The shadowy side of fame

The shadowy side of fame

Subhash K Jha

You really can't keep a good man, or woman, down. But sometimes in showbiz you could have a helluva time holding your own if you are the offspring of a legend.

That's what happened to Mahatma Gandhi's son Harilal. It's the classic story of parental tyranny, imposed involuntarily by the parent's celebrity status. We'll soon see Akshaye Khanna in Feroz Khan's Mahatma Versus Gandhi as the rebellious Harilal who spent his entire life living with a legend who was a father to the nation but had no time for his son.

It's easy for a child in a family headed by a celebrity to turn supremely and self-destructively defiant. Fortunately both of Randhir Kapoor and Babita's daughters turned out just fine.

Karisma and Kareena Kapoor are as different from one another as they are from their parents. "We never made an effort to be different from another. We were just born that way. It's not as though we sat down and decided, 'You be this way, I'll be that way'. Our personalities just happened to be different," laughs Kareena.

But it can't be just a coincidence. Siblings in showbiz have always been poles apart. If the sibling is a clone (like Kajol's sister Tanissha or Malaika Arora's sister Amrita) it can lead to obscurity.

Can you ever think of David Dhawan and TV actor Anil Dhawan as brothers? Then there are Suneel and Dharmesh Darshan - one is gregarious and media-friendly, the other doesn't even carry a cell-phone. Shabana Azmi and her sibling Baba probably represent the archetypal extrovert-introvert syndrome. So do Sunny and Bobby Deol (the elder brother is painfully introverted, the younger one isn't quite the epitome of extroversion but is friendly and easygoing).

Consider Anu Malik and Abu Malik (the former arranges songs, the latter stopped trying and started arranging star concerts instead), Farha and Tabu, Raima and Riya Sen… Why is the sibling always reclusive , if not entirely inaccessible to public attention?

Asha Bhosle has the answer. In a remarkably candid moment she once told me what it meant to try to emerge from the indomitable Lata Mangeshkar's shadows. Asha always knew it would be futile to try to be another Lata Mangeshkar. So she took the opposite route. "If Didi's forte was melodies, I made rhythmic, westernised songs my strength. And never mind if all the heroines' songs went to Didi. There was always that one song where I got noticed even if it was tucked away at the back of the album." It's a terrifying thought…But what if Asha had chosen to follow Lataji's pattern of singing?

Forget a cake-walk, having a star sibling is nothing short of an ache-walk. Ask Aamir's kid brother Faizal, or Manisha's baby brother Siddharth… Has anyone thought of what it must be like to be forever expected to perform and excel as effectively as the star of the family?

Right now Hema Malini's younger daughter is going through the same turmoil. The burden that the two sisters carry on their frail shoulders is unbelievable. Superstar dad, superstar mom and star-siblings Sunny and Bobby…, Esha was constantly compared with them, and found to be lagging behind.

Before Esha could get ultra-defensive about her space in life, success came her way. Now it's Ahana's turn. The constant questions about her future are getting to her. "Why does everyone keep asking my mom what I plan to do with my life? How can she answer when I don't know? I don't have to say anything. But my mom is being made constantly answerable," says Ahana.

The girl is discovering herself at the moment. Like all kids of her age, Ahana is trying to find her bearings in life. She doesn't want to commit in print about her future, because she doesn't know it herself.

Is that a crime? It isn't easy for a teenager to be told on news channels that she'll be directing films when Ahana has made no such decision in life. Her acute embarrassment at being made a spokesperson for her parent's luscious legacy is symptomatic of the pressures that celebrity siblings and offspring are often subjected to. Sometimes they just cave in, go adrift like Mahatma Gandhi's Harilal or Marlon Brandon's son, who was accused of murder.

The more fortunate ones find an escape route , seek out a way of dealing with the celebrity status that they've inherited.

Thank God Amitabh Bachchan's brother never aspired to be an actor, and Shweta Bachchan chose to stay away from the arclights. Not every celeb's sibling is as lucky as Asha Bhosle.