori, as it turned out then, was neither FIitler nor Mussolini, but that of a small child, dressed in welfare clothing, unsmiling, unresponsive as he pauses to stare through the windows of a grocery store, his legs noticeably thin and his stomach slightly swollen. Almost like a gaunt Jackie Coogan. In November 1930, during an emergency White House meeting on Child Health and Protection, President Hoover was forced to admit that six million American children were chronically undernourished. Nevertheless, he immediately added that there was no need for the policy makers and mandarins to be discouraged since at the same time, there are thirty-fi~remillion reasonably normal, cheerful human electrons radiating joy and mischief, hope and faith. Their faces are turned towards the lights - theirs is the life of great adventure. These are the vivid, romping everyday children, our orvn and our neighbours. Stark, almost brutal insensitivity, this inay seem, on first appraisal. But a second look is all it takes, to reveal the 1. Peter Stc[.cn, e d . , "lump Cut" in 2. Ibid, p.37

Rc~ticlc,c~riTlrcl

,=hreM,dintelligence that lies behind this deliberate creation of the image of the other side of reality. During those years of gruelling poverty and starvation, Hoover's juxtaposition of the image of the undernourished American child against thirty-five million rosy-cheeked cherubs was not only timely, expedient and ingenious, but showed how easy it was to obfuscate reality by creating a powerful counterimage in the face of an existing unpleasant one. Charles Eckart, in his seminal essay on Shirley Temple elucidates this power of the moving image. He points out, "as the days greuTshorter and grayer, it became obvious that for the millions, the hardest days were still ahead. Those already mentally and physically stunted by years of malnutrition rvould know. many more years of diminished existence before the economic boom of World War I1 would turn the depression around. And a few parents, broken under the responsibility of caring for hungry, ill and constantly irritable children, rvould kill one or more of them - and sometimes, themselves. But then, on the other hand, there was Shirley Temple."' Shirley Temple, who in the mid 1930s, when 20 million people were on relief, awoke in the morning singing the song 'Early Bird'; whose econoinics declared that a nickel was worth more than a dollar; whose message of lolre, caring and sharing merely reiterated President Hoover's observations about Deprt:ssinn being 'only a state of the mind .' During the Depression, it was cinema that became the saviour both for the people and the policy 111akers. While politicians directly cliarged Hollyrvood with the task of "cheering Americans up", studio ideolog.-~eslike Jack Warner and 1-ouis R.Mayer studiouslv took up their new roles as shapers o f public attitudes. The phenomenon of

1 . o r t ~(1985),p.37

3. Ibid, pp. 42-43

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Ire in the So111

Shirley Temple was carefully nurtured to create the counter image in films like Littlr Miss Marker, Bright Eyes, Curly Top, Our Little Girl, The Littlest Rebel, Poor Little Rich Girl. As a tiny, adorable, warm ball of love that was in a state of perpetual motion - dancing, strutting, beaming, wheedling, chiding, radiating, kissing - her principal function in all these films was to soften hard hearts (specially the wealthy, to intercede on behalf of others, to effect liaisons between members of opposed social classes and occasionally to regenerate an emaciated populace). Thus on the one hand, there was reality - starvation, privation, unemployment, death. On the other, there was the image - Shirley Temple, bouncing, jumping, singing, dancing, full of a natural joie dr z~iure,presenting the only solution to the current malaise in film after film: the transforming power of love. As Eckart points out: "And now we hear her voice announcing that the Depression is over; that it never existed; that it is ending in each and every of her films; that these films are playing at our neighbourhood theatres and that we should come and see them, and that we must learn to love children and to weep for them and open up our hearts to them, that we mustn't hate rich people because most of them are old and unhappy and unloved, that we should learn to sing at our own work and dance away our weariness, that anyone can be an old sourpuss about rickets and protein deficiency but only Shirley Temple fans can laugh their pathology away."" Cinema then isn't actually what it is taken to be: an impermanent tryst with make-believe, regurgitated with a diet of popcorn and ice creams, its succulence lasting only till the lights are turned on. Somewhere along the regurgitation, there is assimilation, affirmation and actualisation 4. Ibid, p. 51

Bolly7~1ood'Burden s of Love

9

also. The power of the medium was recognized both by Hitler and Mussolini, who cultivated it as an ideological weapon to further their own political interests. The occupation of Denzig was deliberately done in a way that would allow the use of the best camera angles to the film crew. For a similar purpose, Hitler commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make Triumph of the Will, a film that would later serve as the official Nazi record of the Nuremberg party rally of 1934. Preparations for the rally were made along with the preparations for the camera work. The objective was to present Hitler and other Nazi leaders in the best possible light, for which a staff of 120 was employed. They included 40 cameramen. Again, at the peak of the war, when destruction was the order of the day, the German newsreels showed beautiful parks and lawns peopled by handsome men and beautiful women, moving around to the accompaniment of the soft sensuous music in the background. An image which denied the existence of fighting, bloodshed and human brutality of the worst 'kind. Shirley Temple's burden of love has not been laid to rest through all these years of cinematic history. Cinema continues to play the role of the traditional healer of society and the studio ideologues have never stopped churning out a cinema of pacification and passivity: the twin objectives of the media. If Temple could talk abbut the transforming power of love in the 1930s during the peak of the Great Depression and endearingly urge that everyone would have enough if the haves learnt to share and the have-nots learnt tbbear, then Mani Ratnam re-echoes similar sentiments in 1995, when the country had yet to ward off the communal scourge. Set against the Bombay riots of 1993, which followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the film Bombay reiterates Temple's message of love as the only panacea for all ills.

Ire in the Solrl

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Trapped in the thick of a mad riot, with mobsters lusting for blood-closing in from all sides, the hero breaks into a song which urges the sword ahd the trident-wielding people to stop. Ruk ja, ruk ja! blares the background music as the soundtrack repeatedly gushes forth about the essential brotherhood of all mankind. This at a time when the word 'Hindu' came to stand for the trident-wielding Muslim basher and 'Muslim' meant the hard-boiled fanatic with his pro-Pakistan ideology. The film obviously recognizes no such differences of religion, caste and creed as the background song declares:

Bolly7i~ood'sBurden of Love

11

fathers who turn out to be the true prototypes of the common Indian, the hoi polloi for whom religion is an undeniable part of daily life. At the onset, they begin as natural enemies. Bred in a rural society, seeped in tradition, the two obviously meet under the shadow of incipient antagonism and communal distrust.

"Apni zameen, apna gagan yeh Dushlnan bane, apne hi hum Mazhab ko chodo, 7~atanki socho Hindustani hain pehle hum To ruk jao ..." (This is our land, this is our sky; why then are we our own enemies? Forget about religion, think about the nation; we are Indians first and foremost, so stop, just stop.) Confronted by this message of love, they stop. Murderous mobs who seemed to have let go of reason, simply drop their weapons and there, in the middle of the smoke and the stench of human flesh, the hunters and the victims hold hands, hug each other and celebrate their Indianness. This, for the film maker is then the primer's principles for peace and communal amity. At a time when the country was being ripped apart by communal fires and when religious fanaticism was on the rampage, Ratnam chooses to paint the picture of the ideal Muslim and the perfect Hindu. While Shekhar (Arvind Swamy) and Shaila Bano (Manisha Koirala) -the hero and the heroine who rebel against their familial orthodoxy and marry despite the communally surcharged air around may be the protagonists of Bombay, it is actually the two

A tense moment in Bonrbay

Shekhar's father, a hard-core Hindu Brahmin, wants Rahim, Shaila Banofs father, to give him 2000 bricks inscribed with the word 'Ram'. The bricks, he says, are meant for the construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Obviously, Rahim sees red and springs at his would-be customer's throat (Rahim is the owner of a brick kiln) in a bloody rage. But they don't spill blood. Later, the two fight over the religious initiation of their grandchildren, a pair of twins. But underlying their outward hostility, there is a childlike pique, which lends an innocence to their rancour so that, when Bombay begins to burn, the two end up as kindred souls, members of a single family or what

12

Ire in the Soul

you will. The Muslim saves the Hindu from a murderous mob and the Brahmin, in turn, lays down his life in a bid to save the Koran, the holy book of the Muslims, from desecration. These, the film insists, are true Indians who take their religion as seriously as the unifying credo of Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai. This at a time, when the polarization of the two communities seemed to have reached a state of no return and the communal frenzy could hardly be contained with simplistic messages of love, unity and fraternity. Nevertheless, Bombay became a box-office success despite the controversies and the temporary bans. The chimera seemed to have worked again. The good Hindu saves the Muslim. The good Muslim protects the Hindu. The good cops shield everyone. And out of the ashes of despair and .dissonance, phoneix-like, a new India is being born. Over the ashes of the burning city, rises the human chain formed by all the city dwellers. One that transcends all barriers of class, caste, community and religion. Nationality being the only cementing factor here. Yes, Bombay proves once again that with a little bit of love, Gods do rest in their heavens and all becomes right with the nation. Over the last decade, a reiteration of this state of national well-beir.g has become a cinematic obsession with film makers. And successfully so. For, in terms of pure economics, all the films which have talked of the 'foreign hand' that is responsible for internal dissension and decay have been sure-fire hits at the box office. Shekhar Kapoor's Mr. India blamed the bomb blasts (a series of bomb blasts ripped through the nation which were reportedly held to be the handiwork of Punjab terrorists) on Mr. Mugambo, the man from nowhere. Subhash Ghai's Karma pitted the dubious Dr. Deng (Anupam Kher) and his private army against the patriotism of the principled jailer (Dilip Kumar) and his three sons of the nation. All of whom repeatedly echoed

Bollywood's Burden of Love

13

the chorus Har kararn apna karenge ae ulatan tere liye (we shall perform all our tasks for your well-being, oh nation!) in the course of the murder and the mayhem let loose by the crafty alien.

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Naseeruddin Shah in Tahnlka

In Anil Sharmafs Tahalka and Hukurnat, the enemy was again the ungodly outsider (Amrish Puri and Sadashiv Amrapurkar), who would infiltrate the sacrosanct border, loot, plunder and disrupt the natural harmony of the nation. In Mehul Kumar's Tiranga, there was the swarthy enemy from beyond, Pralaynath, Goondaswamy who abducted the Indian scientists to execute his nefarious nuclear missile plan aimed at destroying the nation. But the most important in this genre of cinema that takes upon itself the responsibility of propagating national wellbeing are Mani Ratnam's Rojs and Mehul Kumar's Krantiveer. Here, for the first time, the enemy loses his anonymity and is invested with a face, an identity and a clear-cut methodology to his mad designs. Set against the

14

Ire in the SotlI

insurgency in Kashmir, Roja dramatizes a real life incident - the abduction of a scientist - to indict Pakistan for aiding and abetting terrorism in India. The scientist (Arvind Swamy) naturally turns out to be the grand Indian patriot who douses the flames emanating from the national flag with his own body and confronts the militancy of the hard-core terrorist with his straight-from-the-heart thte-athte about nationhood, national love and the like. In a telling scene of the film, the engineer Rishi Kumar, indicts the Kashmiri militant, Liaqat (Pankaj Kapoor) for his treachery. According to Rishi, the terrorists are merely puppets in the hands of Pakistan and their 'war against innocents' is actually disallowed not only by the law of the land but by their religion too. Padosi desh ki kafhpufliho tum, tulnhari apni aka1 kahan hail he queries. He tells the insurgent to shed his violent ways since India cannot be divided. Moreover this wanton shedding of innocent blood was surely anti-Islam too. Yeh ugrawaad, yeh maut, yeh tabaahi, kya Allah ko lnanzoor hai ...Yeh barbaadi, yeh bandook chod do ...y eh desh kabhi nahin bat sakfa, he exhorts. (This insurgency, this death, this destruction, does Allah allow it! Give up this destruction, this gun ... India can never be divided.) Needless to say, the hard-core terrorist has a change of heart by the end of the film. In due course, he realizes that the engineer is right, the enemy is the neighbouring country and patriotism is the only 'ism' worth pursuing. Unhonen kaha dange-fasad karfe rehna, baki sab hurn pe chod do. A b unhonen halnare bachchon ko bhun diya, gaddari k i hulnse ...y eh zulm, yeh barbaadi, yeh ugnuaad kyon? he laments. (They - Pakistan - told us to carry on with murder and mayhem, the rest they would take care of. Now they have mercilessly killed our young ones ...they have betrayed us. Why this oppression, this destruction, this terrorism.) Indeed, a timely lesson, both for the terrorist and the common man who might have held the nation-state as

partly responsible for the current rise in insurgency. But for

Roia.

In Krantiveer, the hero who tries to avenge the death of all the innocents

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enemy as the 'buglike nation next door' (pissu jaisa padosi desh). He then lambasts the neighbouring state for trying to divide the country and condemns his fellow citizens for their cowardice and non-action: Yeh pissu jaisa halnara

padosi desh, jo ek sui bhi nahin bana sakta, hamare desh ko todne ka sapna dekh raha hai. Woh yeh sapna dekh sakta hai kyonki yahan murde rehte hain, he exhorts. (This buglike nation next door, which cannot even make a needle today, dreams of breaking up our country. It can nurture such a dream because here there are corpses who dwell.) In a

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15

Bolly7uood's Burden of Love

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Ire in the Sol11

jingoistic call for militancy, the fiery patriot urges the 'kidamakoda' (insects), the 'zinda lash' (living corpses) to shed their lethargy and rise in action. Set against the communal frenzy, Kranfiveer also tries to disprove the myth about Hindus being Hindus and Muslims being Muslims and the twain never meeting. In an exaggerated, almost melodramatic gesture, the hero intercedes in the middle of a riot, smashes his finger along with his Muslim neighbour's and glibly mixes the blood of both thereby proving that the Hindu-Muslim bhai bhai bit is not hearsay alone. Undoubtedly, Krantiveer is crude, simplistic and typically mainstream. But the applause that filled the auditorium for the peddled secularism and the accolades that resounded after Nana Patekar's diatribe against corrupt politicians, greedy land grabbers and a pulverized police force proved that it could not be all kitsch and cooked up lies alone. Somewhere popular cinema does strike a chord with its Pandora's box of explanations, rationalizations, inversions and obfuscations. In the first place, it must be remembered that the sudden spate of patriotic films emerged against a backdrop of national decay. The country was being torn apart under a two-pronged attack by secessionist movements in Punjab, Kashmir, the North-East, Bihar and the increasing communalization of the political parties and the people. The demolition of the Babri Masjid, the nation-wide riots, the Bombay blasts, the increasing militancy of the communal outfits and the loss of life, property and security of the common man: the country was a state-in-peril. Adding to the chaos was the fluid state of the Congress Party (a synonym for stability), the changing governments at the centre and the emergence of new political combinations almost every day. In such a state of insecurity and flux, a reiteration of national identity seemed to work like

Bollywood's Burden o f h v e

17

a magical balm on frayed psyches. As also, the identification of an enemy - the much maligned foreign hand which loomed large as a convenient punching bag for a people who didn't know where to vent their ire, whom to hold culpable for their present state of disarray. In such a scenario of deep-rooted fission, popular cinema since the mid-1980s took over the role of cementing and coalescing conflicting forces. The enemy of the nation was the outsider, it declared. Terrorists were just wayward kids who had-been misled and needed love and understanding to enable them to return to the fold, it assessed. Corruption was the aberration in the character of certain individuals - politicians, policemen - who were mere exceptions to the general rule. One that believed in the good, clean individual who was functioning in a good, clean system, it insisted. And the viewers willingly understood, acquiesced and believed. In fact, judging by its dominant mood, popular cinema too has never turned its back on the reality of its times. Political scientist, W.H. Morris-Jones divides the political events of India into three identifiable periods. Concomitantly, popular Hindi cinema can also be roughly divided into three periods on the basis of characters and themes. The first period, from 1947-1952 is represented as a period of construction when, not only is the Constitution adopted, but in every part of the system there is, after the shock of Partition, a kind of self-discovery and mutual assessment. Individuals, institutions and groups were finding their way about in the new world, taking stock of themselves in relation to others. In such an age, the task was "to hold things together, to ensure survival, to get accustomed to the feel of being on the water, to see to it that the vessels keep afloat."' 5. W.H. Morris-Tones, Tlrr Gouerrllner~ t nrld Politics of lrtdin (B.I. Publications, 1979), p. 72

18

Ire in the Solll

The mood obviously was upbeat and cinema was not impervious-to the optimism in the air. Thus the age of the golden triumvirate - Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar - in cinema. The second period ( 1952-1964) is described as one in which a system which has achieved a recognizable form and stability, undertakes its operational voyage. "It is not a period without substantial difficulties and these make necessary adjustments and amendments in the system. It is also a period in which the more profound and long term disparities of Indian society come more clearly into view. But on the whole, there is the achievement of containrnentlU6writes Morris-Jones. Cinema expresses this sense of achievement through the joie de vizlre of Shammi Kapoor, the romantic allure of Rajendra Kumar and the feudal grandeur of Raaj Kumar. Heroes who couldn't care less for worldly blues. The third period is described as a reversal of the earlier two, a period of destruction and deadlock. This is a period when the 'sheltered waters' have been replaced by the 'open seas' and the disparities and discontinuities of the Nehruvian period whose clamour 'outside the walls' was heard with distaste, horror and anxiety by the rulers within - these are now the very stuff of political life, in occupation of the central durbar hall itself. "The sight is not a pretty one," writes Morris-Jones. "There is much untidiness. The money-changers are in the temple and there is a noisy boom in political futures. It is a period of challenge."' And popular cinema gears itself to meet this challenge the best way it can. First by recognizing the evil, finding

6. Ibid, p. 73 7. Ibid, p. 73,

7. Ibiil, p . 73

Bollywood's Burden of Love

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an innocuous scapegoat which is almost always an individual, never the system and then purging the system from the evil by an individual act of valour. The 'stormy seas' period found its celluloid answer in the persona of the angry young man, immortalized by Amitabh Bachchan in film after film, ever since Zanjeer hit the screen in the early 1970s. Bachchan was angry,yes, like the average viewer. But he was never.against the system. On the contrary, he was always against a n individual enemy who was~heldresponsible for the protagonist's state of misery. The stupendous success of the image was due, not only to the viewer being able to find a re.. . .- . ...., , . .,.* :.. . ,- . flection of his dominant ;=I-.:, * . ~-*. . ,r . . .. . .,. . :.. mood in the laconic v?,.": ,.: . .,, . . . ., frenzy of a larger-than- f life hero, he was also able to blame it all poverty, unemploy- , ment, inequity, a slum ,' .. dweller's existence . ,.. 4 . . on a recognizable e n - . .. .. y ; ~ 5 ~ . - ~ emy. The smuggler, the ' (.p\ . . is 4 ...1 . -.: .. I drug baron, the mafia . , . ..: I(.k. :*" '<. kingpin, the local dada, ?4.. 5 . . .;: 4 the scheming industriali,,,i . 4.; , ,..<.;. . ..::. 4 ist, the unscrupulous - ..c rich man out there - i,,.. ,,q : -; 2 . .. these are some of the 1 -. . 41 ,f bad guys responsible 1. . - '
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20

Ire in the Solrl

ics, inequitable systems of distribution, nor any unjust political 'isms' that exist only by perpetuating the everwidening chasm between the haves and the have-nots. No, nothing of this sort. Left to themselves, the have-nots are a happy lot, perchance happier than the haves. For they live together in a shared camaraderie and brotherhood born out of collective poverty. They may not have the money to make ends meet, but they do have their 'izzat' (dignity, the oft-used word in the script) that enables them to hold their head high in any and every situation and of course, 'mehnat' (labour), which ensures them its sweet fruits: a subsistence wage, an honest life, a carefree existence and a healthy night's sleep. In his introductory shot in Manmohan Desai's Coolie, the railway porter Iqbal descends from above onto the roof of the .train and proudly declares all his assets to all and sundry: bachpan se hai sir par Allah ka haafh, Allahrakha (points to falcon on his shoulder) hai apne saafh. Baaju par hai 786 ka billa, bees number ki beedi peefa hoon, kaam karfa hoon Coolie ka, aur naam hai Iqbal. (From childhood, Allah has looked after me, and Allahrakha has been my consort. My arm badge is numbered 786. I only smoke beedi number 20. I work as a coolie and my name is Iqbal.) So where is the ~uelfschmerfz? Obviously, it doesn't exist with this proletarian hero. Despite the fact that he lives in a tenement that leaks, eats a spartan meal, works endless hours, has a job that entails hard physical labour and earns a pittance for his toils. But the Coolie is not complaining, for the Coolie is actually a rich man, as long as he has God's blessing, his falcon, his sacred badge, his favourite cigarette and his porter's uardi. Rich in the normative sense of the word, where wealth becomes a virtue of the soul. So where is the need for upward mobility, the dissatisfaction and the desire for economic advancement and the anger at the institutional impediments to success? Here, the anger

Bollywood's Btrrden of Love

21

is against the greedy builder who is out to grab even the little they have. Remove the thorn in the flesh and it is bliss again, irrespective of the have-not state that he continues to live in. This, then, is the basic philosophy that lies behind the smoke and fire of all the angry young man's incantations. And it is not merely accidental that the only overtly political film in this genre of Amitabh Bachchan's film is Inquilab. A film in which the existing ruling party, tactfully known as the Sarkari Party (the official party) is ousted from power by the opposition that hails itself as the Garibon ki Party (the Party for the Poor). Amitabh, an unemployed graduate who earns his living by selling chanas (gram), is inevitably lured towards the populist party with its pro-poor stand. He not only manages to become a police Inspector with the blessings of the opposition leader (Kader Khan) but also begins to firmly believe in the need for change. The present government is responsible for the impoverished state of the common man, he almost begins to believe. But it is not long before lle realizes his folly. For the opposition party turns out to be a gang of hoodlums, killers and men without morals. Needless to say, the Sarkari Party seems almost saintly in the face of such bestiality. And there is just one option left for the cuckolded soul. He must annihilate the new government and install the older, safer and more moral one. So much for status quo! Obviously, the message of Inquilab was simple for an electorate which was gradually being confronted by a viable alternative t o the existing Congress government in a post-emergency scenario. The status quo was the best. Any change could only spell doom. The opposition was just a pack of hoodlums and goons. So there! In such a I-toldyou-so situation, only the foolhardy would opt for change that would necessarily spell their doom.

