A Fanboy바카라�s Bollywood: Before And After The Khans

Frankly I did not see it coming. Nobody from my generation living in a small town of India바카라�s hinterland did. The double-­spread advertisement in a film weekly, Screen, should have forewarned us. It was about the launch of the newest kid on the block, Aamir Khan, in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in 1988. 바카라�Who is Aamir Khan? 바카라� Ask the girl next door!바카라� a teaser of its promotional campaign threw a rhetorical riddle at our faces.

I was absolutely clueless despite being the ­biggest masala movie buff this side of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. So I took the advice ­literally and asked a young woman from the next block. I was relieved to know that she had no ­interest whatsoever in a diminutive-looking youngster in black goggles threatening to storm Bollywood. She dismissed him rather disdainfully as another wannabe.

The reason was not far to seek. The young woman was still suffering from the hangover of Vinod Khanna바카라�s return to tinsel town from Rajneeshpuram after the Osho fiasco in the US. Yes, the Khanna with broad shoulders, flowing mane and, of course, John Wayne gait. That was the eighties, folks, and our hero had to look like one! An alpha male with an in-built testosterone turbocharger! Guys like K.C. Bokadia who ruled the industry by churning out endless sagas of guns and gore did not settle for any lesser mortal.

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Back then, the leading men of a commercial Hindi film had to be macho with a capital M on screen바카라�a veritable hybrid of an Adonis and a Lothario, with their killer looks and overflowing libido. They were selectively chivalrous and often applied preconditions of a patriarchal set-up when it came to treating their ladylove.

바카라�Aap aise kapdon mein baahar niklengi to seeteeyan nahin toh kya mandir ki ghantiyan ­bajegi? (What do you expect to hear if you step out in such outfits바카라�whistles or temple bells?)바카라� a sarcastic inspector played by Big B told Zeenat Aman in his deep baritone after she dragged an ­eve-teaser to the police station. The judge was merely being righteous, not misogynistic, in the Bollywood parlance, mind you!

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The social media-enlightened audience would have roasted Amitabh Bachchan today, but we clapped with vicarious pleasure at each of Salim-Javed바카라�s dialogues in Dostana (1980), sexist or ­otherwise. Some of us whistled too, just like Paintal did in that Raj Khosla film. Our heroes of yore appeared to have landed straight from the pages of Mills & Boon with a compromised complexion바카라�the tall, brown and handsome types, probably with a diploma from the action gurukul of our bald terror, Muddu Babu Shetty (Rohit Shetty바카라�s dad, for the millennials!).

바카라�Bachchan is six-two,바카라� we would exult. Height-wise, 180 cm was the minimum qualification for the leading man in our rulebook. Anybody shorter was not fit enough to adorn the haloed Eastmancolor universe of 70mm as the hero of our favourite action-emotion ka sholaa (embers of action and emotion!). Awful hamming of an actor was acceptable to us so long as the hero looked good enough for a pin-up in the Star & Style fortnightly. Some of the biggest stars of the time primarily owed it to their genes for their prolonged ­survival in the industry.

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But, dear Lord, Aamir was just about five-four or even less. It was okay for Hollywood to fete a Dustin Hoffman or a Dudley Moore, but our heroes had to be tall enough to get our love, adulation and above all, seetees.

The next time I met the same young woman who was infatuated with an actor more than double her age not so long ago, I found her completely smitten with Aamir바카라�s charm. 바카라�He is so, so cute in QSQT, naa?바카라� she could barely ­conceal her glee, switching her loyalties from Khanna to Khan faster than any aaya ram gay­a ram from Haryana. She was not alone. Much to my ­chagrin, I soon found out that Aamir had quietly bec­ome the resident teenage heartthrob in our society. Worse still, the acronym, QSQT pissed us off. After all, nobody from my generation had ever committed the sacrilege of refer­ring to Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaye (1977) as DWJPMB. We were puritans, mate!

Still, the most incurable optimist among us thought QSQT바카라�s box office success to be nothing more than a fluke. 바카라�It clicked because of its great music by Anand-Milind and a greater promotional campaign by Aamir바카라�s uncle and producer Nasir Hussain,바카라� we would console ourselves.

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Obviously, we were still swayed by the swagger and chutzpah of our elderly screen idols who wore unbuttoned silk shirts to show off the tuft of the dyed hair on their chests. They could not have shown anything else without causing immense harm to their image. Very few male actors, therefore, dared to dive into a swimming pool.

