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| Bollywood Blitzkrieg: Relative success in Bollywood |
| By Subhash K. Jha, December 4, 2006 - 08:26 IST |
| Stop right here. You'll never come across a success story like this again. This is the amazing story of Ravi Kishan. A small-time Bollywood actor, best-remembered as one Sridevi's lieutenant's in Army and as the benign purohit hopelessly devoted to Bhoomika Chawla in Tere Naam. In real life it's becoming increasingly hard for Ravi Kishan to remain devoted to his simple sweet rustic wife. His popularity in Bihar and UP where Bhojpuri films have a predominant market is dhoti-phaad. The dhoti has never been sexier for the ladies. Bashful seemingly dutiful middleclass housewives in UP and Bihar sneak out of their homes to view the latest Ravi Kishan masterpiece and sneakily lust after him and fantasize about him. Out of the 17 Bhojpuri films he has done in four years 16 have been super-hits. Many leading ladies from Mumbai are keenly desirous of working with him. But it's Nagma who's wangled the privilege of being Ravi's constant heroine. They're known as the Dharmendra and Hema Malini of Bhojpuri cinema. Today Ravi Kishan is as popular in the cow belt as the Khans of Bollywood . His presence on the reality show Bigg Boss is so intimidating that he has willy-nilly become the leader of the group locked away for thirteen weeks in that house. Audiences go crazy every time Ravi Kishan thrusts his dhoti-clad pelvis at Nagma. Apparently the pair shares more than just a professional friendship in real life . Ravi's fans in the Bhojpuri region want him to marry his favourite co-star. Ravi isn't kissing and telling. "The female attention is very flattering, and the temptation for a hardcore rustic boy from Jaunpur in UP to break the laxman-rekha is irresistible. How can someone who has seen the rock-bottom not be swayed by the hysterical attention he suddenly commands?" Ravi Kishan is honest enough to admit. This is a success story that would be tough, if not impossible to equal . How long would Ravi Kishan success streak last? Or will the euphoria die down once the Bhojpuri boom is over? Going over-board is a national past-time. We do it all the time and to everyone who matters. Vivek Oberoi was the toast of the nation after Company. Today his bread is more battered than buttered. I remember how quickly he was promoted into the can-do-no-wrong category. Today nothing Vivek does seems to go right. Shabana Azmi is right when she says, "In this country you need to be just a little better than mediocre to be considered extraordinary." Look at what they're doing to that poor Siddharth from Rang De Basanti. Admittedly he makes a strong impact in his author-backed role. But has anyone noticed? Siddharth makes such a strong impact BECAUSE it's an author-backed role. Also, because he's the only one of the cast no one in Hindi cinema has seen before. It's like the adorable unearthly creature in ET or Jadu in Koi…Mil Gaya . It would be impossible for them to make a similar impact outside the opportunity provided by the film that popularized them. Siddharth, of course has quickly begun to believe in the myth of his overnight superstardom. He's been giving dozens of interviews about how choosy he is about his assignments. How meticulous of him. He reminds me of two overnight sensations named Kumar Gaurav and Vijay Arora. One was supposed to take the nation by storm (and he did, after the release of his first film Love Story). The other was touted as "another Rajesh Khanna" in the early 1970s. Little did Arora's publicists know "another" of anyone never works Gaurav and Vijay didn't have the options open to out-of-luck Hindi-film actors: television or regional cinema. They just vanished. Unlike Shekhar Suman or Archana Puransingh who re-invented themselves on the booming home medium as TV stars, Ravi Kishan has actually re-invented a whole regional market to accommodate his aspirations. This has never happened before. It probably will never happen again. Let's give the devil his due before the bubble bursts. God knows, we de-mystify our icons faster than we put them on their polished pedestals. "Look at what they did to Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. They first made them into gods. And then they began to demolish the deities piece by piece—for no fault of theirs," says Madhavan who has so far only seen the upside in his career. "But I'm scared of the downside. It has happened in everyone's career, except perhaps Lata Mangeshkar." Ah! But isn't India's jewel in the croon going through the downside of immortality right now? Headlines like "Lata Mangeshkar or The Fly-over?" aren't very flattering to the lady who has been for 50 years the voice of the nation. Admit it. We're a people driven by extremes. We derive pleasure in persecuting questioning and ridiculing the very deity whom we cannot do without . Like it or not, we love to pull down those very super-icons whom we worship all our lives. |
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