22

Ire in the Soul

Sujata Mehta and Charan Raj in Pratighaat

In fact, the scheming politician of Hindi cinema has by and large remained a comic figure who is more of an individual aberration that needs to be set right. Once the crooked guy is cleared out, in a climactic encounter, the system is back to its former pristine glory. In N. Chandra's Pratighaat, the frail and simple female lecturer (Sujata Mehta) confronts a single goonda-turnedpolitician, Kali Prasad. Once he was assassinated by the Durgaesque avatar, the reign of terror also ended and there was nothing left to disturb the idyll of the small town dwellers. Thus, in terms of political ideology, popular cinema has never propagated a theory of change. What is needed is a movement from 'government of humans' to a humane governance. No change of systems, just a re-orientation of issues, where the dispensables become indispensables; where human concerns are brought back to the centre of

I

where human concerns are brought back to the centre of

Bolly7uood's Burden of Love

23

state policy; where politics becomes rooted in ethics. Where all that is required is a clean up mission. Main desh ki jadh se deemak saaf karne aaya hoon. Maa se diya gaya vachan poora karne aaya hoon, (I am here to destroy the termite from the roots of the nation.) declares the vigilante in Inquilab before shooting down the new parliament of goons. As for the common man's lot, for him there is the charmed credo of mehnat, imandari aur lagan (labour, integrity and diligence) that will see him through. Raj Kapoor enunciated this golden maxim as far back as Sri 420. After a life of dishonest accumulation of wealth, the hero renounces all his possessions, picks up his tramp's apparel again and states: garibi ka ilaj char sau bisi nahin, himmat aur mehnat, sare desh ki faraqqi, janta ka eka hai (the antidote to ppverty is not cheating but hard work, courage, the progress of the entire nation and the unity of the people). Shirley Temple's imperishable, undeniable burden of love all over again. The magic of the so-called make-believe always seems to work, despite the fact that the average viewer is astute, choosy and hard to please. Psychologist Sudhir Kakkar points out that cinema is a "collective fantasy, a group day-dream, in contrast to the individualised fantasy incorporated in a work of literature, a painting or the so-called art film by an auteur director, in which the balance between imagination and reality, the intermixture of fantasy and experience is infinitely more complex." Cinema then becomes a prism that "reflects dominant psychological concerns, not only at the conscious levels, but specially the hidden unconscious concerns of the millions of men and women who frequent ~ i n e m a . " ~ -

~p

8. Aruna Vasudev, Phillipe Lenglet, Indian Cinema Superbazaar (Vikas, 1983), p. 89

(Vikas, 1983), p. 89

24

Ire in the Sorrl

The central features of this collective fantasy according to Kakkar are "the fulfillment of wishes, the humbling of competitors, and the destruction of the enemies." And the primary philosophical tenets of this adult day-dream suggest that "the struggle against difficulties in life is unavoidable, but if one faces life's hardships and its many, often unjust, impositions with courage and steadfastness, one will eventually emerge victorious and at the conclusion of popular cinema thus, the parents are generally happy and proud, the princess is won and the villains are either ruefully contrite or their battered bodies satisfactorily litter the landscape. Evil too follows the same course as in fairy tales. It may temporarily be in ascendance or usurp the hero's legitimate rights, but its failure and defeat are inevitable.IJ9 Popular cinema then has always remained the preserver and propagator of society's ethical and political norms and its role as a pacifier has always increased in times of distress. Promotion of national well-being, where the enemy of the nation is always an individual (foreign or native), never the political system nor the institution of governance; perpetuation of the success myth where glory and failure are linked with individual effort rather than infrastructural pressures, lack of opportunity and the like; a glorification of poverty, channelizing popular angst towards a more innocuous expression that highlights the influence of divinity, destiny and the karma theory on an individual's life: these have been some of the glorious tasks that popular cinema has been called upon to perform over the years. Along with this, there has been another paramount preoccupation: the preservation of the great Indian 'parivar' (family).Heroes have changed, formulas have multiplied,

Bolluzoood's Burden of Love

25

new themes have been discovered but the obsession with the undivided Indian family has never waned in popular cinema. Even in the 1990s when globalisation and Westernization seem to have made inroads into every aspect of Indian life, the Indian aversion for modernity and the emphasis on Bharatiya parampara (Indian tradition) still form the core of the cinematic concern. Focusing upon some of the main trends of Hollywood in recent years, Michael Medved concludes that Hollywood wants to-insist that happy marriages do not sell. In short, going by some of the films in the 1980s and the 1990%the institution of marriage and the family have become defunct 'in America. The advertisement lines of Deceizyed, a 1991 Goldie Hawn thriller proclaimed: "she thought her life was perfect." An ominous warning, believes Medved' to all those "misguided souls in the movie-going audience who may have felt satisfied and secure in their own marriage."'o In the course of the film, Goldie appears to have it all: a glamorous career, a beautiful daughter, a devoted and brilliant husband. However, as the drama progresses, she discovers that her affectionate spouse (John Heard) is actually leading a triple life, with several false identities and faked deaths, another wife in another city and participates in a murderous international art theft conspiracy. Eventually there is a bloody confrontation between the hitherto happily married couple. The heinous brute attempts to kill the trusting wife and she fights back tooth and nail in the protracted confrontation. And at the end of it all, when the nightmare ends and realization dawns, she tearfully delivers the film's punch line: "It turned out that everything I believed in was a lie."

10. Michael Medved, Holly7uood vs. Attlerica (Har~erCollins,1993), p. 9. Ibid, pp. 89-90

125

26

Ire in the Soul

A lie, the myth of the integrated, happily-ever-after American family, as Hollywood would like the viewers to believe, perpetuated with a spate of films where either the husband, the wife or both are out to destroy the family. In The War of the Roses (1989), Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas may be married to each other. But they have just one mission: to brutally, sadistically destroy each other. In She Deuil, (1989) the wife who has been abandoned by her adulterous husband opts for revenge-until-death and succeeds in her gory plan. In Scenes From a Mall (1991), a long wedded couple (Betty Midler and Woody Allen) spend the entire movie hurling food and insults at each other while discussing their various infidelities and betrayals. I n ' Thelma and Louis (1991) Geena Davis runs away from a cold oppressive marriage as does Julia Roberts in Sleering Wifh the Enemy, while in Marrying Man (1992) Alec Baldwn and Kim Bassinger are a mismatched pair who marry and divorce, three times in succession, a1terna ting moments of burning lust with explosions of violent rage. Popular Hindi cinema, unlike Hollywood, is not guilty of displaying any contempt whatsoever for conventional family values. Instead of being anti-family, popular cinema has always been aggressively pro-family. Ghar Ek Mandir, Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani, Ghar Ka Sukh, Ghar Sansar, Ghar Dwar, Pariuar, Swarg, Sajan Ka Ghar, Pafi Patni Aur Woh - the average film has always upheld the integrated family where the family-breaker is the Westernized daughter-inlaw cast in the mould of the proverbial outsider, the rich, spoilt daughter-in-law who enters the not-so-rich, nevertheless ecstatic joint family with the single kitchen, the small mandir, the well adjusted kith and kin. This modern, educated outsider wreaks havoc on the traditional set-up with her newfangled ideas, her mercenary concerns and separatist tendencies (here the family becomes a microcosm for the nation). She taunts the pious elders, irrever-

ently scorns their affections and eventually breaks the family apart. But only temporarily. For after suffering the woes of the outside world, she shamefacedly returns to the family fold. But only after she has been well-beaten and properly chastened. The elders obviously forgive her, blaming all her misdemeanours on her 'modern' education. Strangely, this scorn for the modern, liberal, independent woman finds expression even today in films like Maine Pyar Kiya, and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. In both these films (box office record smashers), the traditional heroine is juxtaposed against the Westernized woman (Parvez Dastur, Sahila Chaddha and Bindu) in a manner where the Indianness of the heroine stands out as sacrosanct before the comic modernity of the other. Both Suman and Nisha, who know how to shell peas, fry pakoras, make halwa,

Basking i n tradition: A scene from Hlirtr A a p k e Haiir Ktzurr

28

Ire in

t h t ~S o ~ r l

who never question their elders, who are well-versed in the religious texts, who opt for self-abnegation instead of selfassertion, who find the meaning of life in fulfilling the basic needs of the family (cooking, washing, cleaning, feeding), who are educated yet never even dream of a career, then become the perfect prototype for the ideal Indian miss. And sweet is this extended Indian family with its bhaibhabhi-devar-didi bindings. Here again, cinema is merely reiterating and even preserving the essential Indiamess of the average Indian lifestyle. For as Kakar explains, "Most Indians grow u p in an extended family, a form of family defined as one in which brothers remain together after marriage and bring their wives into their paternal household. Brothers are expected not only to continue to live together after they marry, but more importantly, to remain steadfast to their parents in devotion and obedience. These ideals of filial loyalty and fraternity are the hallmark of the Indian family."" Indian cinema too. And in case, the statistical inquiries come u p with disturbing truths that families are breaking apart, divorce rates are swelling, single women professionals are becoming a generality, very few women are opting for the role of the housewife heroine, then all the better. For the value of a normative cinema is always enhanced when the norm is threatened. Popular Hindi cinema may then not be cinema zlt;ritr' at all. Nevertheless, it has a reality of its own - exaggerated, dramatized and hyperbolic in form. Yet one which does strike a rapport with the viewer, who is willing to spend money and return again and again to the magic of movies. Obviously not for entertainment alone.

The Angry Young Man

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w h e n nothing- worked, there were the biceps. When no one could do anything, there was the Bosman. "It took 30 months of war before he sprang into action, but comic book super-hero, Bosman has at last joined the side of the besieged Sarajevans. And the superman lookalike is ready to take on the Serbs single-handedly..." reports The Sunday Tirnes. This, mind you, is no ordinary business, no fantasy, no realm of imagination and no pure fiction. This is war. Hard, brutal, real war with real guns, real blood, real death and real destruction. So that, when Jusuf Hasanbegovic, a former lawyer, conceived the idea for Bosman in 1993 at the height of the Bosnian war, he seemed to have struck a n instant chord amongst the young and old Bosnians alike. "Dear Bosman," wrote Denis Kasumovic, "I wish you could come to Vogosca a n d kill all the enemies." Kasumovic, a 12-year-old Muslim boy whose family was expelled from the Serb-held town of Vogosca, was not alone

Ire in the Snlrl

30

in his fervent prayer. The comic book was initiated with a modest sum of $4,000, enough to print just 5,000 copies that were to be distributed free to soldiers and war orphans. However, after the first issue alone, Ama Nzuber, an assistant editor with the production house stated, "if we heeded the letters from our readers, we should make it a weekly." The impediments of course were the financial and technical problems that loomed large in a war-stricken economy. In a scenario of real life casualties, why was a fictional character so popular? Nzuber has an answer. "For the first time in a long time, the people have a hero," she pointed out and the fact that this was no ordinary hero, but one who could save the war-battered populace from the hazards of war without any extra-terrestrial qualities holds the answer to a vital secret of human psychology. One that bridges the chasm between the real and the fictional world and allows the existence of the hero-cult in human life. The comic book with black and white drawings of a hero with bulging biceps, a blonde girlfriend and a highpowered motorcycle opens on the eve of the war in 1992. Blurring fiction with reality, the comic depicts the April 6 (1992) peace march that.was targeted by sniper fire. The young woman, who became the first Sarajevan killed in the war is picked up by Bosman and cradled in his arms. He then sees shots coming from the nearby Holiday Inn hotel and charges in to rout a band of hooded snipers singlehandedly. "It's the beginning of hell!" he screams to his girlfriend and forewarns the imminent dangers of the ongoing war. Bosman then visits his girlfriend's grandfather, a wise old man in traditional Muslim robes, who alone knows Bosman's destiny. "It's time for you to get the power you deserve," says the old man, magically endowing him with a superhero suit that would protect him from harm. That

I

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night, the TV newscaster wonders aloud who was that brave Bosman who was faster than Batman, braver than Superman. All this and yet a man: this seems to be the secret of Bosman's success. As also Superman, Batman and the like. Strong, invincible, fearless, nevertheless, still men who may be emulated by a weaker, less powerful section of humanity. Attempting to analyse his popularity amongst the Bosnian readers, Hasanbegovic points out, "He doesn't have any superpower. He can't fly or anything." Thus, he "represents the Bosnians who had help only from God and themselves, no one else." If Bosman was welcomed with open arms by the Bosnians, the death of Superman was met with a hue and cry the world over. "You can't take away our hero," cried an anguished reader when the makers of the popular fictional hero decided to wrap up the series and pitted Superman against a more powerful enemy. Both these emotions - the overzealous acceptance and the sense of outrage at the arrival and exit of heroes like Bosman and Superman bear significant testimony to their ubiquitous appeal and importance in the common man's life. Why did the angry young man image created by Amitabh Rachchan in film after film during the '70s whip u p such a hysterical frenzy? What made his screen persona so successful? And why did this filmic delineation of the hero become almost a national prototype of its time? Psychologists would obviously link this unprecedented national applause to a basic need in the human psyche: the need for a superhero. One that would explain the strong affection and affinity amongst viewers-readers for characters like Superman, Bosman, Batman and the like. One of the major defining characteristics of this figure is its messianic spirit. The super hero is always wielding the man tlc of the 'saviour' and this, for the common man,

The Angry Young Mnn

caught within the daily grind of a gargantuan crushing machine, is like a lifeline. One that sees him through in his habitual condition of decimation, impotency and inability to influence the anonymous forces that control his life. The super hero and his saga works like the much needed daily dose of vitamins for the average man in the street. Throwing light on the inherent need for a hero who promises deliverance in the human psyche, Wilhelm Reich goes back to the rise of fascism in Hitler's Germany. He points out that fascism was a mass movement which had the popular mandate behind it. "It is generally clear today that fascism is not the act of a Hitler or a Mussolini but that it is the expression of the irrational structure of mass man."' In other words, Hitler was actually made a hero by the common man. According to Wilhelm, the success of Hitler's nationalistic imperialism and his mass organisation was to be ascribed to the masses rather than to Hitler himself. "Hitler's success is to be ascribed neither to his personality nor to the objective role his ideology played in capitalism. Nor for that matter, is it to be ascribed to a mere 'befogging' of the masses who followed him. We put our finger on the core of the matter: what was going on in the masses that they followed a party whose leadership was objectively as well as subjectively in diametrical opposition to the interests of the working m a s s e ~ ? "he ~ asks. Obviously for its mass appeal, the National Socialist Movement relied upon the broad layers of the so-called middle classes, i.e., the millions of private and pubic officials, middle class merchants and lower and middle class farmers. Profiling such a prototype, Reich states that on the one hand is the semi-impoverished and powerless state of

the common man; on the other is his identification with the fiihrer or the authoritarian father-figure. "The more helpless the mass individual has become owing to his upbringing (defined here as sex-economy), the more pronounced is his identification with the fuhrer, the more the childish need for protection is disguised in the form of a feeling at one with the fuhrerIu3writes Reich. Thus the need for a messianic leader seems to be an intrinsic part in the psyche of the middle class man. This being theirrational structure of mass man which is evident from his very childhood vis-a-vis his relations in the basic unit of the family. Here, in the purely patriarchal set-up, it is father who knows best. A belief which later grows into the contention that declares the fuhrer-figure knows best. It is a reiteration of the primordial Nietzschian belief in the existence of men and supermen - the herd and the heroes, and the popular cinema of the '70s fully exploited this psychological make-up of the middle class mind while creating the persona of the super hero. A psychology that lays down the existence of a few a priori needs like a state of crisis (economic deprivation, exploitation, war, victimization, personal helplessness), the existence of a fellow brethren who is bolder, braver and stronger and finally, the unconditional belief in this superman's powers of redemption. In all his films, Amitabh Bachchan has exhibited all those required characteristics. He has belonged to the same economic class as the common man, being either a coolie, a dock worker, a waiter, a tangewala, a cop, a petty crook. In short, always a small-timer who is equally victimized by the bad guys - smugglers, drug pedlars, dacoits, corrupt politicians, mafia hoods and scheming industrialists. And thirdly, he

1. Wilhelm Reich, Tllc Mass Psyr11olog.yqf Fnscisrrl (Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, 1970), p. 69 2. Ibid, p. 74

33

3. Ibid, p. 27

Ire in the Soul

34

The Angry Yoirng Mnn

35

Like his father, he too dons the uniform of the cop but between the two there is a world of difference. While the

father chose to fallow his credo of honesty and duty within the parameters of the law, Vijay realizes that the world was a bit too crooked to be set straight through formal means. Thus he chooses his own methods to impose the rule of order and law in a murky underworld. Aap to kanoon ka ek mamooli bazu the, jise kanoon ke dushmanon ne ek hi jhatke men todh diya, maror diya. Magar mujhe koi todh nahi sakta, kyonki main bazu nahin khud kanoon banoonga aur aisa kanoon jo khud mujrimon ko pakdega, khud mukadma sunega aur khud unka faisla karega (You were just an ordinary arm of the law; one which the enemy could twist and break in a single stroke. But no one can break me because I am not the arm of law, I shall be the law itself. A law that apprehends the criminals, tries them in its own court and then passes its own verdict), he declares before the portrait of his dead father. He then acquires a novel style to combat the brown sugar barons operating within the limits of Shaitan Chowki, his area of jurisdiction. He adopts the split personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. By day, he is an ordinary crook a friendly, pusillanimous, paan-chewing cop who is ever willing to accept the petty bribe and then turn a blind eye to their felonious games. Everything to prove that he is one of them and all this ethical spinelessness is displayed for the benefit of the crooked guy. But by night, he becomes the Shahenshah, a supermannish figure in a cloak, an armour, steel chains, blessed with super power and super strength. This super guy has just one mission in life: to seek out the bad guys and Set them right with the power of his punches. Ideologically, he is the father (the fiihrer-figure) who is out to set the errant child straight: rishtey mein hum tumhare baap hote hain, naam hai mera Shahenshah, he announces each time his larger-than-life visage appears on screen before a cowering crook. Technically however, he is the honest, omniscient, omnipotent cop who is the executive, the leg-

Like his father, he too dons the uniform of the cop but between the two there is a world of difference. While the

cowering crook. Technically however, he is the honest, omniscient, omnipotent cop who is the executive, the leg-

is always cast in the mould of the saviour. Bachchan is always angry and against the evil doers and in his crusade against evil, he seems to tower above his fellow mortals. This vigilante mentality of the hero finds its perfect expression in a film like Shahenshah. Inspector Vijay Kumar Srivastava is the son of an honest police Inspector who was falsely implicated and suspended for taking a bribe from a group of smugglers. Unable to bear the stigma of dishonesty, the good, clean cop commits suicide and leaves behind his young son and wife to face the hostile world and clear the family's name. Seeing his father's corpse dangling from the ceiling, the boy Vijay learns a lesson that lasts him a lifetime - honesty alone is not the best policy in a dishonest world. He realizes that an honest guy needs muscles and guile too for his morals to survive in a tarnished clime.

Amitabh Bachchan in Shnhe~rshah

-

--

36

Ire in the Sotrl

islature and the judiciary - all rolled in one. Thereby dispensing with the lengthy system of jurisprudence, full of loopholes, that often victimizes the common man and works in favour of the criminal. Introducing himself, he says he is the cop who does not work for the law. Instead, he makes the law himself. And the verdict of such an officer who transcends all rules is that in his territory, crime will not be able to stand on its feet nor will criminals be able to twist the law to suit their nefarious ends. (Ek aisa afsar jo kanoon khud banata hai ...us afsar ka faisla hai ki uske ilake mein na jurm apne pairon par khada ho sakega na mujrim kanoon ke sir par baithkar nach sakega.) And highlighting this messianic image of the largerthan-life emperor who rises from within the masses is the peculiar music, lighting, costume and background score of the film. In fact, the title song of the film unravels the secret of the super-hero's psyche. It personifies the essence of the role that he reiterates in almost all his films - Zanjeer, Dee~oar,Agneepafh, Mard. Andheri raaton mein, sunsaan rahon par, har jurm mitane ko, ek masiha nikalta hai, jise log shahenshah kehfe hai ... (after dark nights, on lonely streets, there comes a messiah to wipe out all crime whom people call Shahenshah) goes the popular song. The keyword here being 'messiah' who has a clean-up mission to fulfil for the sake of a powerless mass of humanity. In Shahenshah, he has the welfare of the slum dwellers of Gafoor basti at heart; in Zanjeer, the welfare of the common man vis-a-vis the smuggler; in Sholay the security of the Ramgarhwallahs and the shredded honour of the Thakur (Sanjeev Kurnar); in Coolie, fulfilment of the basic needs of the Bombay Central porters; in Mard, there is the freedom of the entire nation at stake; in Inquilab, it is the pllible voter who must be freed from the tentacles of the corrupt politicians. This messiah has two striking characteristics that set him

The Angry Young Man

37

apart from the rest of the heroes that graced the screen before him.

Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor in Deezunar

Firstly, he is a man from the masses, thus making it easier for the common man to identify with him. And secondly, he is always angry, aggressive and rebellious in his bearing. The turmoil, the injustice and the chaos around has seeped into his psyche, leaving him a man of few words, many grunts and no smiles at all. In Zanjeer, his friend Sher Khan tries his utmost, he sings and dances, merely to make him smile. In Deailar, his girlfriend Anita (Parveen Babi) tries to wipe out the scars of his traumatic childhood with her tender love. In Sholay, he prefers to sit alone in the dark-and serenade the widow in white by playing the mouth organ while his boisterous friend (Dharmendra) is rolling in the hay with the vivacious faangauali, Basanti (Hema Malini). In fact, anger has been the hallmark of his image of the lover too. The lover of the 70s-80s, as personified by

Ire in thc Soul

38

Amitabh Bachchan in Kabhie-Kabhie, Silsila, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Trishul and the like is strikingly different from all the earlier cinematic images. He is neither the Devdas of Dilip Kumar, the innocent charmer of Raj Kapoor, the genteel Romeo of Rajendra Kumar, the debonair sophisticate of Dilip Kumar, nor the uninhibited wild tomcat of Shammi Kapoor. Instead, he chooses to repress rather than express his love. And when he does ,he expresses it more through silence than garrulous articulations of the eternal emotion.

The Angry Yo~rngMnn

39

Chopra's Kabhie-'Kabhie, he voluntarily steps back and convinces his beloved Pooja (Rakhee) to marry the man her parents have chosen for her. He gives u p his poetry too and settles down for a conventional marriage and a construction business. Nevertheless, he is never able to smile again and the pain of repression, separation, pours into his present and colours it with acrimony and anguish. Several years later, when he meets Pooja, now a happily married wife and mother, he tells her that he is leading "a desolate, meaningless existence where there is no light, no destination, just a lonely drift into darkness ..." (Viraan, bernaflab

zindngi guzaar raha hoon. Na koi roshni, na manzil, na chirag, bhntak rahi hai zindagi kahin andheron rnein...) Pain, yes. Unmitigated sorrow, indeed. But tinged with a strong undercurrent of anger against fate. So that, this tearless grief is transformed into a virtue and becomes a testimonial of strength. It is only the strong, the brave and the courageous who are not oppressed by grief, the rest the weak and whimpering lot -cave in. This is sorrow that cries out for adulation and applause, not sympathy. Thus when Pooja's husband (Shashi Kapoor) expresses his sympathy for the couple who had suffered the pangs of unrequited love all their lives, the angry lover brushes him aside. Explaining the heroism that lies behind their renunciation, he states: Aap harrren sarnajh na sake, u~ohdard, u~oh

I

A ~ n i t a b hand Rakhee in K~zhlzieK(z11l1ie

His macho appeal lies in his unapproachability and his masculine mystique lies behind the walls that he has studiously built around himself. And whenever he opts for sacrifice in place of consummation, he doesn't forget to let the smouldering fires kindle relentlessly within. In Yash

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.

sacrifice in place of consummation, he doesn't forget to let the smouldering fires kindle relentlessly within. In Yash

kasak, iooh khalish jo harnne dil rnein basayi, uska aap andaza nakin laga sakte. Hum jhoote nahin, darpok nahin, chofe nahin, jaan boojhkar harnne apna pyar rrra-baap ki khushi ke liye kurbaan kiya. Kisi doosre ko tabak kame se pehle, Irurn khad fabah hogaye. Hurnne faisla kiya ki agar ranh mein lnilenge to ek doosre ko pehchaanegr nahin. Bad; hiininat chahiye iske liye, bada lroslo chnhiye ... (you haven't been able to understand us. That pain, that agony, that repressed desire that we carry in our hearts, you cannot fathom its exact nature. We are not liars, nor do we lack courage. We have deliberately sacrificed our -

-

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hearts, you cannot fathom its exact nature. We are not liars, nor do we lack courage. We have deliberately sacrificed our

40

Ire in the Sol11

love for the sake of our parents. Instead of destroying others, we chose to destroy ourselves. We decided that we would not even recognize each other if we ever met again. For this, you need a lot of determination, a lot of courage ...) Again, in Mriqaddar ka Slkandar, the hero prefers to nurture a dead-end love for a woman above his class (Rakhee) rather than respond to the undemanding affections of the nautch girl, Zohra (Rekha). A spirited renunciation all over again. For Sikandar, who had been spurned by his Memsaab's father for his lowly status, rises to an economically higher position in retaliation. Unlike the Devdas ilk who would have opted to drown its sorrow in drink alone. Thus, both as the vigilante messiah and as the lover, Arnitabh Bachchan brought to life one common emotion: anger. Unconcealed, untempered, raw anger that found expression in uninhibited aggression. It was this quality that set him apart from the earlier hero-images and gave him the label of the anti-hero - a terminology that became a trend for the first time in popular Hindi cinema. Bachchan was always a simmering volcano of discontent. A picture that was painted from one of his earlier films, Zanjeer, is believed to have marked the genesis of the angry young man image. Time and again, he fruitlessly tries to opt for order, discipline and normalcy but almost always returns to the fist game. Until his girlfriend Mala tells him to forget about normalcy and settle all his unfinished scores for once. For the good sweet life cannot be his until the seething volcano within erupts and the lava of discontent flows out. Turnhare andar ek j7ljalatnukhi hai aur jab fak 7uoh phafega nahiti, In7)a bahar nahin bahqa, zllahan tneeflle pnatii ki jheel nahirl banegi, she tells him. Unlike his earlier counterparts, the anti-hero is always swimming against the tide. He is against injustice, corruption, inequality - all social evils. But, he is never a 'socialist' revolutionary in the formal sense of the word. For

The Angry Yolrng Mnn

41

though the anger may be ubiquitous in his films, it is by and large a private anger that is directed towards a personal enemy. That this enemy actually happens to be a smuggler, an industrialist, a politician or a mafia don, thereby a menace to society too, is merely incidental to the plot. Bachchan's amelioration of his own lot may also include the amelioration of the plight of several others too. But his vendetta is always a personal one. Always against the man who separated his family, ill-treated his mother, killed his father, molested his wife-beloved or sullied his personal honour. This tenuous balance seems to have been struck in Zanjeer. In the first place, the film establishes the different look of the new hero who was to dominate cinema for more than a decade. The drama hinges on an incident of personal trauma. A young boy, Vijay watches the murder of ,his parents at the hands of a small-time smuggler. From his place of hiding, he can only see the assassin's bracelet with its talisman of a white stallion dangling from his wrists. This one episode is enough to set his teeth on edge and isolate him from the common herd for the rest of his life. The young orphan may have been adopted by an avuncular cop and been provided with a normal upbringing. Nevertheless, he is never able to forget the scars of childhood which provide him with the requisite spirit of extraordinariness that is juxtaposed against the ordinariness of the others. As a young schoolboy, he sits sullenly in class while the rest of the kids innocently recite Ba-Ba Black Sheep. When the class is over, the ebullient ones tumble out in cohesive bunches but for the little outsider who walks down the corridor alone and as the class settles down to a boisterous game of football, the boy Vijay, sits at the edge of the field, staring into space, with not a shadow of a smile on his childish lips. Plagued by unseen ghosts, he is robbed of, his 'normalcy'. Perpetually cast in a state of

42

Ire in the Sozrl

solitary confinement, he passes from an sbnormal childhood into an equally traumatic adulthood. Not for him the joyous pranks of boyhood nor the simple pleasures of manhood. Despite being firmly embedded in the hoi polloi, he always remains a class apart by virtue of his destiny. This basic quality of being different is an integral part of the super hero's psyche and is repeated in most of his films. In Deacuar, he is different from his lighthearted brother because of the tatoo mera baap chor hai (my father is a thief) that was-inscribed on his arm when he was a little boy. In Agneepath, as Vijay Dinanath Chauhan, the son of a Gandhian school-master who dreamed of bringing electricity to the village, he encounters his peculiar fate in early childhood again: a false allegation against his father ends with the brutal stoning of the idealist by an irate mob of villagers, led by the landowners and the greedy moneylender. The ten-year-old drags his father's corpse in a handcart and performs the last rites, single-handedly, while his mother is in a state of shock. The macabre death of his noble father, the scorn of the villagers and the powerlessness of the good, clean family in the face of the machiavellian forces of evil: Vijay is doomed to carry the burden of his father's corpse on his fragile shoulders forever. It is not merely accidental that he grows up into a mafia don. Rather, his drift into the underworld is a deliberate means adopted to get even with those who sullied his familial honour and evicted the family from its rightful home. But both in Zanjeer and Agneepath, the hero's personalized war tends to acquire a macro dimension and becomes a fight for the rights of the masses too. In a significant sequence in Zanjeer, the angry rebel lays down his philosophy behind his crusade for social justice. When his wife-to-be expresses her dismay at his unending state

The Angry Yolrng Mnn

43

Getting the whip hand: Amitabh Bachchan in Zarrjeer

of depression and his lack of eager anticipation at their impending marriage, the sullen Inspector lashes out against her self-centred, individualistic approach to life. He says caustically: Hum apne ghar mein khubsoorat parde lagzuayenge aur main yeh jaanne ki koshish nahin karoonga ki is parde ki doosri taraf duniya rnein kya ho raha hai; halnare khubsoorat ghar ke bahar log lnarte hain to lnarte rahen.. slnuggleron ki gaadiyan lnasooln bachchon ko kuchalti rahen. Mujhe in sab se kya matlab. Main zjaada karta hoon ki agar unki cheekhen mere kaan tak pahunchi to main kaan band karlnonga, main fumhari khubsoorat zulfon main apne ko chupa loonga. Main tumhari khubsoorat ankhon lnein kho jaaonga. Haan Mala hum zaroor ghar banayenge. Yeh ghar jise duniya ne banaya hai, kitna badsoorat hai ...kitne zulm, kifni beinsaafi hai, yahi chahti ho to yahi hoga ... (We shall put beautiful curtains and I shall not try to find out what lies beyond them; if people die outside our beautiful house, let them die, let the cars of smugglers

44

Ire in the Soitl

crush innocent children. What do I care? I promise that if their cries reach my ears, I shall close them. I shall hide myself in your beautiful hair, I shall drown in your beautiful eyes. Yes Mala, we shall definitely build a beautiful house. This house built by this world is so ugly, so much oppression, so much injustice. You want only this, so be it.) In Coolie, the protagonist Iqbal (a porter at the Bombay railway station) is even seen wielding a sickle and a hammer which he declares is the "weapon of the working class". Flashing it before the evil troika consisting of the corrupt politician, the industrialist and the Railway Board manager, coolie Iqbal threateningly declares: H u m mazdooron ka yeh hatyaar hai , yeh harnara pet paal bhi sakta hai aur turn jaison ka pet phar bhi sakta hai. Nothing could bear testimony to his commitment to the worker's cause more explicitly than this: the very symbol of the communist working class. Again, in both Deeujar and Coolie, he instigates the workers to go on strike against the exploitative manoeuvrings of the bosses. Informal yes, nevertheless trade unionism at its cinematic best. Thus the film makers had taken great care to add the requisite touch of 'socialism' to the super-hero's crusade so that the personal war acquires the flavour of a battle of the masses - and Bachchan's voice seems to echo the protest of the millions against 'zulm' (oppression) and 'na-insaafi' (injustice). His seems fo.personify commitment to society at large, as he pledges before his mother's photograph in Inquilab, when he becomes an ACP: Main garibon aur massoomon ki duniya lnein ujala laaoonga, lnatribhoolni ki se7i1a karoonga, farz se kadaln nahin hatoonga (I shall bring light into the world of the impoverished and the downtrodden, I shall always serve my motherland, my steps shall never deflect from duty). In fact, it is this voice-of-the-millions quality, apart from

T h e Angry Yoirng Mnn

45

the anti-hero stance, that was primarily responsible for the stupendous success of Bachchan's films. Most of them Zanjeer, Sholay, Deewar, Naseeb, Coolie, Muqaddar ka Sikandar - grossed millions at the box office and slipped into the superhit category of film economics. Partly responsible for the success of the Bachchan mystique was the timing of the creation of the image of the angry young hero. The period after the Congress split in 1969, by and large, bore witness to the erosion of the institution of the state. Political scientists have described the 1970s as a decade that was sullied by 'the crisis of the state'. On the one hand, there was the increasing marginalisation of the common man, on the other, the consensual politics of the Congress was gradually being replaced by a confrontationist attitude that found its full manifestation in the Emergency in 1975. This is how Rajni Kothari sizes up the socio-political scenario of this decade: "Central to this scenario of social and political erosion is the sharp decline in the legitimacy and authority of what was till recently considered the key institutions of the civil society, namely the modern state. Both the conception of the state as a negative good in which an authoritative assumption of disproportionate power was considered essential for providing order and security and the more positive conception of the state as an instrument of liberation and transformation have suffered a decline in ~redibility."~ This was a period when the crisis of the state manifested itself in the crumbling efficacy and legitimacy of the traditional institutions of the state and the polity - legislatures and courts, political parties and the bureaucracy. The post-Independence optimism of the Nehruvian model of

4. Rajni Kothari, State Agairlst De~r~ocracy (Ajanta Publications, 1988), p. 2

46

Ire in the Soul

The Angry Yolrng Mnn -

47

work had petered down into large-scale discontent, unemploymenf, poverty and unbalanced growth and the Indian landscape became cluttered by large tracts of urban slums festering between miniscule pockets of prosperity. Here was a complete polarization between a state that was incapable of carrying out its constitutional obligations and a people who did not know who else to turn to. In such a state of suspense, vulnerability, and total lack of comprehension and given the inherent middle class mindset that longs for a father-figure, the image of the super hero who reflects popular discontent seemed to be the perfect answer to the people's prayers. According to Kothari, the crowning concept of the liberal theory of progress, equality and democracy was 'participation'. However, he adds, "By the end of the '60s, it became clear that to participate in development was a prerogative of some though proclaimed as the right of all and that, it was in particular denied to the 'masses', the people and the poor - in whose name development took p l a ~ e . "In~ such a socio-political set-up, the dissenting, protesting, grabbing tactics of the angry young man seemed to illustrate effective methods of participation. Unfortunately, this was only in the realm of imagination, for Bachchan's histrionics were not only a fantasy displacement for the gullible viewers, they were also built around a bundle of myths. Chinks in the Emperor's armour? Indeed yes! In the first place, Bachchan's working class bearings were basically a ruse. Bachchan may have been angry, but his anger was never directed against the state. Much in contrast to the workers' movement which js always in direct confrontation with the capitalist state. &condly, Vijay Verma may be

branded the anti-hero but only on the surface. For he is never anti-establishment, anti-morality, nor against the accepted traditions of society. But first the reality behind the success myth. Bachchan may have played the coolie (Coolie), the dock worker (Deeruar, Huin) the waiter (Naseeb), the coal miner (Kaala Patthar), the small-time cop (Zanjeer, Akayla, Indrajeet), the tangewala (Mard) time and again. But did he genuinely have the interests of the working class at heart? Or did he even manage to personalize their problems in the right perspective? In his analysis of Erwl Kniez~el(1972) and The Last Ainerican Hero (1973), two Hollywood successes which featured working-class heroes, Chuck Klienhans states that these two films are significantly different from the usual working-class films. Based on a biographical account of motorcycle dare-devil Evel Knievel and champion stock car racer, Junior Johnson, the films do not ignore the class origins of their protagonists who are real-life heroes to the working class. This being much against the general trend where the typical presentation of the American myth of success centres on the hero's trials and triumphs and considers his class origins only long enough to establish the initial 'rags' of the 'rags to riches' theme. Evel Knierjel and The Last Ainerican Hero diverge from traditional directions by presenting heroes whose working-class origins are central to the narrative. However, as Klienhans illustrates, both films remain "within the limits of bourgeois ideology, particularly in dealing with the success myth, for they affirm that individual success is both possible and worth p u r ~ u i n g . " ~ The films studiously ignore the existence of institutional obstacles and the absence or denial of opportunities while

5. Ibid, p. 30

6. Steven, op. cit., p. 79

48

Ire in the Sot11

The Angry Young Mnn

49

analysing the failure and final success of the hero. The typical success image in these films is presented through characters who succeed or fail through their own individual activity or outlook. Describing this all-pervasive success myth, Klienhans points out that according to this myth, "America is the land of opportunity, males go from log cabins to the White House, the virtues of Horatio Alger ensure success." He believes that "because of its promise of reward for hard labour, the myth serves to distract people from seeing institutional obstacles to striving and from conserving the small number of wealthy and powerful at the top of the success pyramid in comparison to the massive base of failure^'."^ The myth promises to those who lack money, educational advancement and influence - the vast majority of Americans - that a personality committed to ambition, determination, perseverance, temperance and hard work will earn its appropriate reward. The harsh reality of American society is sharply at variance with the myth. In one of the landmark studies on the reality and myth of success among the industrial workers, Automobile Workers and the American Dream, Ely Chinoy points out that it is external conditions and not subjective factors that determine success for the working class. He explains that soon after beginning their careers, blue-collar workers find a ceiling on their upward mobility and level of achievement. Thus by denying the possibilities of group activity for the achievement of life's successes, or of measuring failure in political terms, these success myth films subtly reiterate the status quo. For subjectively, when members of the working class find their aspirations impossible to achieve

in this prevailing ideology of individualism, they resort to self-reproach and an elaborate defensive rationalization of their position. If one pursues the success myth and then fails, one can only blame oneself. Chinoy comments: "To the extent that workers focus blame for their failure to rise above the level of wage labour themselves rather than upon the institutions that govern the pursuit of wealth or upon the persons who control those institutions, American society escapes the consequences of its own contradiction~."~ Even Knievel and Junior Johnson were able to achieve name, fame and success despite their-blue collar background, their inhuman employers, their unscrupulous rivals and an unfriendly destiny, simply through a combination of raw nerves, courage, action and an aggressive defiance of authority. According to Klienhans, "The attitude to authority and the social system in both films follows a similar pattern - acknowledging a genuine problem, but proposing an ambiguous solution. In both films, the protagonists grow in knowledge as they learn how to bargain with and outwit authority figures so as to establish themselves in the best possible position within the system. They learn to what degree authority can be ~hallenged."~ Amitabh Bachchan's personification of the workingclass hero in the films of Salim Javed and Manmohan Desai also fall within the above parameters. In a similar vein, they reiterate the Hollywoodian success-myth formula, whereby the coolie may bear the hammer and the sickle and instigate his fellow workers to go on strike. Nevertheless, when it comes to the final confrontation, he alone blessed as he is with the qualities of a super hero - is a

7. Ibid, p. 66

8. Ibid, p. 79 9. Ibid, p. 71

Ire in the Sot11

50

match for the crooked guys. The rest, the powerless masses, can only wait for deliverance. What is notable here is the total nullity of group action as a primary condition for success. The closest cinema comes to any depiction of group achievement is always in an extreme situation: the stranded platoon, the sinking ship, the lifeboat. Otherwise, it is always the Darwinian theory of natural selection that is in operation. Secondly, it is the nature of +*,' the enemy which tends to , f mystify the working-class .. ='< problem still further. The vilh . *it> lain of the plot is always the bad guy - the smuggler, the industrialist, politician, corrupt bureaucrat, drug pedlar, mafia kingpin, labour don - , . 'i who must be done away <.> with through direct action. Never a set of misconstrued political and economic relations responsible for the creation and perpetuation of *.. two polarized classes: the + haves and the have-nots. . This recognition would obvi>-* Zr-7 ously call for structural redefinitions and the change in status quo while the former entails a mere climactic cleansing mission. In Zanjeer, it is Teja the smuggler who must be killed, in Coolie, Zafar the Amjad Khan in Sholay enemy of the hero's family; , . ' - % I ,

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smuggler who must be killed, in Coolie, Zafar the enemy of the hero's family;

