Aarey Milk Colony was envisioned in 1949 by Dara Nusserwanji Khurody (winner of 1963 Ramon Magsaysay Award with Dr Verghese Kurien) and inaugurated with the planting of a sapling by the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. Over the decades, it has grown to be one of Mumbai’s most cherished lung spaces. Weeks before the powers that be decided that Aarey was not a forest and so could be plundered to make way for a Metro shed, Dada Saheb Phalke awardee and Maha Nayak Amitabh Bachchan and the cheerleader of all government initiatives, Akshay Kumar sneakily tweeted about the benefits of the Metro service.
Bachchan even advised people to plant trees like he had in his own garden! Because one of Mumbai’s last surviving, rich with bio-diversity zones can be compared to his flourishing, private garden. Both actors conveniently did not remember that the citizen protests were not against the Metro or tree planting drives elsewhere but the logic of destroying, yes, a living forest, to build a shed.
Over the last two days, the axe has fallen not just on hundreds of mature trees but protesting citizens have also been roughed up and arrested. Makes you wonder, does it not, if celebrities who climb on popular bandwagons to endorse the indefensible ever pause to think? That by misusing their equity, they are tainting not just their own artistic legacy for posterity but also hurting those who helped them create it?
This legacy is not created by juries who give them awards but the millions who idolise them, line up to buy tickets to see their films, travel for long distances despite penury to catch a glimpse of them. But then given just how many successful and not so successful actors are now labelling their own dissenting colleagues as “anti-national” and an FIR has been filed against globally respected cinematic legends like Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Shyam Benegal and Aparna Sen among others for just expressing concern over the increasing incidents of lynching, may be short term rewards are far more tempting than long term benefits. And so who cares what the collateral damage is as long as another accolade can be scooped up by being on the right side of power?
The Aarey incident reminded me of Nishrin Jafri Hussain whose septuagenerian father Ehsan Jafri was brutally killed by a mob during the 2002 Gulbarg Society massacre in Ahmedabad. On her page, she occasionally shares moments from her wonder years because they don’t hurt as much as the others. Like the memory of Jetun bibi who was one of the lucky few who could begin a new life some place else. Jetun chachi in a more innocent time, cradled close to her heart, a little box. Its assorted treasures included many pictures of Amitabh Bachchan. ‘Lambu’, she lovingly called him. In her head, perhaps she associated him with the idea of an India where angry young men did not stand by when a helpless fellow human-being was being lynched or wronged but stood up to fight for truth and justice.
Like Bachchan’s Vijay did in so many career defining films in the seventies. At a time when citizens like her are once again being hemmed in by hate and are being told that they are not Indian enough and will be exterminated like termite, the booming voice of her favourite actor is silent. There are a few others who do speak out but their platforms are not big enough to challenge the status quo.
Yes, Jetun chachi survived but her idea of India perhaps did not. She also possibly knows in retrospect that on- screen heroism should not be confused with reality. But it is easy to see why she loved Bachchan so much. All of us did. On the shoulders of characters primarily created by Salim Javed and Kadar Khan, Amitabh Bachchan stood tall to become the “lambu,” the country came to look up to and love unreasonably, selflessly.
His Vijay held on to Billa number 786 for dear life in Deewar, his Johnny sang “Allah, Jesus, Ram hain mere” in Naseeb, he was the devout humanist Iqbal in Coolie. He was the dock worker standing up to ‘hafta vasooli’ gangs. The impassioned police officer going after the biggest baddie in town in Zanjeer. The coal miner who made pain his destiny because he could not live with his damning conscience anymore in Kala Patthar. He was a purveyor of our anger. Our angst. He was our rebel. Our hero. He was a ‘desh premi’ who advocated secularism and sang, “aapas mein prem karo.” He was the ‘Chhora Ganga kinare wala’ and Anthony Gonzalves. He was India falling in love with its diversity and also straining against its systemic corruption.
And that is why Indians from all faiths came together to pray as one for his well-being when he was grievously injured in the eighties. Doordarshan ran daily health updates and the boy who had come to Bombay, clutching a recommendation letter from Indira Gandhi, was now a national hero. We rooted for him again when he was down and out, struck by a financial crisis in the nineties. And why we thought anyone replacing him in remakes of his films or in his game show was an undeserving upstart.
I remember watching him from a distance, as he stood alone, drawing patterns in the dust with his foot during the rehearsals of the Miss World pageant in Bangalore in 1995 and feeling a rush for empathy. The odds were against his company ABCL and him, controversies were mounting around the pageant and I had wanted to go up to him and tell him, “It is okay..it will be okay.” I remember writing pieces about his memorable roles because those who grew up in the seventies, remember what it was like to see him in his prime on the big screen. The imagery and resonance of his iconography became indelible in our heart and minds.
He however always conveyed that playing the angry young man was incidental. He was not trying to make a point and we should have listened. Because as we know now, he was just riding a wave and was never really a champion of anyone or anything other than his own ambition. He switches allegiances easily to people and ideas to suit himself. It has never been about something bigger than his career trajectory. He does tweet the Sunday ‘darshan’ pictures taken outside his home but these are more about him, then those who gather outside his gate to catch a glimpse of him. He loves our adulation but don’t expect him to take an inconvenient ideological stand for anyone. Hell, he could not even resist taking an indirect swipe at Gurmehar Kaur, who is young enough to be his granddaughter. He even fights with Twitter if he suspects the algorithm is tampering with his number of fans because regardless of all the humility he projects, his following matters to him.
I remember how he blushed whenever star struck fans gushed over him and told him to repeat the dialogues of his heroic screen characters in KBC but in the real world, he champions anyone who can afford his brand and his unmistakable, sonorous voice. Be it Cadbury trying to deworm a controversy. Or a political ideology he indirectly became a poster boy for when he tweeted about the “pink effect” of a newly minted currency during Demonetisation. Or his uninformed take on planting more trees in your garden instead of fighting for Aarey.
Not too long ago, he vouched convincingly for the ‘apradh’ free status of UP. He now wants you to believe that all is well in Kashmir. I was told last year that Bachchan, the son of the man who had penned, “Mandir, mazjid bhed karate, mel karati madhushala,” now doesn’t say ‘shabba khair’ in the closing segment of KBC and asks questions that hardly if ever reflect the sabrangi flavour he once sang about in film after film. I can’t vouch for this last bit because I don’t watch the show anymore.
A few years ago, I also wrote about the gentlemanly but deep-seated patriarchy that has long been a part of who he is. But that is a different story for another time. It is the distance between his carefully crafted image and his life choices and his selective use of the media and his fans to promote himself and his agendas, that will be called out by those who will look back at this era and wonder why artists were not held to greater standards in our country.
But even in this era, when he is called a, “Yug purush”, I wonder who is it exactly that he represents.
Political leaders? Special interest groups with deep pockets? Agendas that discount the well-being of those who have made him the adored icon that he is? As an artist, he may well deserve the Dada Saheb Phalke award but it is hard to now confuse him for anyone other than who he really is. A really good actor who always obeys the director. And never goes against the script.
**Reema is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US . She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.
Pic credit: latestly.com