When an actor who built his career playing the poster boy of anti-establishment resistance tweets fake news about how “bacterial energies” during amavas can be dissipated by clapping and shankh naad, you realise once again that opportunistic artists always sell what is in demand. They know the season of discontent and dissent is over and now thali beaters are preferred to whistle blowers.
Where are the angry young rebels in cinema when we truly need them? And because they are no longer in season, I recently revisited Rahul Rawail’s Arjun (1984) and Ram Gopal Varma’s Shiva (1990). Two heroes with mythological names who were not propagandists of faith but men battling the nexus between crime and politics. With no sub-text of demonising the minorities because the two were in a minority like us and outnumbered by corrupt, violent, manipulative power mongers.
Both films showed how the young are lured into goondaism by powerful politicians and then discarded once their purpose is served. Shiva built upon the template Javed Akhtar had created in Arjun. Of a group of boys who decide they will fight and not comply with the system that oppresses the weak. In Arjun , the primary concern was unemployment. In Shiva, it was the weaponisation of student leaders by corrupt politicians.
Two scenes in Arjun resonate till date. A young boy is lynched on a rainy day in a crowded street but nobody notices because everyone is safe within the confines of their umbrellas. The other is when Arjun is running for his life in the end through streets lined with the posters and cutouts of a man who has come into power by using his innocence and idealism. Everywhere he turns, there is this pervasive image with folded hands. Plastered on walls, peering from hoardings. Still the film ended on a note of hopefulness. To show that the system works if you insist upon seeking justice. There was no such closure in Shiva.
It has many scenes that mirror situations and shots from Arjun including a cycle chase but it ends with the realisation that if one bully is taken out, another one will erupt because the ground realities do not change for ordinary Indians.
So yes, the cinematic icons have sold out to the system but maybe, we are looking in the wrong places for heroes. Maybe that young man who came out in his shared balcony yesterday to say, “Andhvishwas ghulami hai..ghulam mat bano,” is the real hero. The one who is not paid to play a part. The one who will speak the truth even when it is dangerous and unpopular to do so. Maybe, the hero of the hour is this ordinary citizen who would rather burst a bubble than live in it.