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Amjad Khan in Sholay

51

The Angry Yorrng Mnn

in Sholay the dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh; in Deauar, the rival smuggler and in Inquilab the entire Parliament, which has been wrongly infiltrated by the evil opposition, needs to be blown apart for order to return. All this can only be achieved by heroic aggression, action and dare-devilry: character traits of the extraordinary hero who has risen from amongst the ordinary. In short, the viewers had a neat little solution to the riddle of destitution and degradation. You could either solve your problems like the Shahenshah or if you lacked the courage, you could just sit back and blame yourself for bowing to the bad guy who is plaguing you. No need for revolution, restructuring, redefinitions and reallocation. Even in his anti-hero stance, the Bachchan persona has its limitations. Bachchan is not all bad. He is only angry, unsophisticated, roguish and aggressive. In short; he is essentially all male. These, however, are just superficial aberrations. So that, at his core, the angry young man remains a good, clean guy who is merely disgruntled and demanding. In essence, his is the hard shell that overflows with the Shakespearean milk of h u m a n kindness. Bachchan may break the law in most of his films, but only momentarily. Ideologically, he is never against it and at the end of his crusade, he always returns to his mother's bosom. This being a metaphor for the accepted order, the establishment, the status quo. In Sholay, the Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) aptly defines the exact nature of his crookedness when he says: Woh (Dharmendra and Amitabh) badmash hain, lekin bahadur hain, khatarnak hain, is liye ki khatron se khelna jante hain, burre hain magar insaan hain (They are crooks, nevertheless they are brave; they are dangerous because they know how to play with danger; they are bad yet they are human). The duo play small-time crooks who are willing to do anything to earn a quick buck. However, as the story progress, they

,

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-- - -- - - ----- . """. .. '" ---J --play with danger; they are bad yet they are human). The duo play small-time crooks who are willing to do anything to earn a quick buck. However, as the story progress, they -I

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52

Ire in the Soirl

are eager to risk their lives to apprehend the dreaded dacoit, Gabbarsingh. Not for bags of gold but merely for the sake of justice - Gabbar had destroyed the good cop's family and killing him would be nemesis. Thus the twopenny crooks turn out to be the true soldiers of god in due course. Both in Deewar and Agneqath, the anti-hero bears a soft corner for his mother who symbolizes the moral order in both these films. As he drifts into the world of crime, he is gradually distanced from this mother centredness. In a telling scene in Deai~ar,the successful smuggler scoffs at his younger brother's principles which have brought for him merely a middle-class existence, while he has amassed the mandatory millions. "What do you have?" he queries, pointing towards his own wealth. "I have mother," smugly declares the punctilious younger brother, leaving the prodigal speechless, angry, and conscience-stricken. It is this guilt that belies his all-bad status and bears testimony to the fact that this drift from the good, clean life is only a momentary one, born out of expediency. In Agneepath, when the police Inspector exhorts him to mend his ways, he shrugs him off. "This world is very bad. If you want to survive in it, you must be bad yourself," he declares (yeh duniya bahut bigdi hai, is duniya mein zinda rehna hai to bigda hona bahut zaroori hai). Having undergone a traumatic childhood and watched the murder of his idealist, non-violent father, he concludes that the biggest evil in a harsh world is to be weak. Ka?nzoriku mail sachai, adarsh, bhugulan se nahin dhulta, taaqat se dhulta hai. Strength and power are all that matters. Truth, ideals, god are all secondary, believes the mafia don. But only half-heartedly. For all along, he is conscious of his mother's reproachful eyes, is hurt by her scathing remonstrations and refers to himself as a 'goonda'. It is only in the end, when he has achieved his mission - killed the villain, reinstated his

The Angry Young Mnn

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53

family in its rightful home - does he fall into his mother's lap and confesses, Main ghar aa gaya, main burra aadmi nahin, main goonda nahin (I have returned home, I am not a bad man, I am not a goonda). Neither a goonda, nor a bad guy. Only the prodigal, who like the biblical hero, must return. And he always does after the cathartic denouement. Thus behind the sullen, rough and rugged exterior is the genteel homme who swears by honour, duty, justice and truth. All his trespasses into noman's land are merely to let truth and justice prevail. Hence the irresistible lure of the angry young man and his mannish mission dhich provides the viewer a sweet release from servility, powerlessness, exploitation and repression. Fantasy displacement, but fantastic nonetheless.

Thc Anti-Hmo

55

The Anti-Hero

A n d as the '80s slipped into the cataclysmic '90s. Vijay Verma, the quintessential hero of the '70s saw a second coming. This time however as Ballu Balram, the bad man of Khalnayak (1993) the Baazigar (1993)or the psychopathic, homicidal lover of Anjaatn (1994) and Darr (1993). This metamorphosis was once again in keeping with the times. For Ballu Balram retains the ire of Vijay Verma, but with a pronounced difference that makes him stand apart from the angry young man of the '70s and the angry young lover of the '80s. How does Khalnayak qualify as the anti-hero? In his anger and irreverence for accepted institutions of law and order, he seems to be a mere offspring of the hero immortalized by Amitabh Bachchan in films like Zanjeer, Deewar and their ilk. But, in his 'immorality', he stands alone: the agent provocateur who heralds a new breed of brave young men who have crossed over on that side of traditional ethics. Ethical iconoclasm then, is the distinguishing characteristic of this negative hero whose negativity lies in his

ruthless rejection of society's accepted book of norms. So much so, that while Bachchan's transgressions in almost all his films were mostly extra-legal - Vijay Verma and his clones were guilty of breaking the law alone - the Baazigar is a fugitive, both from the law of the land and the law of the Lord (the moral code). In his teleological responses, the anti-hero tilts the ethical balance in his favour and overturns old concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. In their behavioural responses, both the hero and the anti-hero respond to personal (sometimes social) injustice through violence. The perpetrator of the injustice must necessarily be annihilated. Only then will nemesis

ethics. Ethical iconoclasm then, is the distinguishing characteristic of this negative hero whose negativity lies in his

lIlJustlce tnrough violence. 'l'he perpetrator of the injustice must necessarily be annihilated. Only then will nemesis

Sanjay Dutt in Khalrlayak

Ire in the Soul

56

prevail. This is the sole guiding principle that determines the actions of both the protagonists through the entire narrative of their films. But while the hero's mission of vengeance always ends in an expression of guilt and surrender to the law of the land, the anti-hero's climactic shot is an ecstatic expression of triumph and self-justification. Pangs of conscience, self-reproach or a shade of apology are totally absent. So that, while in the first instance, homicide becomes unfortunately inevitable, for the anti-hero it becomes triumphantly and perchance rightfully so. The elite journal of opinion, the US Magazine brought out an annual summary of the latest fashions in America in January 1992. Emphasizing this trend of the negative hero, the journal declared that 'Evil' is now officially in and 'Good' is definitely out. It stated, "ever since the Joker walked off with a movie called Batman, Evil not Love is what the movies are all about." It noted that all the noteworthy actors today preferred to play "the devil incarnate," and concluded that movie heroes and their characterizations today lead us to believe that, "in Hollywood, there may be no God, but there certainly is a hell."' In his ethical iconoclasm, the anti-hero is truly a child of his times. For this moral turpitude is a product of the changing tenor of the '90s. If sociologists were to find a prototype for this decade, they could easily turn to cinema for a real-life look-alike. Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994)) with their predilection for the cult of gore might seem to reflect society's shifting morals in their crimewithou t-a-twinge-of-conscience behavioural tendencies. As the film maker points out, the film, which was incidentally rated R for "extreme violence and graphic carnage, for -

-

1. Michael Medved, Holly~owdus. Alrlrrica (HarperCollins, 1993), p.

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The Anti-Hero

57

shocking images and for strong language and sexuality," is merely a reflection of reality. Natural Born Killrrs, says Stone, "is an attempt to depict the cultural and social landscape of the 1990s in America - bigger and distorted to make people think." So that when Mallory says, "I guess I'm born bad!" and Mickey declares he discovered his true calling in life when he held the shot gun for the first time - "That I am a natural born killer" - they are not unravelling the realm of imagination alone. No, Mickey and Mallory, Stone insists, are "the rotten fruits of the 20th century." That Mickey and Mallory are not alone in their glorious ungodliness further testifies to the fact that the '90s is indeed an age marked by a redefinition of evil. Killing a man has not only become a mindless act, it has also acquired a clinical perfection in a clime that is splattered with global violence. Historical events and newspaper headlines of this period prove that both the capacity to perpetrate and tolerate violence on the part of the state and the common man has reached a much higher plane of acceptance than the earlier decade. On the one hand, there are several psychological studies conducted during this period which unfold a series of startling data on the rising levels of brutality and violence among average individuals. On the other hand, there is the predominance of the death wish in cinema, TV and fiction too. Oliver Stone's film about a couple of mass murderers, had reportedly been responsible for at least ten killings after its release. In Dallas, a 14-year-old boy accused of decapitating a girl after seeing the film, told friends he wanted "to be like the natural born killers." In Paris, a pair of young students went on what looked like a screeninspired shooting spree. Stone, however dismissed all culpability stating that "anyone who murders because of a movie is already a violently disturbed individual. Those

Ire in the Sotd

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kinds of people are going to be sparked by anything and the moment of ignition you never can tell." Obviously then, the success of the violent anti-hero image lies in the fact that the powder keg already lies within the viewer and the image merely 'ignites' tne imagination. The Nezu York Times (March, 1995) reports that A new course, 'Murder' has become the most popular in the history of Amherst College, with more than 300 students enrolled, a fifth of the 1,570 student body. That breaks the record of 'Human Sexuality' which was offered in the 1970s. Explaining the popularity of the course, Professor Austin Sarat points out: "we are a killing society, awash with violence ... murder is a window into American culture." If America remains the repository of high crime, even a more conventional Britain does not remain immune to the contemporary virus of violence and the accentuated death wish that clouds the human psyche. According to a government study, Ju7Jenile Violence In A Winner Loser Culture, the rate of violent crime by youngsters aged between 10-16 had risen from 99.1 per 100,000 of the child population to 151 per 100,000 since 1987. According to the statistics which declares that the 'savage generation' has hit Britain, children are increasingly responsible for the surge in rapes, shooting~,knifings and assaults. Psychologists, magistrates and educationists are most alarmed by the trend of youngsters to turn to violent crime. Some of the recent cases include:

* A 12-year-old boy in Northwich, Cheshire charged in December with raping an 11-year-old girl.

* A boy in West Yorkshire charged in the same month with raping an eight-year-old girl days before his 13th birthday after inviting her to play computer games. * A gang of children, including at least one 12-year-old

arrested recently after terrorising passengers on a train, demanding money and jewellery. * Gangs of 10-year-olds in Grimsby, Humberside, who have been carrying out organized muggings of elderly women outside bingo halls. * A 14-year-old schoolboy, armed with a pellet g u n and razor blade, who was running a protection racket in his Humberside school. Closer home, the cult of evil too seemed to have gathered its ever increasing band of faithfuls. While individual instances of grotesque violence and increasing incidence of crime, as well as institutionalized brutality have been on the ascent, the pendulum swing towards negativity is more evident in the emergence of new heroes and idols. Stock trader Harshad Mehta may have been guilty of a mega buck scam that cost the national exchequer a handsome sum of money. But umpteen surveys on the mood of the citizenry have not been able to come up with a unanimous national verdict condemning the scamster or his acts. There might have been a time when Mehta's acts could have been categorically branded as deceit, fraud and therefore bad per se. Not any more. For survey statistics have revealed that Mehta is a hero for many, specially the upwardly mobile youngster who has lionized the 'Bull' for his intelligence and money making business acumen. In a similar vein, there is Phoolan Devi who has strangely metamorphosed from a dacoit into a political figure, winning both social sanction and applause. All this despite the fact that she has served a prison sentence for her misdemeanors which include alleged cases of arson, loot and the notorious Behmai massacre and still has a number of cases pending against her. Obviously then, ethical amorphousness is the defining characteristic of this decade that struggles to find a new

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equilibrium between the pure good and the pure evil. Describing the changes on the socio-political firmament in the post '80s, Rajni Kothari points out that during the decades since the Emergency, "crime and violence have known no boundaries and have raised their heads in the most ghastly of ways. The lower classes and the vulnerable strata of society have suffered severely including physical dismemberment and death. Individual safety and security have declined precipitously, goonda raj is on the rise and is often promoted by the strong men of politics, community orgies have taken place in the presence of local police, native forms of cruelty have been indulged in by villagers frustrated at the collavse of the regular machinery of law and order, and there is a growing feeling in some areas that one had to f2nd for oneself and in the process, use any means that comes ones way."2 Describing the current national mood as one that is "less of discontent and more of dismay and growing disorientation," Kothari sums up the current years as a period of crisis. "The decade and more since emergency has brought home to us the increasing irrelevance of mere regimes at the top ... For some it is basically a crisis of economic performance, for others, a crisis of leadership, for still others, a crisis of ~haracter."~ It is this crisis of character which has gradually woven its way into the cinematic discourse too. So that, if the anger of the '70s hero was directed both against a particular enemy and the world in general, the anti-hero's belligerence bears no traces of any kind of i.c~eltunschau~~rig. Increasingly, the current media has become peopled by

2. Rajni Kothari, Stntt. Ayniirst Dritrocrncy (Ajanta Publications, 1988), p. 98 3. Ibid, p. 98

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a host of heroes who, by the traditional judgemental standards, are embroiled in a similar crisis of character with the conflict being waged on an internalized plane. Only here, the crisis is not always followed by a catharsis and the aberrations in the psyche and the personality of the hero must not necessarily be set right for the plot to reach its natural climax. Psychologist James C. Dobson describes this current state of ethical amorphousness as a civil war of values. "Nothing short of a great civil war of values rages today throughout America (almost everywhere). Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible world views are locked in a bitter conflict that permeates every level of society. Bloody battles are being fought on a thousand fronts, both inside and outside government," he writes. Cinema too has been caught in the throes of a similar civil war. There has been a celebration of evil of late in cinema and the star parade boasts of the wolf, the vampire, Frankenstein: in short, natural born killers for whom blood and gore is just the ordinary business of life. In his autobiography The Nume Aborle The Title, Frank Capra, the three times Oscar winner, tried to draw attention to the altered attitudes of cinema that forced him to turn his back on a medium that no longer talked of love, justice, mercy, compassion. He laments: "the winds of change blew through the dream factories of make-believe, tore at its crinoline tatters ... The hedonists, the homosexuals, the hemophiliac bleeding-hearts, the God-haters, the quick-buck artists who substituted shock for talent all cried, 'Shake them'! "Rattle them! God is dead. Long live Pleasure! Nudity? Yea! Wife-swapping? Yea! Liberate the world from prudery. Emancipate our films from morality!" "There was dancing in the street among the disciples of lewdness and violence. Sentiment was dead, they cried. And so was Capra, its aging missionary. Viva hard core

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brutality! Arrila barnyard sex! Arriba shock! Topless shock! Bottomless shock! Mass intercourse, mass rape, mass murder, kill for thrill shock! To hell with the good in man. Dredge up his evil - shock! shock!" At the 1991 Oscar ceremony, The Silence of the Latnbs became the third film in movie history after It Happened One Night and One Flew 0i.wthe Cuckoo's Nest (1975) to win all the major awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Jonathan Demme) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally). The Silence of the Lalnbs may be an exquisitely crafted piece of cinema, but thematically it is the antithesis of the traditional, value-laden cinema of the popular mainstream. For not only does the story follow the exploits of two social deviants - a psychopath who skins his victims and another who feeds on them - it makes a hero out of this form of deviancy. For the New York Police Department solicits the help of none other than Dr. Hannibal Lector, the psychiatrist turned cannibalistic killer to lay their hands on the other, all-bad psychopath. Stephen Farber, former film critic of California magazine highlights this lacunae between the message and the medium of The Silence of the Lambs. He writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Yes, the picture is tactfully made, but the question remains, why make it at all. The skilled craftmanship and the directorial restraint can't change what the film is - a thoroughly morbid and meaningless depiction of the modus operandi of a couple of sadists." That The Silence.of the Lainbs is not the only film to have won approbation, both official and individual, in recent years amply proves that the cult of the macabre hero has acquired the dimension of a trend. Consider some of the winners who walked down the hall of fame of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1991-1992.

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In 1991, the Oscar for the Best Actress went to Kathy Bates for playing a sadistic psychopathic nurse who kidnaps and tortures her favourite writer (James Caan) and who, in the climactic scene in the film Misery, cripples him for life by shattering his ankles with a sledge hammer. Jeremy Irons in The Re~~ersal of Fortune won the Best Actor Award for his eerily effective portrayal of Klaus Von Bulow, the coldblooded and adulterous aristocrat accused of attempting to murder his heiress wife, not once but twice. Joe Pesci won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for essaying the role of a demented, dangerous sadistic mafioso who kills more for pleasure than profit in Good Fellas. In 1992, the Academy Awards reflected the fascination for the darker side of the human psyche once again. Almost all the heroes nominated for the Best Actor Award had played characters who were far removed from the good, clean, right guy of traditional fiction and cinema. Three of the nominees played psychotics (Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of The Lainbs, Robert de Niro in Cape Fear and Warren Beatty in Bugsy); one of them played a homeless, delusional psychotic (Robin Williams in the Fisher King) and another played a manic depressive neurotic who is the victim of a viciously dysfunctional family background (Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides). The hostility to the traditional hero figure then seems to be the determining note of the cinema of the '90s. This being a development that marks a drastic change of focus for popular culture. Focusing on this change in Hollywood fare, Michael Medved points out "In years past, in the heyday of Gary Cooper and Greta Garbo, Jimmy Stewart and Katherine Hepburn, the movie business drew considerable criticism for manufacturing personalities who were larger than life, impossibly noble and appealing individuals who could never exist in the real world. Today the industry consistently comes up with characters who are

Ire in the Solrl

smaller than life - less decent, less likable than our own friends and neighbours, instead of creating elegant and exemplary figures of f a n t a ~ y . " ~ Broadly speaking, the heroic model of the '90s falls into three broad categories. They are either the invulnerable and emotionless martial arts masters (Arnold Schwarzennegar, Steven Seagal, Jean Claude van Demme, Chuck Norris with their Indian counterparts belonging to the breed of Sunil Shetty, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan), the brooding, disturbed, unpredictable sharp-shooter whose explosive propensity for violence stems from some deep psychic wound sustained during some traumatic episode of the distant past (Sylvestor Stallone's Rambo, Me1 Brook's Lethal Weapon, Sanjay Dutt's Sadak, Jackie Shroff's Angaar) or the psychotic, neurotic, sadistic killer who is not normal (Anthony Hopkins, Robert de Niro, Shah Rukh Khan). Indeed, there was a period of cinematic history where Dr. Hannibal Lector (The Silence of the Lambs) is serenaded with umpteen Academy awards for his chilling cannibalistic yen! Indian cinema too won international acclaim in this period through none other than the Bandit Queen, Shekhar Kapoor's biographical account of Phoolan Devi, the female dacoit. And it is not merely incidental that the film turns out to be a totally eulogistic biography of an antiheroine, albeit in the hands of an intelligent film maker. Kapoor may be deifying the female bandit as all commercial films, like Kahani Phoolz~atiKi, Daku Hasirla and Kali Ganga have done in the past. But Kapoor's plea of circumstantial expediency as the prime instigator of all the protagonist's misdeeds and their consequent rationalization have that dangerous ring of plausibility behind them. Phoolan Devi, under Shekhar Knpoor's cinematic eye does 4. Medved, op. cit., p. 201

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indeed turn out to be a glorified larger-than-life figure, much in keeping with her public image of the prototypical wronged woman-turned-public-princess. In popular mainstream cinema, the prototypical hero of this period is the khalnayak (Sanjay Dutt), Subhash Ghai's hero in the film bearing the same title. Who is this antihero, what are his primary impulses, how does he differ from the hero and what is the exact nature of his immorality: these are some pertinent questions that need to be answered here. Ghai moves into mythology to pitch the traditional forces of good against evil in Khalnayak (1993). Rama irrefutably remains the venerable one and finds his celluloid avatar in CBI Inspector, Ram Sinha (Jackie Shroff). Pitted against this epitome of goodness is Ravana, as in the epic Ramayana. In fact, till here, Khalnayak seems to fall in line with formulaic film making which has always delineated the climactic fight between good and evil through Rama and Ravana clones. Inspector Ram, as in the average potboiler, remains an incarnate of the lnaryada purushottarn and there are repeated references to the sacrosanct status of the traditional hero. Sub Inspector Ganga Gangotri Devi who happens to be the Inspector's betrothed, sets out in search of the terrorist who threatens to besmirch the Inspector's reputation, declaring: Ram ka sarz~anashkoi nahin kar sakta ... rnain apne Rarn ji ki lnaryada ke liye kuch bhi kar sakfi hoon. (No one can destroy Ram ... I can d o anything to uphold the honour of Ram.) Even the terrorist serenades the straight cop as God incarnate, the true son of India. Rain jo sach Inen Ram hai, Bharat ka saccha putra hai. But the similarities in characterizations end here. For Subhash Ghai's Ravana is no traditional bad man. In fact Ghai's ingenuity lies in the fact that he tries to make a hero out of Ravana for the first time. The grandson of a freedom fighter who happened to be a friend

