Amitabh's fall from grace
Shobori Ganguli
The most thankless comment of the year: "KBC was becoming monotonous. I felt I was becoming mechanical. As an artiste, I needed to have the butterflies in my stomach - that had stopped." The most pompous comment of the year: "That's too little" (on Brand Bachchan being worth Rs 700 crore). Finally, the most graceless comment of the year: "I would like to see Shah Rukh Khan as an inspiration. I want to do better, make better films, so he can copy me." Coming from a man seen as the millennium's most humble living legend, these remarks betray a curious pomposity in Amitabh Bachchan, an unbecoming fall from grace. This is certainly not the man who once said, "I have never really been confident about my career at any stage."
Memory, they say, plays strange tricks with the human mind, but surely Bachchan's cannot be such a traitor. Time perhaps for a recap. In the year 2000, satellite television witnessed a phenomenal revolution when Star TV unleashed the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on an audience whose entertainment bouquet had hitherto contained intellectually indifferent yet hugely popular family soaps. The step was bold but Star had little option. India's first celebrity game show Kaun Banega Crorepati went on air amid grave doubts. The odds were firmly stacked against the channel. A beleaguered Star TV was desperate to arrest its sagging fortunes. Since the Indian audience had never tasted a gameshow before, its reaction was completely unknown. With the risks enormous, no contemporary movie idol was willing to wager his or her fortunes on the small screen.
Treading uncertainly Star homed in on a jaded Amitabh Bachchan who could be occasionally seen frolicking around women half his age in films like Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan, essaying roles which served his age and image ill. Although a star of yesteryears, Amitabh in 2000 stood as a failed actor and businessman. The box office had clearly abandoned its one-time darling with Amitabh posting four flops in 1999. His fledgling company faced imminent death - ABCL was running a stupendous debt of over Rs 90 crore. With no big banners coming his way, Amitabh was desperately clutching at opportunities, not all of them very savoury. KBC was just one of those opportunities.
The show was first aired on July 3, 2000. That day marked a unique concert on Indian television. Star TV needed a break, Amitabh needed a lifeline and the Indian audience needed some novel excitement. With KBC television entertainment finally shed its mindlessness. The show was a smashing success and as the Big B returned night after night to millions of homes across the country, one knew that Indian television's, also cinema's, history was being rewritten. While Star Plus saw its TRP ratings soar to unexpected heights, the show also initiated the process of Amitabh's reinvention in Hindi cinema. The legend of Big B returned to the silver screen and the actor went on to bag some of the finest roles of his career in the next few years.
Clearly, another time, another channel, another actor, another audience may not have been able to create the magic KBC did then. Without Amitabh, KBC could have been an also-ran. Without Star TV, the Big B would not have found an opportunity to resuscitate his terminally ailing film career and business. And without an entertainment-starved audience neither the channel nor the host could have dreamt of raking in the moolah they subsequently did.
Seven years since, times and indeed Amitabh Bachchan have changed. Entertainment has undergone a dramatic makeover. Satellite television has become a gigantic entity, the competition for TRPs acute. As for Amitabh, things have never looked better in his career. He is once again a top draw in Hindi cinema. Having regained a firm foothold in Bollywood, he is giving his younger counterparts a serious run for their money. His son Abhishek too has overcome his jinx at the box office and tasted stardom. As for the Big B's wife Jaya, she is today an articulate Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha.
Given the umbilical link between KBC and the Big B's new avatar, Bachchan's comments on the show, Shah Rukh Khan and his own net worth at the box office seem to lack the pleasing elegance that has hitherto defined the star. For one, had Star never approached the Big B for KBC, Amitabh would have been relegated to the annals of Bollywood, remembered as the "angry young man" who once set the screen on fire with his social messages but who was now prancing around with women as young as Shilpa Shetty in eminently tasteless films like Lal Baadshah. Pre-KBC, it was clear that the once cult figure was refusing to age with grace, caught as he was in the vicious trap of his yesteryear image that ill-matched his advancing years. Saddened by the trajectory, Big B's die-hard fans mourned the decline of an actor who once moved the masses and classes. Bachchan, it seemed, was unable to follow his own advice that, "we will age and age is not always flattering."
Then came KBC and Amitabh's immensely successful image makeover. Here, the Big B played his age, wore classic jackets, sported the now-trademark graying beard, looked comfortable in it, and created for the first time in Hindi cinema a niche for an older actor who could carry an entire film on his shoulder. Cinegoers simply fell in love with this reinvented Amitabh. Don was forgotten and Sexy Sam was warmly welcomed into the hearts of a whole new generation. Indeed, it was through KBC that Amitabh discovered the image that makes him one of the sexiest and most talented 60-plus actors in the world. Today, when he does a 'Kajra re' or a 'Rock 'n' Roll Soniye', the audience's eyes seldom travel to his co-stars. No more jeers about dancing with women his daughter's age.
Had Amitabh not touched the lives of millions of Indians through that television show seven years ago, where would Brand Bachchan be today? Unfortunately, Bachchan has chosen to write away the most successful chapter of his career as monotony. Despite a fan-following that far outpaces that of any other actor, he has chosen to speak about Shah Rukh Khan as "competition". Finally, despite knowing the emotional hold Hindi cinema has over the masses, he has chosen to tastelessly dwell on the "commercial" value of his star family. Indeed a sad commentary.
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