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of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballu Balram drifted through a n impoverished childhood into a turbulent adulthood. The first signs of his moral turpitude were visible when he was a kid. He greedily grabbed the box of crackers which the local hoodlum had bought to bribe his lawyer father who, needless to say, was wedded to the creed of unqualified honesty. His father had slapped him, but his mother had held him close to her bosom declaring that if the father did not bring crackers for Diwali, the kid would naturally be attracted to those brought by a stranger. As a youngster, he had rebelled against his father and joined the local mafia gang, headed by the hoodlum, Roshi Mahanta who had now graduated into big crime. H e had become a hashish smuggler and manned a terrorist outfit. Ballu grew from a small-time smuggler into a cold-blooded assassin. He, however, committed his first crime under the guise of a misunderstanding. He was misled into believing that the Police Commissioner had killed his favourite sister and therefore shot him in revenge, at the behest of Roshi Mahanta. After that, there was no looking back for the prodigal son who slipped down into the quagmire of crime and soon emerged as the nation's top terrorist: Ghai's archetype for the wayward youth of the '90s. Arresting him for the assassination of the political leader in the opening shots of the film, Inspector Ram declares: yeh hai hawzare desh ka nauja7c~an,jiski aankhon inein khoon hai, jisne chaar t~efavnka khootz kiya hai, 9 daake dalcln hain, 20 elerfion booth loofe hain. Itni si ulnar aur ifne saare junn ... (This is our nation's youth, one which has b10,od in its eyes, who has killed four politicians, committed nine heists, looted 20 election booths. So many crimes at such a young age ...) After this, the film follows the usual cops and robbers chase involving Inspector Ram who is in hot pursuit of the fugitive Ballu Balram. Ballu Balram however is a breed apart. Neither the tra-

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ditional villain nor is he the usual law breaker, who takes the law into his own hands in order to settle personal scores. He does not belong to the breed of Gabbar Singh, the dreadful dacoit of Sholay, who is pathologically evil. The narrative of the film offers no reasons for Gabbar's vacillations from the straight path. He kills, loots and plunders for the love of it and gloats in his ogre image for the power and misconstrued glory it bestows on him. Again, Ballu is no kindred soul of the heroic smuggler, Vijay Verma of Denc~ar.For all through his transgressions in Deeular., Vijay was cowed down by a sense of guilt and his voice of conscience constantly loomed large before his eyes in the form of his censorious mother (Nirupa Roy). Each time he broke the law, he knew he was drifting away from order and righteousness. So that, eventually, when all the roads were blocked, there was only one avenue left for the fugitive. Like the prodigal son, he must return to his mother's lap a n d atone for his sins in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. Maa rnain rnandir aa raha hootz. Aaslrir7i)aad detze anogi tzaa? he whispers and pleads for his mother's blessings before he surrenders. Much unlike the Khalnayak, who fervently believes in the righteousness of his unlawful acts and even slaps his mother for bringing the cops to arrest him. Ballu's drift towards the crooked path was not involuntary. Instead, he consciously opted for crime and easy money in lieu of virtue and impoverishment. When Ballu joins forces for the first time with Roshi Mahanta, the hashish smuggler, his father is astounded. Bkaraf ke krantlkari, Jagannath Prasad Choudhay ka pota Roshi Mahanfa kl hashrsh bechega? (The grandson of the Indian revolutionary, Jaganath Prasad Choudhary will sell the hashish of Roshi Mahanta) he admonishingly queries and slaps his intransigent son. The son, on his part remains remorseless and offers his reasons. He scoffs at his grandfather's name-plate which

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adorns the village square and declares that it rests before a house that has not been able to pay the rent for the last ten years. Inside the house lives a young boy and girl who are unemployed for the last two years, despite being educated, he mockingly declares. Under such dire circumstances, he has no other choice but to discard abstractions like family lineage, past heritage and honour for the sake of hard-core necessities like bread, butter, upward mobility and economic betterment. Khandani takhti par aap baithiye, lnujhe to us takhti par baithna hail jis par baithknr, lnnntri se naukar tak sirf paisa banate hai. Garibi kighulalni se achchi Roshi ki ghulalni hail he announces and leaves a destitute home for greener pastures beyond. (You rest content on familial platforms. I will sit on that platform from where everyone, including ministers and servants mint money. I prefer a life of servitude to Roshi instead of poverty). This, however, is just the beginning. For as the years pass, Ballu graduates with full honours in the world of crime. But all along, he has his justifications and rationalization that provide a meaning to his misdeeds. In a hotheaded encounter, when the CBI Inspector castigates him for working against his motherland, Ballu offers his philosophy of crime, complete with rhetoric: Ram babu, aap sarkari afsar hain, to apne desfi Bharat ~nataki baat karenge hi. Magar kitne neta aur afsar hai jo Bharat lnata ke naare lagakar apni jaben bhar rahen hain, jo garibon par goliyan chalate hain, unke lnunh se roti chheente hain. Yeh to nap bhi jaante hain aur main bhi. (Ram babu, you are a government officer, therefore you will naturally talk about your country, your motherland. But there are so many politicians and officers who take the name of their motherland, and yet they fill 'heir coffers with ill-gotten wealth, shoot the poor, snatch e bread from their mouth. You know this as well as I do.) %e Inspector rebukes him further, declaring that some de's dishonesty cannot be used as an excuse for one's

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own murky morals. For what is wrong remains immutably so. "Kuch logon ki beilnani ko apni gaddari ka bahana ba~zakar, tulrl galat ko sahi nahi sabit kar sakte. Jo galat hai, rclofi galat hai." Such concepts of timeless truth, goodness and evil are however alien to the anti-hero's philosophy of life. For Ballu believes in the relativity of goodness. Confronted by the righteous Inspector's incantations, Ballu counters: "Galat ya sahi, yeh to apna apna khayal hai. Aap ke khayal tnein main Khalnayak, zlillain. Aapki bhakti aur bhagroan aapka desh, napki sarkar. Meri bhakti aur bhagzoan, tnrra ~naalik,Inera giroh." (Right or wrong, this depends on the individual's perspective. In your opinion, I am the Khalnayak, the villain. Your devotion, your God lies in your country, your government, mine lies with my employer, my gang.) He then proudly asserts that he is not the hero, rather, the anti-hero - (Nayak nahin, Khalnayak hoon main) - a melodious refrain that runs through the entire film as the opening lines of the title song. In fact, in the very first encounter with the comely sub-Inspector, he introduces himself as a goonda, a murderer, a fugitive from prison, a man who is called the Khalnayak in respectable society. And he uses all these negative epithets with regal aplomb and unconcealed pride, as if they were titles befitting a king. "Mairr ek goonda, katil, jail se bhaga hua mujriin, sharafat ki kitab lnein lnujhe Khalnayak kehte hain." It is here that Ballu differsfrom Lakhan (Anil Kapoor in Ram Lakhan), who historically speaking, maybe termed the big brother of the bad man. But in terms of negativity, Lakhan remains a poor cousin of the Khalnayak, despite his credo of 'one tzrlo ka four, four t.cclo ka one,' (corruption, fraud, dishonesty.) For Lakhan, the younger brother of Ram is corrupt only till the climax of the film. After which he adopts the good clean code of honour propagated by his venerable elder. Even the nature of his negativity is less reprehensible than Ballu Balram's criminality. Neverthe-

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less, Lakhan remains the first negative hero of the '90s: a prototype for the get-rich-quick generation that is fervently motivated by the materialistic drive. Lakhan with his obsession for amassing wealth, reflects the cravings of the new kids round the block - the RaybanReebok race that measures success and achievement with material possessions. Lakhan, for the first time, enunciates the code of relative ethics in contemporary mainstream cinema. Throughout the discourse, Lakhan seems to harbour only one desire: the desire to become a millionaire in a day. Kha pee raha hai saara zamana, jo bhooka pyasa hai 71~0hdee7aana (The whole world is eating and drinking; anyone who starves then can only be a fool), he intones in a mirthful song and dance number. In fact, so strong is his impulse to amass wealth that he becomes a policeman to make money alone. Since he believes there are only two ways to get rich quick - either as a smuggler or as a police officer. Before he joins the department, his elder brother Ram who is the quintessential honest cop asks him whether he would like to become a cop to serve the nation or to make money. "For both," replies Lakhan, with uncanny honesty and begins his profession by zealously accepting the mandatory 'chocolate box' (bribe). "Mujhe is yudh lnein jeetna hai. Zindagi lnein garibi bahut dekhi. Magar aap itne chote-chote chocolate ke dibbe denge to hamare garibi hatao progralnlne ka kya hoga," ( I have to win this war. I have seen a lot of poverty in life. But if you give me such small boxes of chocolate then what will happen to my poverty eradication programme), he queries, dissatisfied at the amount of bribe being offered by the plaintiffs. Big bribe, big money, big success is what he dreams of in an age which, according to him, belongs to Ravana rather than Rama. Artd when his brotller indicts him for selling his soul to Satan in a compelling discourse on sin

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and virtue, the renegade exhorts: "Paap aur punya dakiyanoosi logan ke banaye gaye shabd hain. Jo itnandari aur punya ka ghalnand liye phirte hain u7oh nu kisi ka dard salnajhte hain na kisi ke jazbaat ko dekhte hain." (Sin and virtue are mere words that have been coined by old-fashioned people. People who proudly deify the cult of honesty and goodness do not understand the pain and sentiments of others.) But what about the Ramayana, its tenets and the heroes after whom we have been named, urges the honest elder. (Subhash Ghai's Ram Lakhan once again recreates the epic, albeit in contemporary tones. The elder brother Ram mirrors the mythical hero's ethical grandeur, while the younger Lakhan, has a nebulous set of values that are more worldly and less utopian.) The Ralnayana? Huh! Just an old book, a drama, a teleserial today that looks good only on screen, not in real life. The world has changed big brother! he scoffs. "Aajkal Ralnayana sirf ek purani kitab, ek drama, ek TV serial hai jo dekhne lnein achcha lagti hai, magar karne mein bahut fark hai. Zalnana banal chuka hai bhaiya," (Today, the Rawzayana is just a book, a drama, a TV serial that looks good to see, but is different when it is enacted in real life. The world has changed, brother!), he exhorts. Lakhan ridicules his brother's piety, walks out of his modest abode and sets out on his own individual path to glory. And en route, he hobnobs with the smugglers, drug racketeers, accepts their generous bribes, turns a blind eye to their misdeeds, sets free their cohorts and relentlessly breaks the legal and moral code himself. For he believes that the end - economic advancement - does justify the means. But Lakhan's downward drift on the ethical barometer is only a temporary aberration. Lakhan must be reinstated as the true brother of Rama - a pure reflection of the pristine

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nurtured by a young, growing, gradually modernizing India. But Bombay in the '50s had lost its soul to Mammon and the great paradoxes of development - glittering pockets of prosperity arising amidst sprawling slums were quite clearly visible in the country's El Dorado. In the first few shots of the film, the avuncular beggar forewarns the young hopeful that Bombay is a city only for the dumb, deaf and the blind; a city where there is no work for the educated, honest youth; where there are no avenues to earn an honest living but 420 ways to mint money through lies, deceit and dishonest measures. "Yeh Bambai hai meri jaan, yahan behre, goonge, andhe basfe hain, yahan padelikhe imandaar ja7i)an ko kaam nahin mil sakta; yahan sach bolkar pet bharne ke raaste dhundne se nahin milte aur jhoofh bolkar paise banane ke raasfe 420."

elder. Only then will the equilibrium be restored. "Dekh lena, ek din Inera Lakhan Ram bankar dikhayega," (Just watch. My Lakhan would prove himself a Ram one day) the mother declares, even as she stands a mute witness to her prodigal son's bathos. And lo! the mother's dreams do come true. For before evil can blacken his soul completely, Lakhan shifts loyalties and joins hands with the forces of law, order and justice. For Lakhan has realized that the tenets of the Rainayana are indeed immutable and the concept of goodness does remain unchanging through the ages. "Aap sahi kehte the bhaiya, hazaron saal pehli likhi hui Ralnayana ki baat ko hum log na badal sake hain, na badal payenge," (You were right brother, the tenets of the Ramayana which were written thousands of years before, cannot be changed by you and me), he concludes. Historically however, the anti-hero can be traced back to the '50s. If one of the first identifiable anti-heroes is Ashok Kumar's portrayal of the petty thief in Kismet, it is actually Raj Kapoor's graduate tramp turned gansgter in Sri 420 who essays the authentic bad man. One who opts for the crooked path voluntarily, after being placed at a juncture where he could have chosen poverty and principles over money, power and moral compromise. Much in contrast to Ashok Kumar in Kismet, Raj Kapoor in Aawara, Amitabh Bachchan in Deuilar: thieves, gangsters and hoodlums who were forced to follow the footsteps of criminals due to bad upbringing, familial pressures and the likes, and who all along, hated their ethical transgressions. In short, unlike Raju in Sri 420, Lakhan in Ram Lakhan, Ballu in Khalnayak, these bad guys never did have a choice. Crookedness was the only course of action left if the business of life had to carry on. In Sri 420, Ranbir Raj Raju is the unemployed, ambitious, optimistic graduate from Allahabad who enters Bombay with just a citation of honesty and a bagful of dreams,

In such a 'heartless', money-oriented city, the small town simpleton begins his search for bread and butter by first pawning his medal, given to him for his honesty, for a

carry on. In Sri 420, Ranbir Raj Raju is the unemployed, ambitious, optimistic graduate from Allahabad who enters Bombay with just a citation of honesty and a bagful of dreams,

In such a 'heartless', money-oriented city, the small town simpleton begins his search for bread and butter by first pawning his medal, given to him for his honesty, for a

Raj Kapoor a n d Nargis i n Sri 420

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paltry sum of Rs. 40. He then pledges to buy the en tire city with the handful of notes and does succeed. Only, he loses out on love, character, integrity, conscience and goodness of spirit in his scramble for the good life. And in keeping with his anti-hero status, there is no regret, no pangs of guilt for quite some time. When his pious beloved Vidya (Nargis) spurns him for wallowing in the muck of deceit and dishonesty, Raju dismisses her diatribe with scorn: "Yeh imandaari ka urdesh hamesha garib logon ko kyon diya jaata hai. Tum-din bhar kaam karo, mehnat karo, imandari ki rookhisookhi kha kar dhannlan aur bhagi.nan ka shukr karo. Aakhir aisa kyon?" (Why is it that only the poor are taught the tenets of honesty? Why must they alone be told to work hard day and night, eat the spartan fare of honesty and then offer their gratitude to the rich and the almighty?) He then continues his search for the pot of gold, cardsharping, selling bogus shares, gambling and dabbling in the 'sattaf bazaar and the like. Until he reaches the preordained climax where his conscience arises from its temporary slumber and indicts him for having everything but peace of mind. The vagrant then returns back to love and truth -having realized that the cure for poverty does not lie in corruption and deceit. Rather, in hard work, courage, the progress of the nation and the unity of the people. Raju then was not pathologically bad, but was momentarily misled by the glint of gold. So that in his intrinsic purity, he stood as a symbol for the get-rich-quick generation of the '50s, as did Ballu Balram, who typified the directionless scramble for lucre of the '90s generation. But between the two;there lay a great difference. Raju was crooked but not a killer unlike Ballu whose negativity involved all kinds of heinous crimes, including homicide! This being a mere reflection of the changing hues of evil over the decades of development and decay. Obviously, crime had a different definition in each decade and the

degree of immorality acquired new tones with the passage of time, the changing value system and the insulation of the individual who seemed to be growing more accustomed to death and destruction. The bad man seemed to have reached his nadir in recent films like Baazigar, Darr and Anjaam, the protagonists of these films being characters who were entirely remorseless and with little or no value for human life. In his final surrender to the security forces and his noble bid to save he honour of Ganga, (Madhuri Dixit) the female cop who lad protected his life, the Khalnayak emerges as the hero who dons the traditional garb of goodness. In fact, the Chalnayak's flirtations with nobility begin to emerge much

involved all kinds ot neinous crimes, inclualng rlurrucluc: This being a mere reflection of the changing hues of evil over the decades of development and decay. Obviously, crime had a different definition in each decade and the

I I I~I U I L U Uu ~r barlga, (lvlaanuri uixlr) me remale cop wno had protected his life, the Khalnayak emerges as the hero who dons the traditional garb of goodness. In fact, the Khalnayak's flirtations with nobility begin to emerge much

Shahmkh Khan in Anjaarrt

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before the glorious end of the film. Midway during his escape bid, Ballu saves an election booth from falling prey to a band of local goondas and ensures a free and fair poll. The villagers applaud him for his valour and pin a paper replica of the national flag on his lapel. While sub-Inspector Ganga declares: "Tum me bhi ek achcha bharatiya khoon hai. Har khalnayak mein kahin na kahin ek nayak chhupa hota hai. Raz)ana mein bhi nayakpan tha kahin." (There is good bharatiya blood in you too. Every anti-hero has a hero hidden somewhere within. There was heroism in Ravana too.) It's by and large a bright scenario, both for the reel life bad guy and his real life clones, since the Khalnayak represents a generation that has been temporarily misled either by the anonymous foreign hand, a questionable upbringing or a childhood trauma or injustice that cries out for revenge. What is alarming here, however, is the fact that revenge, despite being bloody, has the moral approbation of the elders and the legal transgressions are not outrightly condemned in the course of the narrative. So that, what is habitually viewed as wrong gradually begins to be treated as natural and right. In its delineation of the deviant the cinema of the '90s has by and large followed a laudatory tone. The anti-hero might be the traditional bad man, nevertheless, he is the rebel hero who kills for self-esteem. Attempting to analyse the psyche of real life serial killers like Ian Brady, Charles Manson, Peter Sutcliffe, Colin Wilson has underlined "a hierarchy of need^."^ According to this, the first needs that people have are for food, shelter, human and sexual relationships. When these have been satisfied by society, the

5 . Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer, The Lirst to Kill (New York University Press, 1987), p. 57

The Anti-Hero

need arises for self-esteem and respect, followed by selfactualisation and creativity. Wilson relates this hierarchy to the history of crime. Whereas 200 years ago, most crimes were committed for food we are now witnessing the crime that is committed for self-esteem and self-actualization. As in the case of Dr. Hamibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs and Mickey, Mallory in Natural Born Killers and Shah Rukh Khan in Anjaam, Baazigar and Darr. Here, on celluloid, is the world which was created by Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse Francois, 1740-1814) who promoted and popularized the concept of the murderer as the hero in early nineteenth century. Cinema today seems to be merely reiterating Sade's contention that the 'pleasures of cruelty' are entirely natural, that is in accordance with the dictates of nature. "Who doubts that murder is one of nature's most precious laws? What is her purpose in creation? Is it not to see her work destroyed soon after?"6 he queries. "If destruction is one of nature's laws, the person who destroys is simply obeying her" he argues, thereby creating the sub-s tructure that supports and vindicates the existence of natural born killers. Sade's fictional world is one where vice is naturally triumphant and virtue is not only not rewarded, it is actually punished by suffering and death. So is the world of the anti-hero. The virtuous Shivani (Anjaam) loses her husband, child, freedom and life in her battle against her fiendish lover who at least has the satisfaction of destroying her: something he set out to do. According to Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer, murder and violence in Sade (and in post-Sadeian writing and cinema too) is the symbol of transgressian whereby the individual who transgresses is a rebel in search of freedom and pleasure. "If killing is justifiable because it obeys the 6. Ibid, p. 161

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laws of nature, it is pleasurable because it does not obey man-made laws: it flouts the morality of society and religion and it is this element of overt transgression that commends the act of murder to the true libertine,"7 they argue. Thus, the killer becomes the quintessential modern day hero, much like the 'white Negro' of Norman Mailer. In his celebrated essay on 'Hip' (a 1950's sub-culture with its roots and its most important characteristics -jazz, language, marijuana smoking - in Black American culture), Mailer creates the central figure of the hipster and applaud3 him for his combination of transcendence and transgression. Explaining his background, Mailer argues that the hipster emerged along with the stifling conformity of the post-war period in the United States. One who adopted the way of the existentialist, courted danger, lived in the present, tore up roots and challenged morality. And to be such an existentialist hero, Mailer remarks, "one must know one's desires, one's rages, one's anguish, one must be aware of the character of one's frustrations and know what would satisfy it." So does the Khalnayak, the Baazigar and the protagonist of Darr. Furthermore, as Cameron and Frazer point out, Mailer's existentialist hero is "akin to the psychopath, the madman whose disorder consists precisely in the fact that he lives entirely in the present and gratifies his desire at whatever violent cost."' As does the anti-hero of the '90s. For this cool, hep, psychopathic hero, personal gratification of desires becomes the su~n~nuln bonuln of his existence. Societal judgement and morality fall nowhere within the purview of his individualistic concerns. Inspector Vijay of Zanjeer broke the law and resorted to violence, to ensure

7. Ibid, p. 161 8.

Ibid.

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the greatest good of the greatest number. Ballu Balram does it for his personal satisfaction and need fulfilment. As does Shah Rukh Khan in Baazigar, Darr and Anjaam. This asocial, highly individualized form of behaviour on the part of the anti-hero stands out in stark contrast to the tvditional hero's messianic bids. Unlike the normal do-gooder hero, this modern day 'white Negro' works only for himself and seems to believe in the philosophy of Norman Collins, the killer of seven women in Michigan, who wrote in a college essay: "If a person wants something, he alone is the deciding factor of whether or not to take it, regardless of what society thinks might be right or wrong ... It's the same if a person holds the gun on somebody - it's up to him to decide whether to take the other's life or not. The point is: it's not society's judgement that's important, but the individual's choice of will and intelle~t."~ Thus clear-cut demarcations between good and bad seem to have become smudged in the cinema of the antihero. As is evident in the case of Baazigar, Darr and Anjaam, where Shah Rukh Khan makes a virtue of evil with his glorified delineation of the obsessed lover in Darr and Anjaam and the cold-blooded killer of Baazigar. The acts are totally reprehensible if they are to be judged bv the traditional yardsticks of right and wrong. Nobody ought to kill four people, including his best friend, and his beloved's husband (as in Darr and Anjaaln), however strong may be the passion for the object of his desire. And nobody ought to throw his beloved off a high-rise building on the eve of his wedding or kill the innocent witnesses (as in Baazigar), even though it may all be part of a grandiose scheme of vendetta. But that which is customarily wrong is held as right and proper by these protagonists.

9. Ibid.

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In Baazigar, Ajay Sharma's impersonation a s Vicky Malhotra, his double dealings with a pair of gullible sisters, his murder of the elder and his complicated game of deception is gallantly viewed as an intelligent game of revenge, a heroic fight for personal rights and an imposition of divine justice. While in Darr and Anjaam, the hero's attempts to annihilate the heroine's state of bliss with the man of her choice is also a mere attempt to translate the divine will and seek out personal gratification. Shah Rukh's murderous meddlesome ways are merely a means to ensure the heroine's welfare in both the films, as the antiheroine doggedly believes. In a pertinent scene in Darr, the heroine (Juhi Chawla) rebuffs the overrl. tures of the maniacal lover, bidding 1' him to leave her , alone since she wants to lead her ' I own life. The hero is astounded- and retorts: "But that's exactly what I want you to do lead your life the way you ought to. Near me, with me, in my arms." (Main bhi to yahi chahta hoon ki tuin usi tarah jiyo jis tarah tuinhe jeena chahiye inere saafh, inere paas, lrleri bahon Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in Baazigar inein .) Obviously,

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the premise here is that the hero knows best what is right for the beloved and the hero cannot err. Specially, when love for him, as he confesses, is neither a profession (pesha), nor an interest (shauk), but life itself (zindagi). In Anjaam too, the hero is quite shocked at Shivani's rejection since he believes he is the only perfect match for her. And it is merely to ensure and enshrine this perfect relationship that he wipes out the only impediment - the lawfully wedded husband of the woman he loves. Yes, for the anti-hero of Darr and Baazigar, the magic of the cliche does seem to work. For everything - murder, deceit, fraud - does seem fair in love and war. And th&changing morality is best reflected in the attitudes of the mother - an integral figure in the drama of popular Hindi cinema - over the decades. In Deuuar, Vijay Verma's mother makes a definite choice between her polarized sons and prefers to stay with the righteous cop (Shashi Kapoor) rather than the beleaguered smuggler. This despite the fact that she loved him more and he needed her more, since he had been left alone in his attempts to keep the family together. When the errant son tries to hold her back with promises of material comfort, she coolly declares that all his worldly assets will never be able to buy the love of his mother who believes in the wealth of principles alone. Similarly, in Agreepath, the son, Vijay Chauhan, may be ionised by the entire bus tee as the benevolent overlord. But the mother (Rohini Hatthangadi) frowns upon his status, wealth and achievement insisting that he must 'wash his hands' since they were 'unclean'. In Khalnayak, the tenor begins to change and the '90s mother lays bare her unquestioning, immutable love for her errant son. She learns about his horrific crimes through newspaper headlines. Nevertheless, she hides his photograph in the Rainayana waiting for the prodigal to return, confessing that she cannot see

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him suffer and die since she is his mother. It is only in the end does she slap him and shower herself with self-reproach since she begins to hold herself responsible for her son's moral degeneration. According to her, her blind, unconditional love for her son and her tendency to gloss over his misdeeds was the prime cause of his criminal tendencies. "I wish I had slapped you earlier when you had first stolen a pencil in school," she laments, "when for the first time you had spurned your father's principles. Today, I'd like to tell every mother of this country that those who hide and cover up the misdeeds of their young, will almost always have sons who grow up as the Khalnayak," she forewarns. Anjaarn and Aatish (1994)' the In films like Baazigar, maternal mood seems to have done a complete volte-face from the censorious ? '70s. For now the mother does not merely turn a blind eye to her son's transgression of the 1 ethical-legal code, she vociferously approves of them. In Aatish, she (Tanuja) even castigates the younger one who *, , happens to be the 'P honest cop (Atul Agnihotri) for attempting to arrest the elder (Sanjay . Dutt)whoisaproSunjay Dutt in A u t ~ s h fessional killer and a kingpin of the city

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Sunjay Dutt in Aatish

fessional killer and a kingpin of the city

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nafia. And the mother, as it happens, has always been a ;ymbol of the voice of conscience in popular Hindi cinema. 1s the voice of conscience then singing a different tune in :he turbulent '90s? Temporarily perchance, but yes, it is.

Angry Yo~rngLoae

4 Angry Young Love

ve remains the terra firma on which popular Hindi cinema has built and rebuilt its glorious castles through the ages. There have always been tinsel tow11 lovers with their on-screen romances that have borrowed heavily from the Romeo-Juliet, Shirin-Farhad myth. Always the tentative courting by two startcrossed lovers; always the pain of separation; the pangs of longing, the passion of unfulfilled desire, until the final consummation of the relationship that drifts through fire and ice. Always the same? Well not really. For love has changed its temper with changing times. From the soft sweet saga of the '60s, where the lovers (Shammi Kapoor, Saira Bano, Rajendra Kumar, Sadhna and their ilk) wove their sugar candy soirees beneath a balmy mid-day sun, love in the '70s lost out to the towering inferno (Amitabh Bachchan) and his tryst with injustice. Confronted by the ire of the angry young man, the tender love story buried its head beneath the fire and fumes of Bachchan's grand revenge dramas. From the central discourse of the '60s cinema, it

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was deliberately marginalised and reduced to the status of dramatic relief in a narrative that hinged on action alone. The angry young man seemed to have had no time left for love in his bid to settle scores and set the scales of justice right. The Zeenat Amans and the Parveen Babis were just glamorous appendages to the main plot. Mere add-ons who drifted on the fringes waiting for an occasional favour: a song or dance with the favoured one. With the social angst of the '70s hero being laid to rest, love returned centre stage once again. This time however with a changed complexion that was in perfect synchronization with the new environment - the guns and gore cult. Love in the 1980s and the 1990s was more a matter of raw nerves than a tender heart. So what were the basic tenets of this new love story, one which had ousted the Shahenshah from his reign over the box office and had acquired the form of a trend ever since Mansoor Khan's Qayalnat se Qayalnat Tak (1988) scaled the hustings. When N. Chandra made Tezaab, he advertised it as a violent love story. Chandra's advertisement campaign seemed to hit the nail on the head. For here was a genre of cinema that conveniently built bridges across hitherto unbridgeable chasms. In the traditional love story, violence came only in the last few reels when the obstacle (the villain) had to be physically removed from the path of true love. But here was a cinema that combined action and violence with love and blended them together in a delectable masala mix. Here was a kind of blzelpuri which offered the viewer a dash of it all: moony-eyed mush, star-crossed lovers, clan enmity, lasci-rious third angles, fission, discord and the eventual fusion of two love stricken souls. Qayalnat se Qayalnat Tak (QSQT) heralded a new form of presentation in which the directors began to ingeniously blend the intrinsic violence of the era with the basic love story. They used it as a volcanic force that threatened to

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dispute or in a tussle of honour. Generations of hostility have carried on uninterrupted and there has been no veneer of civility to mask the animosity. The families have either discreetly kept out of each other's way or they have clashed with the frenzy of bulls in fury. It is in such choleric times that the lovers set their eyes on each other. Raj (Aamir Khan) sees Rashmi (Juhi Chawla) in QSQT and Salman (Salman Khan) spots Rukhsar (Chandni) in Sanarn Bewafa. Cupid inevitably strikes his tender bow. A few songs later, the duo ends up totally smitten and bound in a pledge which says till-deathdo-us-par t.

Ti11 death do us part: Juhi Chawla and Aamir Khan in Qaya?riat Se Qaya?rrat Tak

erupt, while the lovers, unwary of the simmering discontent haplessly built arid rebuilt on dreams and passion. Violence interestingly forms the background in almost all the successful love stories of the post-1975 decade. It either takes the form of two warring clans as in the popular love ballads of Romeo-Juliet,Shirin-Farhad, Laila-Majnu or it weaves its way into the narrative as a form of selfexpression on the part of the bad guy. In films like QSQT and Sanarn Bewafa, the violent note is struck by the familial feud that has existed for long between the clans of the girl and the boy. In QSQT, it is a a pair of warring thakurs, while in Sanaln Bauafa, it is a pair of two hot-headed pathan families. Both the families' have been embroiled in a land

It could have been one of those happy fairy-tale ends, but for the inter-familial discord between the two warring Rajput and Pathan families in QSQT and Sanaln Belllafa respectively. In Sanarn Bezuafa, over a land dispute generations has caused an unbridgeable rift between the two arrogant aristocrats and the note of antagonism is sounded

in Sanarn Bauafa, it is a pair ot two hot-headed patnan families. Both the families' have been embroiled in a land

tlons has caused an unbridgeable rift between the two arrogant aristocrats and the note of antagonism is sounded

Salman Khan and Chandni in Sa?rarri Bezuafa

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right at the opening of the film. The drama in the first few reels centres round the high-decibel encounters between the sons and the servants of the two feudal families which seem to clash in open battle over issues like water from a disputed canal which borders both their lands. it's a bloody encounter which repeatedly occurs while the law keeper (the obsequious hawaldar of the local thana) conveniently looks the other way and surfaces only for his weekly commission. It is against such an incendiary backdrop that the lovers meet and dare to build their private castle of dreams. Naturally, the bonds of hate prove to be stronger than love and the innocent passion of the young lovers is appropriated by the scheming elders - Pran, the father of the girl and Danny, the father of the boy. Love becomes just another weapon in the'arsenal of hate. The elders allow the youngsters to marry, but before they can settle down to blessed matrimony, the boy's father separates them. The rest is, of course, one sordid tale of revenge which unfolds in a series of gruesome attacks and counter-attacks leaving no one untouched. Not even the hapless nine-year-old brother of the bridegroom. And all along, the lovers can do nothing more than stand as silent witnesses to the violent desecration of their monument of love. It is only when there is a threat to the life of the heroine's baby does the mother in her rise in rebellion. Just a few hysterical screams at the climax is all she can muster. Till then, the lovers are just a pair of extras who pop up for the song and dance bit. And yet, all along, Sanaln Beroafa is marketed as a love story. In QSQT, the war ends only after the bitter climax, when Rashmi is accidentally shot by a group of assassins hired by the girl's father and Raj ends his life in disgust. Presumably to be with his beloved beyond death. In Tezaab, director N. Chandra chose to be a bit different. ~ \ d b LIILI ~

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A blockbuster that created some kind of history for having presented Madhuri Dixit in her first sensuous song and dance number (Ek Do Teen), Tezaab tried to project violence as the high point of its story. The film was advertised as a violent love story, while the gory' underworld with its door-die cult of blood and gore was no longer a mere background to the drama. Instead, the all-pervasive deathwish becomes endemic to the story which sees the lovers attempting to unite beneath the shadow of death. Death comes in the form of Lotia Pathan (Kiran Kumar), the drug pedlar who has two grouses against the lovers. First he has to avenge the death of his brother who was killed in a shoot-out by the hero (Anil Kapoor) while attempting a bank heist. Second, he wants the girl (Madhuri Dixit), a vibrant dancer, to add colour and verve as a floor show girl in his den. Aiding him in his nefarious designs 'he girl's father (Anupam Kher) who views his daughter -

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Sunjay Dutt in Sadak

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by the girl's father and Raj ends his life in disgust. Presumably to be with his beloved beyond death. In Tezaab, director N. Chandra chose to be a bit different.

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Sunjay Dutt in Sadak

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as the proverbial goose with the golden egg. Naturally then, M u m a and Mohini can hardly manage to drool over each other and talk about the moon and the stars against such an incendiary backdrop. Death threats, abductions, explosions, attacks and counter-attacks form the core of this supposedly romantic tale. Again, in Sadak, it is the menacing sEtadow of Maharani (Sadashiv Amrapurkar), a psychotic eunuch that looms large over the lovers, Sanjay Dutt and Pooja Bhatt. Maharani runs a brothel in the backwaters of the big bad city. Pooja is just another sparkler in his illicit den and like all good pimps, he staunchly refuses to let go his bounty. Not even for the sake of love. So that the love tryst between the duo ends up as one long run for freedom, where the couple is constantly chased by the pimp and his henchmen. In Baaghi, it is Salman Khan and Naghma who must flee from the vicious clutches of Shakti Kapoor ,another brothel owner. Like Maharani, this kotheirclala too holds the brothel above all else and keeps his ill-gotten kingdom together by unleashing a reign of terror. The small town girl who comes to the city for a job ends u p in his dragnet and before she knows it, she is confined in an ill-lit boudoir that opens to let in fat, pot-bellied customers. Needless to say, she resists them tooth and nail and waits in the murky shadows for Prince Charming to arrive and set her free. Predictably, the Prince arrives, but before he can set her free, he must battle against the demons of society. This process of setting free is one of the focal points around which the drama of the prototypical love story is centred. The heroine is, by and large, the Cinderella or the Sleeping Beauty figure, while the hero wears the mantle of Prince Charming. Mahesh Bhatt's Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin (1992) recreates the myth in its entirety where Pooja Bhatt, the runaway heiress fantasizes about the princely stranger who will one

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day walk into her life on a white horse in the song sequence " 0 mere sapnon ke Saudagar, mujhe aisi jagah le chal." This film is however no exception to the rule. Almost all the successful love stories of the last two decades have rebuilt the stereotype of Prince Charming and Rapunzel. In QSQT, Juhi Chawla spots Aamir Khan for the first time through the lens of her camera. The hero emerges on a sylvan summit against the setting sun -the lone man who towers above the natural splendour of the locale. In Sadak, Sanjay Dutt emerges out of the shadows of the desolate street and sets Pooja Bhatt's caged birds free. Of course a metaphor, for he eventually sets her free too. In Baaghi, Salman Khan arrives at the door of the heroine's boudoir as it opens to let in the lustful customers. In Dil Hai Ki Manta Nal~in,Aamir Khan breezes into Pooja Bhatt's life, even as he hops into the crowded Bangalore bound bus. In Maine Pyar Kiya, Bhagyashree finds Salman Khan in the most unconventional place - the washroom where she has entered to change the towels. Nevertheless, it is this washroom encounter that changes her whole life. And intrinsic to the Prince Charming myth is the damsel-in-distress syndrome. The Prince is always delineated as the saviour who must save the Beauty from the clutches of the Beast. Thus, an inevitable part of the saviour's crusade is the heroine-as-victim bit. In 1919, D.W. Griffith made Brokeil Blossolrrs. The film which followed his monumental epics, The B~rthofA Nation and Intolerance, was hailed both as high art and as a progressive and emotionally moving statement against masculine brutality and racial prejudice. But Broken Rlossolr~sis important in the present discussion for the sexual politics that it establishes in its tender love story between Lucy, the young white girl and an immigrant Chinese man. Here was a film that revelled in all the precedents of the perfect love story. The girl Lucy (Lilian Gish), was the

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homes and chosen to build their own little haven, it is Aamir who brings in the moolah. That too as a mere construction worker, while Madhuri prefers to roll the dough

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in the cosy domesticity of her newly married life. So also in QSQT, where getting together a meal of baigan ka bharta and chapatfis for her beloved who is out 'hunting' for logs is the only preoccupation for an educated Juhi Chawla. In Maine Pyar Kiya, the hero has the experience of running the family business apart from possessing a business degree from the States. Nevertheless, when he is asked to prove his worth by earning a paltry sum of Rs 2000, he joins the local quarry and lifts stones to do the needful. Needles to say, the business degree has been buried as worthless by now. And Suman, who proudly declares in the earlier part of the film that she is a first divisioner, does not even think of sharing the economic burden with her beloved. Instead, she plays her 'rightful' role by knitting a sweater for her hardworking beau. Thus, despite the fiery aggression of the female in the first few reels, the power equations between the lovers in

the latter part eventually reinforces the stereotypes of the woman-as-a-consumer and man-as-a-provider. So much so, that even the modem sartorial image (minis, jeans, cholis, shorts) of the initial reels is abandoned by the heroine for the traditional sari and salwar kameez in the second half. Filmic love then firmly re-establishes the traditional gender equations in society. Not merely by recreating the traditional man-woman relationship, but by glorifying it too. A scenario where cooking chapattis conveniently becomes the raison n'2fre for the woman's life while all the affairs of the world are left for the man. Throwing light on this kind of sexual imbalance, Wilhem Fassbinder writes: "I am more convinced than ever that love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression. The ritual of romantic love, stereotyped by film demands a hierarchical order. One member of the couple, most often the male, takes control, the other plays a relatively passive role." The love stories of the post angry young man cinema served another important function too. Apart from reiterating and preserving the gender balance in an age that was being bowled over by sexual permissiveness, it pumped new life into the image of the traditional Indian woman. Despite her Westernized education, the heroine of the prototypical love story was no stickler for women's liberation. All the initial permissiveness is just superficial - to titillate and ensnare the hero. And once the hero is hers, the heroine promptly sheds the short slip for the sari. Suddenly from the truant college girl, she metamorphoses into the homespun hausfrau. Small wonder then, the perfect love story of the decade turns out to be H u m Aapke Hain Kaun (1994) followed by Uaine Pyar Kiya. Both the films scaled unprecedented heights at the box office in an age when cinema was strug-

Thus, despite the fiery aggression ot the female in tne first few reels, the power equations between the lovers in

Maine Pyar Kiya. Both the films scaled unprecedented heights at the box office in an age when cinema was strug-

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Aamir Khan and Madhuri Dixit in Dil

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gling in the stranglehold of video and the satellite invasion. Directed by Sooraj Ba jatya, both the films shifted the focus back to the 'bharatiya nari' in its characterization of Nisha

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Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit in H u m Aapke Hair1 Kaurz

(Madhuri Dixit) and Suman (Bhagyashree), the female protagonists. But with a slight difference. For both are sufficiently modern too. While Suman, a rural lass, is an Intermediate pass, Nisha, a small-town girl is a graduate in computers. No old-fashioned, backwater belles these two. Nevertheless, there is no unbridled Westernization in their value systems. The family, home, religion, society, decorum are the determinants of their behaviour. And all this worldly concern and reverence for familial welfare exists despite the overpowering 'individual' passion of love. Even the womanliness of the two girls is proved through their expertise with domestic chores, in the course of the film. While Suman excels at the overall task of housekeeping and is able to snatch a few clandestine moments of togetherness only in-between the kitchen chores (as in the song sequence, Aaja sham hone aayi), Nisha is the one who can

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cook the perfect hal7t7af unlike the more Westernized Jamuna who adds salt instead of sugar. The expression of love remains asexual and the duo are willing to sacrifice their feelings for the sake of the family. Suman returns meekly to her father's house when the elders express their disapproval of the match. It is Prem who rebels against his father's wishes and follows her to her parental homestead in Maine Pyar Kiya. In Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, both Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan are willing to forgo their love since the elders want Madhuri to marry Salman's elder brother. Obviously, sacrifice, obedience are more hallowed than personal gratification. The absence of eroticism is another determining factor of the relationship. Love, yes, but no sex: this seems to be the credo of this 'modern' love story. In case passion threatens to break the bounds of decency the lovers kiss across a cold glass wall, as in Maine Pyar Kiya. The hero (Govinda) looks askance at the suggestive foreplay of Karishma Kapoor in films like Dulaara and Raja Babu and relents only when she sheds her aggressive image. Hence, unlike its Hollywood counterpart, the Hindi film has treated love in its non-physical form - an emotion where a physical consummation of the relationship does not form an integral part of love. But most importantly, the love story of the 1990s has served its social purpose by transforming love as the strongest rebellion of all. In all these films, the lovers are an extremely angry lot, crying out against barriers of caste, class, community . And somewhere along, this sound and fury of the young lovers works as a safety valve. It channels the anger of the viewer and conveniently deflects it to apolitical issues. When love is the ultimate rebellion and the expression of love needs aggression, violence and dissent, why must anyone choose to rebel against those boring, unromantic inevitables of u n p l a ~ n e ddevelopment:

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unemployment, poverty, inequality? Thus there is a convenient transmutation of the slightly political angry man into the totally apolitical angry young lover, where love becomes the perfect safety valve for the discontent which might otherwise be brimming over.

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The Wild Cat and the Wimp

m a t is the most popular myth aboutHindi cinema?The one that insists that popular mainstream films treat their women as the 'side-hero' and relegate her to the traditional second sex status. Of course, there has been a surfeit of the weeping willow image in the garb of the sacrificial mother, the silly sister who invariably looms up as the potential rape victim, the villain's woolly-headed moll or the towering inferno's (Amitabh Bachchan) glamorous appendage. And the independent woman has largely surfaced as the female Bachchan clone: an aggressive avenging angel who is hell-bent on salvaging her outraged honour through guns and guile. Needless to say, this scorned fury is invariably cast in the mould of a Zakhmee Aurat or a Daku Hasina. But that is just the inglorious past. Cinema of the 1990s might have a million firsts to boast of. However, more than the genesis of the anti-hero (the Khalnayak) as the hero (Nayak), contemporary Hindi cinema stands out for its changing perspective on the prototypical celluloid woman. No longer a svelte second-hander who stands by for the

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traditional macho act, she is setting the pace, defining relationships and brazenly defying the questionable tag of all-body-no-brain that had clung to her, ever since Amitabh Bachchan had domed the mantle of the super hero in the 1970s.

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'old: Rati Agnihotri in Coolie, Zeenat Aman in Laawaris, Amrita Singh in Mard. But tha-t was then. Today, she may still be running round the trees in multicoloured micro-minis, waiting for Prince Charmings and Ramboesque Robin Hoods. But she no longer waits as a gullible little Red Riding Hood who can be swept off her feet by the first smart cookie. Or one who might fall for the wily charms of the big ' k -1 bad wolf. No, now she knows how to protect herself, I rarely prostrates herself and almost always asserts herself as a heady mix of body and brain. Suddenly, the 7 image has lost its I f '*, linear proporI tions. The heroine is no longer content to rest as the Zeenat Aman in Daku Haszr~a hero's accommodating moll. And even if she does, it has to be as the aggressively demanding, sexually assertive girl friend, an avenging angel in films like Khalnaika and Anlaam, who is determined to do away with anyone who dares to tamper with her state of well-being. She is transformed into the traditional housewife (Darnznl, Saajan ka Ghar) with equal ease. -_m-

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Puneet Issar and Dimple Kapadia i n Zakhlrzi Aurat

The heroine in Bachchan's blockbusters had always remained an afterthought. With the super hero always holding centre-stage, the camera rarely shifted its focus on to the fairer sex. And when it did, it always chose to treat the woman in relation to the larger-than-life man. Secondary to the plot, the heroine was cast either as the everpatient, forever understanding girl-in-the-shadows, as in Zanjeer (Jaya Bha.duri), Deewar (Parveen Babi), Trishul (Raakhee), Muqaddar ka Sikandar (Rekha), Sholay (Jaya Bhaduri), Shakti (Smita Patil) Agneepath (Madhavi). Or as the spoilt rich brat who needed a bit of 'manhandling' to cure her of her wanton feminine arrogance. Bachchan must set these errant ladies right and help them to return to the

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Rekha in Khoorr Bhari Maarzg

And when she is not looking after kith and kin, she is looking after the greatest good of the greatest number as in Tejasvani. Added to all this brawn business is the 'sexysexy' bit where she boldly declares in a popular song in Khuddar, sexy sexy sexy lnujhe log bolen' (People call me sexy sexy sexy) or invites the heroine in Haathkadi with a 'Let's make love, baby'. Yes, for the first time the Hindi film heroine begins to gleefully flaunt her sexuality on screen. So much so, that this time, it is the hero who is fighting shy of the oodles of oomph that cascade forth in the permissive behaviour of the fairer sex and simply tells her to "go to hell, baby" (Govinda in Haathkadi). Karishma Kapoor obviously stands out as the perfect prototype of this dazzling cousin of eve. Her sensual display in films like Khuddar, Raja Babu, Andaaz, Muqabla and Dulaara (1994) may have scandalized many, calling for a stricter implementation of the censor code. Nonetheless, in her wild, erotic display and her personal delight in her own 3 L 1 1~~~~

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physicality, the 'sexy-sexy' heroine symbolizes a coming of age of on-screen prudishness. Be it the wild vixen of Raja Babu, the la2 dupatte u~alis(Ritu Shivpuri and Raageshwari) and the raunchy rural belle (Shilpa Shirodkar) of Aankhen (1993)or the irresistible coquette who rakishly queries 'choli ke peechey kya hai in Khalnayak (1993), the hitherto bholi-bhali behenji (innocent maid) has overnight become aware of her sexuality. And moreover, she doesn't think twice before using it to ensnare and delight the hero. But unlike her Hollywood counterpart, this tantalizing blend of intelligence and eroticism is neither a Sharon Stone nor a Madonna who uses her physicality for libidinal purposes alone. For that flavour of Indianness, native film makers have intelligently added a suffix to all her sensual display. Interestingly, all these characters have a noble cause behind their alleged 'ignoble' acts. There was a sacrosanct motive behind the controversial choli ke peechey number itself. Madhuri Dixit throws off her constable's attire and dons the itsy-bitsy choli in order to seduce the terrorist (Sanjay Dutt) and bring him back to the hallowed portals of law. Simply because this would salvage the honour of her beloved Inspector Rama (Jackie Shroff) which had been jeopardized by the terrorist's jailbreak. "Main apne Rama ki rnaryada ke liye kuch bhi kar sakti hoon," she declares and enters the Khalnayak's lair with her seductive act. (I can do anything to protect and preserve the honour of my Rama.) Then, in Khuddar, the infamous 'sexy, sexy, sexy' number (later changed to 'baby, baby, baby' at the behest of the Censor Board) has Karishma Kapoor brazenly wiggling her bottom before the camera. But here too, the film maker has furnished a philanthropic motive to this saucy show. "I show off my thighs so that their legs may remain strong and covered," she fiercely declares to the dismissive cop (Govinda) who scoffs at her street-walker ways. The scorn-

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(Govinda) who scoffs at her street-walker ways. The scornfully departing Inspector turns back and lo! there beneath the fluttering tri-colour she stands: the short-skirted floor show girl, clustered around by her brood of hungry, halfclad orphans who have no one but Didi for succour. Naturally, the hard-boiled cynic is transformed into an awestricken admirer who ends up equating this 'Bharat ki beti' with the Bhagavad Gita. "Tum mein bhi ek Mahabharaf hai" (there is a Mahabharat in you too), he declares and reverently kisses her hands. Scorn has obviously been replaced by devotion. And now, for the rest of the film, this brazen girl who almost ended up as the star of a blue film (against her wishes of course), plays a sari clad, demure wife who doesn't step out of her husband's house. In Rajeev Rai's Mohra again, Raveena Tandon plays the seductress as a mere extension of the journalist's act. She uses her feminine charms, her half-open eyes, her alluring

Raveena Tandon and Akshay Kumar in Mohra

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pout actually to elicit information from intractable sources. Even the-popular 'tu cheez badi hai mast-masf number' with the rumbustious pelvic twist has a reason behind it. The journalist has graciously decided to play the irresistible snooper with the punctilious cop (Akshay Kumar) and help him ensnare the baddies. It is a mind-boggling mix of tradition and modernity that our film makers seem to have achieved of late. The emphasis of course, is on Indianness as opposed to absolute Westernization. And a perfect prototype of this modern Indian miss - one who is neither all-Indian nor all-Western can be found in Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. Both Bhagyashree in Maine Pyar Kiya and Madhuri Dixit in Huin Aapke Hain Kaun are god-fearing girls, adept at Indian dance and music, shelling peas, chopping vegetables, feeding the family and caring for kith and kin. All this, despite their education (Bhagyashree has completed her Intermediate and Madhuri is a graduate in computers), their modern sartorial sense and completely urbane looks. But unlike the Victorian image of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, tradition here does not stand as synonym for submissiveness. Not even for unwarranted coyness. For Bhagyashree, who even closes her eyes when her beau offers to rub Iodex on her sprained ankle, sets aside all false modesty and serenades him - in a bare-all evening gown - simply as an expression of her intense love. Juhi Chawla does it again in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleinan (1993), despite being a 'propah' bustee belle with the characteristic set of middle class morals. She does it for her sweet little Raju who has finally managed to fulfil his dreams in the big bad city of Bombay. Needless to say this partial abeyance of maidenly modesty is for love alone. The changing hues of the traditional wife find their greatest articulation in Indra Kumarrs Beta (1993). Saraswati (Madhuri Dixit) may be the devoted patni in the

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all her intelligence, guts and guile, she tries to outwit her Machiavellian mother-in-law (Aruna Irani) who wants her out of the familial homestead. No, unlike the earlier daughters-in-law of Hindi cinema, this one is not willing to drink the proverbial cup of poison or silently bear the cross for the sake of domestic peace. On the contrary, with her sharp intelligence and worldly wisdom, she plays a perfect foil to her dim-witted husband who is ill-equipped to handle both his personal and business interests. Her unconventional rebellion against her mother-in-law then becomes merely an observance of her wifely duties. Nevertheless, it does upset the sacrosanct hierarchy of the Indian family for a few reels of the film. In an age of dowry deaths, bride burning, torture and marital abuse, Saraswati stands out as the perfect answer to barbaric in-laws. Instead of giving in to familial violence and playing the sacrificial lamb, or simply walking out on an unsavory family, she opts for counter attack as her sole weapon of defense. The familiar stereotype of the dumb belle is gradually being corroded, even in the traditional image of the woman in love. Narrative fiction, be it the novel, cinema or drama, has usually painted the woman in love as the vulnerable waif, the damsel in distress or the sacrificial wailer. The contemporary film heroine however, seems to have a head over her shoulders, even in these parts. In Mahesh Bhatt's Aashiqui, the protagonist Anu (Anu Agarwal) plays the woman in distress to the hilt. An orphan, left in the care of an autocratic warden, she cringes at the very sight of an outsider and is willing to rest content in the dismal shadows of her confinement. But only until love beckons. Then, she flees the cage and cuts herself loose from the vicious warden's octopus-like hold. And once she's out, she urges her beau to enable her to stand on her own feet, instead of being totally dependent on his do-

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own feet, instead of being totally dependent on his dogooder friend for her upkeep. Soon, she becomes a top model who is all set to sail the high seas. Again, a new angle to the Cindrella myth here, where the Cindrella girl looks beyond Prince Charming and his white steed. Anu is no exception to the rule. In all the immensely popular love stories of the 1990s (Dil, Qayamat se Qaya~nat Tak, Tezaab), the women are equal partners in rebellion. For here, love is not roses and moonlit make-believe alone. Instead, it is a revolt against authority, class and caste barriers and destiny. And if the hero is on the run, he has the heroine by his side all through the two-man uprising. All the time, matching his guts, guile and gore. Almost like a man. The power of the traditional woman manifests itself in full glory in Raj Kumar Santoshi's Damini. A simple godfearing woman who would have been happier to lead her life within the confines of her husband's house, Damini (Meenakshi Sheshadri) suddenly decides to forgo everything for principles alone. She is willing to place everything - her husband, home and her family's reputation at stake so that truth and justice might prevail. Even a moist-eyed Juhi Chawla in Saajan Ka Ghar (1994) does manage to make a few pointed digs about the second sex status that a conventional woman has to undergo as a daughter, a wife and a bahu. The positive woman-as-crusader image that manifested itself in N. Chandra's Pra tighaat reaches fruition in Tejasvini, his remake of the Telugu hit Karthaz~yaln.Obviously inspired by the exploits of the woman cop, Kiran Bedi, the film has reportedly motivated thousands of girls in Andhra Pradesh to join the police force. In a traditionally maleoriented society, Tejasz)ini is the small-town girl who declares that her hands are not made to knead dough or wash utensils alone. Instead, they have the power to procure

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lands can only dream of .... From the beginning of time, _the female cycle has defined and confined woman's role. As Freud was credited with saying, 'anatomy is destiny'. Though no group of women has ever pushed these natural restrictions as far as the American woman, it seems that she cannot accept it with good grace."

justice for the meek. Trjasuani is the supercop who refuses to give u p her battle against injustice, oppression and crime despite the pressures from family, her superiors and the mafia. In fact, she refuses to give i n even when the bad guys reduce her into a physical wreck. Somewhere along the way with her gritty strong-arm tactics, she deals a crumbling blow to the defenseless damsel-in-distress image of the proverbial Indian woman. And then, the glittering coin turns over. Alas! there on the flip side is the counter-myth that lays bare the fettered freedom that has been won by the fairer sex over the years in popular cinema. Beyond the gloss and the glare of the image, the wildcat turns out to be a wimp and all that brouhaha about the brave new feminine breed turns out to be a mere chimera. During the 1960s when the feminist movement was sweeping across America and women were beginning to realize that 'Occupation: Housewife' was no occupation at all, Nrwsu)eek carried a cover story to find out what was wrong with American women that they could not accept their roles gracefully. An agitated mother of four lamented: "I've tried everything women are supposed to d o - hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbours, joining committees, running P.T.A. teas. I can d o it all and I like it, but it doesn't leave you anything to think about, any feeling of who you are ... I'm desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I'm a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bed-maker, somebody who can-be called on when you want something. But who am I?"' In answer to this, Ne7clsu)eek categorically declared: 1. Betty Friedan, T l ~ eFertlitlitle Mystiq~re(Pelican, 1983), p. 19

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It then went on to quote a 'happy' housewife who asserted: "We ought to salute the wonderful freedom we all have and be proud of our lives. I have had college and I have worked, but being a housewife is the most rewarding and satisfying role .... My mother w a s never included in m y father's business affairs ...she couldn't get out of the house and away from the children. But I am an Equal to my husband. I can go along with him on business and to social business affairs."

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Contemporary Hindi cinema has, by and large, resounded a similar echo in its delineation of the heroine. Over the years, it has tried to d o what the article in Nmls7clerk did to the feminist movement: subvert the very basis for existence, by presenting the counter-image of the woman who was happy with small mercies vis-a-vis the woman with no mercy. For despite the daring outfits, the bohemian air, the Hindi film heroine has just one burning ambition: to comfortably fall into the pre-determined slot of the housewife heroine. When it comes to doctors, engineers, corporate decision makers, politicians, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs or innovators, there seems to be an exclusive all-male preserve here. In 1993, when a popular advertisement listed the career options for women as banking, finance, law, marketing,

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And how? For now, she has given up her factory, her house and rests content as the gajra-clad wife of a worker who packs the tiffin for her husband and coyly pleads:

who packs the tiffin for her husband and coyly pleads: please come home early this evening. Needless to say the husband has now moved from the rank of the blue collai. to the white-collared status. He is now the owner-manager of his wife's company. Laadla thus restores the traditional gender balance once again: the man brings in the lnoolah and attends to the men's business outdoors while the woman manages the home indoors. What about all that education, experience and acumen? Of course the former corporate queen would use it, but now as a mother and a wife, the film maker might contend. Wouldn't she then be reduced to the two-headed schizophrenic who, having once written a paper on liberalization and macro economics, today writes notes to the milkman? Wouldn't a day which was once spent in boardrooms, making hard-headed decisions and devising business strategies, now look like an old Marx Brother's comedy? One where the female protagonist begins by washing the dishes, rushing the older children off to school, dashing out into the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, get the lunch done, sew or mend while the children nap, then cook supper and wash dishes while the husband watches TV and finally go to bed with the gnawing realization that very little of what she had done was necessary or important. Would she then not tear her hair, scream and eventually end up on the head-shrink's couch? The film maker chooses not to know. So does the viewer. For the film fortunately ends on a 'and-they-lived-happily-ever-after' note. At the height of the Women's Liberation movement, the red book kmrnented: "Few women would want to thumb their noses at husbands, children and community and go off on their own. Those who do may be talented individuals, but they rarely are successful women." In the turbulent

house and rests content as the gajra-clad wife of a worker who packs the tiffin for her husband and coyly pleads:

orr on meir own. lnose wno ao may be talented lndivlduals, but they rarely are successful women." In the turbulent

aviation, journalism, chartered accountancy (all this apart from the teachers, doctors, engineers, administrators), there came a film like Laadla. This was the most damaging of them all. A supposedly heroine-oriented film that ended up essentially as a battle of the sexes where victory is preordained. Instead of refurbishing the image of the independent, intelligent woman (a hard-to-deny reality in today's society), the film strongly indicts it. Sridevi, a pioneering industrialist, prefers to remain unmarried until she can find a man who matches her intellect, drive, status - until she meets Anil Kapoor, a worker in her factory, who scoffs at her arrogance and declares: "you may be number one in everything, but as a woman, you are a big zero." A few slaps later, she ends up as the number one woman too.

Raveena Tandon and Sridevi in Laadla

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above all else, divorce rates are spiralling up, single women are becoming the norm, films like Laadlrl and Beta choose to act as marriage counsellor and set the gender balance right once again. In both the films, the women are more intelligent than the men, but intelligence is of no concern here. Traditional roles are more important and according to these role models, a woman is best when she flowers within the four walls of the home. Yes, Hindi cinema has never outgrown Freud and doggedly insist that anatomy for the heroine is destiny. An anatomy which has destined for her those glorious roles of the mother-provider or the better-half wife. Brta perfectly enunciates the ideal in both the roles of the mother and the wife. If Saraswati, on the one hand, is more intelligent, more educated and better qualified than her yokel husband (Anil Kapoor), it really does not matter. For Saraswati believes there is a mismatch the other way round. "Kazcn

kehta hai ~ 1 1 0 ?tierr layak nahitr hair?. Such to yrh ha1 ki ~irairihi urzke layak rialiin hoon," she declares (who says he is not worthy of me, the truth is that I am not worthy of him). The mother (ArunaJrani) on her part, begins by plotting against her son and daughter-in-law in order to retain her stranglehold on the property and the family. However, at the end of all the melodrama and subterfuge, she holds her dying stepson to her bosom and repents: M a slinbd ki hatya

hog; aur hntyarin hog; lirain - ek vra. Karkryi ire to aplie Rmir ko 14 sal ka zinnz~asdiya tlra, inagar lirainr to apne Rairr ko ~riaut hi de di ... (The word mother will be murdered and I, a mother, will be a murderer. Kaikeyi sent her son, Rama to exile for 14 years but I have sent my Rama to death itself.) After this soulful lament, her poisoned son naturally rises. For, as he insists, " M a ki vralnta zahar ko bhr doodh baira deti hai." ( A mother's love transform poison into milk too.) So much for glorified motherhood! Ironically, in all these changing images, the antipathy to

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Ironically, in all these changing images, the antipathy to the modern woman still remains. Anything ostentatiously urban and Western as opposed to the Oriental and Indian is held suspect, both by the film makers and the cinegoers. The mini-skirted, cigarette smoking siren in the off-shoulder gown who throws herself on the hero is immoral, loose and un-Indian too. The success of Maine Pyar Kiya lies partly in the juxtaposition of Suman (Bhagyashree), the prototypical bharatiya kanya against Seema (Parvez Dastur) the icon for the 'videshi' (Westernized) vamp. Seema with her seductive air, her daring sartorial sense and her permed hair must bear the brunt of everyone's scorn. So what if she has a sharp business sense and helps in running the family business? She is no match for sweet little Suman with her oiled plaits, crumpled salwar kameez, Relaxo rubber chappals, accompanied by a First division in Intermediate. In case, there is an iota of doubt, Prem (Salman Khan), the Prince Charming dispels them all. Announcing his intention to marry, he tells his mother he wants to marry a young, modern girl. He then begins to describe her: "M17, ladki 7uoh 110 jo salzoar kalneez, churidar kahlii na ~wlirir,sitf jratis, midis, irrinis jlrhiie, jiske baa1 bilkul bade iza

lro, chotr-chotr, bob cut ho, jo wr711y sexy ho, yell ho, ~ 1 o hho, atoln ho7trb ho ..." (Mother, the girl should not wear salwar kameez and churidar, only jeans, midis, minis; whose hair should be short, in a bob cut, who is really sexy, who is this, that, an atom bomb ...) The mother merely smiles and dismisses the puerile fantasy as a boyish prank. For according to her, such an 'atom bomb' would not be able to shell peas, d o the housework and adjust with the young and the old in the family. "Lrkrn aisr ladkr ghar ka kaalrr tlzodr na karrgi, irratar

thodr iiu chrrlrgi, Dadolr ki izzat, choton se pyar, huiir ulnroil se upnapall, yrh sat] g u n k a / , , - ~hongr uslire ... Needless to say, Prem agrees'and Seema loses him to the homely Suman. As happens whenever the traditional Jane is pitted against

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And it happened to Amrita Singh as the hard-as-nails businesswoman in Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and the ambitious model in Aaina who lost out to the unambitious gentle, unambitious, domesticated Juhi Chawla. In Aaina, Amrita, the elder sister is actually in love with the successful businessman (Jackie Shroff).Nevertheless, love for her is not the summum bonum of her existence and she dreams of setting up a career as a model before settling down to domesticity. Neither her family nor the film maker can understand her. They treat her natural ambitions as something totally unnatural and unacceptable.

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Shahrukh Khan and Amrita Singh i n Raju Ball Gayaa Ge~rtlernari

On the eve of her wedding, the would-have-been-model wonders why she cannot postpone her marriage for a few months.For at this point of time, when she is poised at the threshold of an exciting career as a model and a film star, marriage to her seems a liability. She describes it as the 'end

threshold of an exciting career as a model anh a film star, marriage to her seems a liability. She describes it as the 'end

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marriage to her seems a liability. She describes it as the 'end of the road' and cries out against the standard rituals and customs. "Wahi laal joda, n~ahisaat phere, zuahi rasme ...sab kuch itna traditional, ifna routine lag raha hai" (the same red bridal gown, the very same customs, rituals ...everything seems so traditional, so routine), bemoans the bride-to-be. Obviously, the younger sister looks askance at such iconoclasm and knows that her sister is wrong. For, tradition, she insists, can never be wrong. This is a lesson which the ambitious young woman soon learns too. For the modelling assignment for which she deserts her fiance turns out to be a tryst with the big bad wolf and the prodigal sheepishly longs to return to the fold: back to the family and the fiance. Only, the family has by now turned its back on her for injuring its honour and the fiance has discarded her as the evil eve. He has comfortably opted for the totally traditional younger sister who luckily has no ambitions other than being a good wife and a good mother. Naturally, no one thought of combining the two: marriage and a modelling career, whereby the elder sister need not have ended up as the black sheep. According to Sudhir Kakar, for both men and women in Indian society, the ideal woman is personified by Sita, the quintessence of wifely devotion. According to this myth, perpetuated by popular cinema, a good wife is by definition, a good woman. And the duties of this 'good wife' are clearly enunciated by Sita, the heroine of the Ra~nayana where she eloquently lays down the dharma of an Indian wife while emphasizing her decision to share her husband's fate: "For a woman, it is not her father, her son, nor her mother, friends nor her own self, but the husband who in this world and the next is ever her sole means of salvation. If thou dost enter the impenwho in this world and the next is ever her sole means of salvation. If thou dost enter the impen-

precede thee on foot, treading on the spikj. Kusha grass. In truth, whether it be in the palaces, in chariots or in heaven, wherever the shadow of the feet of her consort falls, it must be follo~ved."~ The series of traditional Indian myths and legends that have tried to mould the character and behaviour of the Indian woman are all mirrored in the Hindi film in its characterization of the heroine. A married woman's duties have been clearly described in Draupadi's (the wife of the Pandavas) adlrice to Satyabhama, Lord Krishna's wife in the Maliabhnrafa:

I "Keeping aside vanity, and controlling desire and wrath, I always serve with devotion t 1 1 ~ sons of Pandu with their wives. Restraining jealoilsy, with deep devotion of heart, without a sense of dcgradation at the serlrices I perform, I w'lit upon rny husbands ...celestial, or man or Gnndharva, yoiing or decked with ornaments, wealthy or comely of person, none else my heart liketh. I ne1.t.r b'lthe or eat or sleep till he, that is my husband, hat11 bathed or eaten or slept..."' This has been the ideal that elrery Hindi film heroine has sought to achieve since the beginning of cinema. Itarel); have there been any digressions from this \.ision of the woman-as-wife image that denies the existence of all other images. And anyone ivho digresses is ine\ritaL31y classified as the vamp in cinematographic iconography. The nlodern woman has been presented as the vamp since the days of Shashikala, Helen, Rindu. But ivith the onrush of modern-

2. S u d h i r Kakknr, Tllt~1rlrrc.r World (Oxford Unitwsity J'ress, l q i i l ) , p. 65 3. Ibid, pp. 67-68

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Shashikala, Helen, Hindu. Hut lvilh thc' o n r u s l ~of modcrnism in the.-post-Zc~natAman c.r;i (t3l7er since her delineation I ~ ~ )makers , also of the junkie in Hnrr Rnlllii 1lar.t~K Y / ~ / I ? film took i t upon themsel\res to In:. do\vn in black and white, the pitfalls of this unbridled slvii:g tolt~ardsthe West. In K(lclr1 Kali, there is Madhu, a rnodern college girl, lv11i) lol'es to hoogev at the discotheque and dream; she hates those con~rnonplacechores like cooking, cleaning, househer liberal brother and frowned keeping. Encouraged h j ~ she spends her time. innoupon by her traditional bl~nl~lir, centl\l partying lvith friends. Almost liktt the bright, y o u i ~ g collc.ge-goor next door. Rut alas! Bliabhi ..ras right all along. For there beyond the 1,aksllman-rekhn of the. traditional sanctum sanctorurn lurk the big bad wolves. The gullible maid is Lwguiled to act in a L~li~e film, sold in a L~rothel, tortured, l v l ~ i p p c d a n d stripped. Merely because s h e lva11tc.d to let hc>rhair dolvn and ha\rc. some fun. The image of the Kaclii Kali appears time 'ind again to highlight this conflict L3c.tween traditio~land inc~dc3rnity.Also, to scr1.e as a warning ~ r i t ha strident '13ccvare1 t c ~anyone w h o dares to c ) L > ~for i l l o d e r ~ ~ i s ~ n . Modernism, as the p(1pi11;lr~ i n ~ l l i a t idiolll ic lvould define. i t , 1it.s in a c1laractc.r like Nisha, the protagonist of I l l i t 1 1 A n l ~ k rHnirl Kcliri. Nniv Nisha, and bred in the age of I'epsi cllld Coke is a perfect amalgam of the east and the itrest. A gradc~atein compclteronics, she molres around on rol1t.r skates and lil~eson ict)-cream and chocolates. Nevertheless, she is adept at the folk and classical dances and is \veil-1.ersed in traditional rituals and customs. But over and alwvc all this, she is \villing to hold family honour and familial hierarchy a b o l ~ eall else. E\.en abo1.e love. When the family lvants her to marry her dead sister's husband she>proillp11y agrees. Despite thc fact that she has sptmt almost tivo and 1' half hours serenading and being serenaded by thc: brother-in-laiv. 1

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exception to the rule. It is only in an extreme situation of duress that a woman is allowed to call the shots. Mostly as the angel of doom in Insaaj Ka Tarazu, Zakhmee Aurat, Phool Bane Angaarey, Khoon Bhari Maang, Anjaaln and the like. Here the heroine has either lost her honour or her family and is consequently de-sexed for the sake of vengeance. She must necessarily lose out on normalcy normal family relationships, the normal business of life and be more than a woman. A devi, in short, where she is shown as an incarnate of 1 Durga, Kali, Chandi. In Rahul i ---nRawail's Anjaa~n, I . . rn Shivani (Madhuri

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Dixit) loses her husband, daughter, her . . r.. nborn child and eedom a t the h a n d s of a demented lover (Shah Rukh Khan). But before she sets out to wreak vengeance she declares to her prison mate: "Ek aurat agar daya Rekha in Phool Barre A~tgaarey ma~nfa seene men rakhti hai to nafrat ki ju~ala blii. Aurat agar ma bankar zindagi de bhi sakti hai to Chandi hankar zindagi le bhi sakti hai ...sansar ne aurat ko ma behan beti ke roop mein dekha hai, magar Chandi ke roop mein nahin dekha ..." (If a woman hides the treasures of pity and motherliness in her heart, she also nurtures a cauldron of hate within. If a woman can impart life as a mother, she can also take life as Chandi, the goddess of death .... The .#.

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hate within. If a woman can impart life as a mother, she can also take life as Chandi, the goddess of death .... The

The Wild Cnt nnd thc Wimp

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can also take life as Chandi, the goddess of death .... The world has seen woman as a mother, sister and daughter, never as Chandi.) She then meticulously kills the molester with the holy trident. As does Lakshmi (Sujata Mehta) in Pratighaat and Rekha in Phool Bane Angaarey. All of them being incarnates of destructive goddesses and far removed from the plane of the ordinary, angry woman. Even a film like Tejas71ani which tries to project the positive image of the Indian woman, meticulously reiterates this de-womanised version of the super-heroine. Tejasvini (Vijay Shanti) in her khakhi cop's uniform, her fiery lingo and burning passion for justice, has had to forego everything that an average intelligent woman would want for an integrated life. She drifts apart from her family, incurs their wrath, has no time for love and ends up venerated, albeit lonely. Now how many women would like to substitute the pleasures of home and hearth with a clinical khakhi uniform and a handful of arid principles and a career? Obviously, here commitment to abstract causes and a complete woman cannot go together, our film makers would like to have us believe. Nevertheless with so much of manhandling, the image of the independent woman does occasionally raise its head in cinema. Shabana Azmi in Arfh, Smita Patil in Sl~bah, Sridevi in Lamhe and Meenakshi Sheshadri in Dnl~iniare some of the rebels who dare to wield the mantle of independent, intelligent womanhood. For if Shabana prefers to discover her own identity, rather than return to a husband who had deserted her for the other woman, Smita Patil chooses career over husband and home in Subah. In Lmnhe, Sridevi breaks all conventions by falling in love with a man who loved her mother and in Damini, Meenakshi manages to bring to life a self-righteous, principled, courageous woman - all within the traditional parameters. For woman - all wltnin tne traaitlonal parameters. bor

cated wife who would have found meaning in life cooking sang for her husband (Rishi Kapoor) if she had not witnessed the gory rape of the family maid. Then, for the sake of 'truth and justice, she is willing to forego everything: home, family, domestic peace. Mnin kya karoon, Innin turnhari p n t ~ hoon, i magar is ghar mein paap hztn hni, main yrh kaise bhotll jaoon. Tuln hi lrlujhe sikhao kis tarah upne zaineer ko maara jaafn hai (What should I do, I am your wife, but a sin has been committed in this house, how can I forget it? Teach me how am I supposed to murder my conscience), she pleads to her distraught husband who would like her to forget the unsavoury incident for the sake of familial honour and peace. Eventually, when reason, threats, emotional blackmail fail, he gives u p with the sad realization that his wife happens to love truth more than him (Diiklt ki baat yell hai ki tumhare liye nlerr pyar sr badllkar Id11 a l l y cheezen Itill). Sadly, it is only rarely that we come across a Da?nini who places principles over pati. Protagonists like these are too few and far between to become the rule rather than the exceptioil. Nevertheless, the metamorphosis has begun, if only on the surface; the changing face of the woman does signify a heartening trend: the Hindi film heroine is almost ready to xvalk out of her strait jacket and stop being the mere wind beneath the hero's wing. If only the film makers would let her get more attuned to reality...

Index Anr~kller~,103 Anslziy~ti,2, 93, 106 Antisll, 82 Anrclnrn, 72 Academy of Motion Pict~rre Arts and Sciences, 62; Awards 63 Aggarwal, Anu, 93, 106 A g ~ c e p n t l ~36, , 42, 52, 81, 100 Agnihotri, Atul, 82 Agnihotri, Rati, 19, 101 Aknyln, 2, 47 Akshay Kumar, 6-1, 105 Alger, Horatio, 48 Allen, Woody, 26 American Print Media, 5 Amherst College, 58 Amrap~lrkar,Sadashi~;13, 90 Alidnaz, 102 Atignnr, 64 Al~jnnrrr, 54, 75-82, 101, 119 Artll, 119 A r ~ l n aIranl, 106, 112 Ashok K ~ r m a rsee G a n g ~ ~ l i , Ashok Kumar Allto Shankar, 3 Azmi, Shabana, 119

Bnngl~i,90, 93 Bnnzigar, 3, 54, 75, 77, 79-82 Babri Masjid, 9, 16 Bachchan, Amitabh, 2, 19-22, 30-56, 74, 85, 100-01 Baldwn, Alec, 26 Bnrldit Q i i e o ~ ,64 Barjatya, Sooraj, 3, 96 Bassinger Kim, 26 Bates, Kathy, 63 Beatty, Warren, 63 Bedi, Kiran, 107 Befn, 105, 112 Bhaduri, Jaya, 100 Bhagyashree, 91, 96, 105, 113 Bhatt, Mahesh, 90, 106 Bhatt, Pooja, 90-91 Bindu, 27, 116 Birth of n Nntiorl, 91 Bor~ibny,9-12 Bombay Riots, 9, 15, 17 Brady, Ian, 78 Bright E!/t.s, 8 Broke12 Blossotris, 92-93 Brook, Mel, 64 Biigsy, 63 Caan, James, 63

Index Cameron, Deborah, 79-80 Cnpe Fmr, 63 Capra, Frank, 61-62 Chaddha, Sahila, 27 Chandni, 87 Chandra, N., 22, 85, 88, 107 Charan Raj, 23 Chawla, Juhi, 80, 87, 91, 94-95, 105, 107, 114 Chinoy, Ely, 49-50 Chopra, Yash, 3, 39-40 Claitde Van Damme, Jean, 64 Collins, Norman, 79 Coolie, 19-21, 36, 44-45, 47, 50, 101 Cooper, Gary, 63 Crisp, Donald, 92-93 Clirly Toy, 8

Dilip Kumar, 12, 18, 38 Dixit, Madhuri, 75, 89, 93-94, 96-97, 103, 118 Dobson, James C., 61 Douglas, Michael, 26 Dulnnrn, 97, 102 Dutt, Nargis, 73-74 Dutt, Sanjay, 55, 64-65, 82, 90-91, 103

Dnkri Hnsirln, 64, 99 Dnriiiiii, 101, 107, 119-120 Danny, srt7 Denzogappa, Danny Dnrr., 3, 54, 75, 77, 79-81 Dastur, Parvez, 27, 113 Davis, Geena, 26 d e Niro, Robert, 63-64 Drcrizwf, 25 Drt~clnr,37-38, 42, 44-45, 47, 51-52, 54, 72, 81, 100 Dernme, Jonathan, 03 Denzig, 9 Denzogappa, Danny, 88 Deol, Dharmendra, 37, 51 Desai, Manmohan, 20, 49 Dev Anand, 18 Devgan, Ajay, 3, 64 Dharmendra set. Deol, Dharmendra Dhawan, David, 3 Dil, 2, 93, 107 Dil Hni Ki M n ~ r f nNnlitri, 2, 90-91

Gnilgn ]nirllirrn Snrnsulnti, 2 Ganguli, Ashok Kumar, 72-73 Garbo, Greta, 63 Ghai, Subhash, 3, 12, 65-66, 71 G l ~ n rDstnr, 26 Gllnr Ek Mnrldir, 26 Gllnr G l ~ n rKi Knlmtli, 26 Glrnr Kn S ~ i k l ~26, Ghnr Snilsnr, 26 Gish, Lilian, 91 Good Fellns, 63 Govinda, 97, 103 Great Depression, period of, 5, 9 Griffith, D.W., 91

Eckart, Charles, 7-8 E 7 ~ 1Kiiimel, 47 Farber, Stephen, 62 Fassbinder, Wilhem, 95 Fis11t.r Kiiig, 63 Foster, Jodie, 62 Francois, Donatien Alphonse, 77 Frazer, Elizabeth, 77-78

Hnrz Riirlln Hnrr Krislrrln, 117 Hasanbegovic, Jus~tf,29, 31 Hntlrkndl, 102 Hatthangadi, Rohini, 81 Hawn, Goldie, 25 Heard, John, 25 Helen, 116

Hepburn, Katherine, 63 Hitler, 9 Hoover, 6-7 Hopkins, Anthony, 62-64 H u m Anpke Hoirl Knun, 3, 27, 95, 97, 105, 117 Indra Kumar, 105 Iizdrnjeet , 2, 47 lrlq~tilnnb,2i-22, 36, 51 111snnf Kn T n m z ~ i ,118 lilto[ern?lce, 91 Irani, Ar~tnasee Ar~tnaIrani Irons, Jeremy, 63 It Happerled Oile Night, 62

Indligar, 2 Jean Claude Van Demme see Claude Van Demme, Jean Johnson, Junior, 48, 50 I~iveilile Violerlce 111 A Witlrrer Loser Cultlirc, 58 Knbhie-Knbhle, 38-39 KncI~cl~i Knli, 117 Knharli Plloolvnti KI, 64 Kakar, Sudhir, 24, 115 Kajol, 80 K d n Pntthnr, 47 Knli Gnilgn, 64 Kapoor, Anil, 69-70, 89, 110, 112 Kapoor, Karishrna, 97, 102-103 Kapoor, Pankaj, 14 Kapoor, Raj, 18, 23, 38, 72-73 Kapoor, Rishi, 120 Kapoor, Shakti, 90, 111 Kapoor, Shammi, 18, 38, 84 Kapoor, Shashi, 38, 40, 8: Kapoor, Shekhar, 12, 64-65 Knrnil Arjrril, 3 Knrrnn, 12

Knrtlmu!/niir, 107 Kasurnovic, Denis, 29 Klinlrmrkn, 101 Kl~alrrnynk,3, 54-55, 65-69, 72, 76-78, 82, 103 Khan, Aamir, 86, 92, 95 Khan, Amjad, 50 Khan, Kader, 21 Khan, Mansoor, 2-3, 86 Khan, Salman, 3, 87, 90-91, 113, 118 Khan, Shah Rukh, 3, 64, 76-77, 80-81, 119 Kher, Anupam, 12, 89 Khooil Blrnri Mnnilg, 118 Khliddnr, 102-03 Kiran Kumar, 89 Kisrrlet, 72-73 Klienhans, Chuck, 47-48 Knievel, Evel, 47, 49 Koirala, Manisha, 10 Krnrltiveer, 13, 15-16 h n d l n , 110-12 Lnnulnris, 101 Lntrlhr, 119 Lnst Ari~ericnr~Hero, The, 48 Lector, Hamibal, 63, 65, 78 Letllnl Wenpoll, 64 Littlt, Miss Mnker, 8 Littlest Rebel, Tlre, 8 Madhavi, 100 Mailer, Norman, 78-79 Mnirir P!/nr Ki!/n, 2, 27, 91, 94-95, 97, 105, 113 Malini, Hema, 37 Mani Ratnam, 9-10, 13 Manson, Charles, 77 Mnrd, 37, 47, 101 Mnrryi!rg Mnrr, 27

hfayer, Louis U.,7 Medveii, hlichael, 24 Mehta, Harshad, 59 Mehta, Sujata, 22-23, 119 Mehul Kumar, 13 Milder, Betty, 26 Misc>ry, 63 Mollrn, 104 Mr. lildin, 12 Mltqitllln, 102 Mitqndililr k'il Siknrldilr, 39, 40, 45, 100 Mussolini, 9 Naghma, 90 Nnriie Ahozle Tlle Tlflr, The, 61 N a r g ~ ssrc, Dutt, Nargls Nnseeb, 45-47 Nnt~lrnl Borrl Klllers, 57-58, 77 Nolte, N ~ c k ,63 N o r r ~ s ,Chuck, 64 N ~ l r e m b e r gParty rally, 8

Orie Flc~c,O i l ~ rflie Citckoo's Xc~st, 62 Our Little Girl, 7

Pnriililr, 26 Panreen Babi, 38, 85, 100 Patekar, Nana, 3, 16 Prlti Plltli: Alrr Woli. 26 Patil, Smita, 100, 119 Pesci, Joe, 63 Plrc~ol Billie Ai1~11!7rty, 118-19 Phoolan Devi, 60, 64 Poor. L i f f l r Ric-11 G:rl, S Pran, 88 Pn~tigllilnt,23-23, 107, 119 1'r-irii c, ( ~ Tidt>s, t 7'/rl,,63 PLITI,,\mrish, 13

Qil!/!l~iiiltSt, Qn!jil~iri~t Tilk, 2 . 87-86,

Siroliiy, 37-38, 46, 51-52, 68,

91, 93-94, 107 Raasesh\\rari, 103 Iiaaj Kumar, 18 Rai, Rajeev, 104 Rill" Biibrt, 98, 102-iJ? Rajendra Kumar, 18, 39, 84 Rqil B1111 GII!/IIG ( J I I ~ ~ ~10.5, ~ I I114 I~I~I, Iiakhee, 39-41, 1111 Rilrri Li~klii~rl, 69-73 Rilt~iil!jt~i~i~, 7'111,~71 ~ ~ 1 ~ 1& 1~~0, Rawail, Rahul, 118 Rekha, 41, 101, 119' l i ( ~ t ' r ~~f 1 Forfilrit: Tilt', 63 hefenstahl, Leni, 9 Roberts, Julia, 26 Rojil, 13, 15 Ro); Nirupa, 67

37-38, 101 Shroff Jackie, 65-66, 103, 114 Sil~-iic-t, qf tlic Lnrirlls, Tlic., 63-65, 78 Silsilii, 38 Singh, :\rnrlta, 101, 114 S ~ ~ , I , /h'~t11 T ~ I I1 ~1 1 ~Ei~crii!/, ~ 27 Sri 1.20,24, 73-76 Sridei~i,110, 119 Stallone, S y l ~ ~ e s t o64 r, Stewart, Jimmy, 63 Stone, Oliver, 56-57 Sttl~iil~, 119 Suteliffe, Peter, 77 Sicamy, A n s i n d , 10, 74 Szc~t~ry, 27

Sniljnrl k'il Gllnr, 27, 107 Sndnk, 65, 90-91, 93 Sadhna, 84 Saira Bano, 84 Salim Jal'ed, 49 Snriilri~ B(v.onfil, 2, 86-88 Sanjeev Kumar, 37, 52 Santoshi, Raj Kumar, 107 Sarat, Austin, 59 Sic~ries Frorrr il M i ~ l l ,25 Sch~varzennegar,Arnold, 64 Seagal, Steven, 64 Sl~i~lit~it~li~iir, 35-37 Sliiikti, 1011 Sharma, Anil, 13 5 h ~ s h l h n l a ,116 i l ~ i ,D,'i.il, 26 Sheshaciri, Meenahshi, 707, 119 Shetty, Su~xil,64 Slxiioiihar, Shilpa, 1 O? Sllivpuri, Ritu, 103

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Tnlinlk11, 12 Tally, Ted, 62 Tandon, Raveena, 104 Tanuja, 82

Tr~i7sz~i~rii, 1112, 107, 119 Temple, Shirley, 7-9, 24 Pzi71711, 2, 86, 89-91), '13, 107 T11c~1111i7 nild L L I I I I S26 , T~rilr~gn, 13 Toofilii, 2 Tr15111i1,39, 100 Triilrr~pl~ of tilt' Will, 9 T ~ ~ r n eKathleen, r, 25 Vijaya Shanti, 119 Villain, 50

Wilr of f l ~ eRoses, Tllr, 25 Warner, Jack, 7 Williams, Robin, 63 Wilson, Colin, 77 Znkl~rrreeA ~ t r n f 99, , 118 Znrileer, 2, 19, 37-38, 40-43, 15, 47, 50, 54, 79, 100 Zeenat Aman, 86, 101, 116