Gossip magazines, which were part of our monthly ration, told us with a shshshshsh바카라� that most of them went abroad for a facelift to keep them in circulation. Nobody had heard of botox then. For most actors, it was the era of six pegs (Patiala ones at that!), not six packs. Nobody bothered to hire a fitness trainer, which showed onscreen by default. They had to wear loose shirts and jackets to hide their paunches, a tell-tale sign of their unbroken companionship with Johnnie Walker (not the actor with a similar sounding name!).

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Aamir바카라�s next few films after QSQT bombed, which brought the 바카라�we-told-you-so바카라� smiles back on our faces. Like Kumar Gaurav of Love Story (1981) fame, we thought he would also fade out in due course. The fickle teenyboppers would drop him like a hot potato soon, we imagined.

It all happened because the hero we worship­ped was invariably larger than life. He could lock himself up along with a dozen goons in a deserted warehouse and fling away the keys for an invitation to a brawl; a hero who could tell the biggest goon in town not to sit on the chair unless he is asked to because the police station was not his father바카라�s jaagir (fiefdom). He would be extravagant enough to smash a brand new imported Mercedes to give us the Hollywood-like thrill without CGI. We would forever try to ape him, mostly to disastrous effect, but never fought shy of wearing our unabashed love for him on our sleeves.

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Oh, how wide off the mark we were! We could not feel the winds of change that had begun to blow across Hindi cinema by the turn of the noughties. The brave, new brigade of young act­ors did not look remotely like their predecessors, but they took the industry by storm with their talent, confidence and sheer ability to steer clear of hackneyed formulas. They were simple heroes who belonged to our world. Aamir바카라�s success was followed by the advent of two other Khans바카라�Salman and Shah Rukh in quick succession.

Since then, the triumvirate has ruled the ­industry with more ups than downs, and they are still going strong despite facing new challenges in the pandemic-hit times that have made content a bigger star than anybody with 40 million ­followers on Instagram.

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The nineties truly belonged to the trio who left everyone else behind in the race for stardom with a string of blockbusters. Suddenly, the old guard began to look jaded. Even the relatively younger bunch of stars such as Mithun Chakraborty, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff and Sunny Deol had to cede the ground to them. Only Govinda바카라�forerunner to the young Khans in breaking Bollywood바카라�s stereotypes about the mainstream cinema hero바카라�held his fort for some time with his zany comedies. But he too became irrelevant by the turn of the new millennium.

Aamir and Salman delivered humongous hits like Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Dil (1990), Saajan (1991), Hum Aapke Hain Koun! (1994) and Raja Hindustani (1996), but it was Shah Rukh who surged ahead with Darr and Baazigar (both in 1993) and, above all, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) that revived and redefined rom­antic ­musicals in Hindi cinema in the 1990s.

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But then, Aamir and Salman, both Bandra boys, belonged to illustrious film families. Shah Rukh had no godfather as such in the industry unless you count Vivek Vaswani and Colonel Raj Kumar Kapoor. The Delhi boy had done a few Doordarshan serials such as Fauji and Circus (both aired in 1989) before he landed in Mumbai to try his luck in the dream city.

Aamir and Salman had already become big stars by then. Thankfully, Shah Rukh did not have to sleep on an empty stomach on Mahim pavements, as he got good opportunities quite early in his ­career. Two of his initial hits, Darr and Baazigar, fell in his kitty after Aamir and Salman chose to reject them respectively. Come to think of it, even Arman Kohli had turned down Baazigar.

Shah Rukh soon bought a heritage building (Mannat) at Bandstand, where Anil Kapoor had shot the famous Ek do teen바카라� song of Tezaab (1989) earlier. Today, Mannat, just like Bachchan바카라�s Jalsa in Juhu, has made it to the must-visit wishlist of the multitude of Hindi cinema buffs on a visit to Mumbai.

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SRK바카라�s 1990s movies were, of course, not free from Bollywood바카라�s past tropes, like those of his Khan rivals. Nor was he among the best of ­actors from Hindi cinema. Anybody who has dared to watch Ram Jaane and Guddu (both ­released in 1995, the year of DDLJ) and a few other 바카라�gems바카라� would vouch for that. But he gradually evolved on his own as a widely loved star. Today, mimicry ­artistes may have made a fortune out of his K-k-k-k-i-r-a-n-n-n, but the 1990s바카라� audience simply adored him.

With the advent of the multiplex era, SRK emerged as the biggest box office phenomenon. He became so popular abroad that he was hailed as the God of Box Office by distributors operating in the lucrative overseas territory. Much of the credit, of course, should go to the banners of Yash Chopra and Karan Johar, who reposed their ­unflinching trust in him.

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But to give Shah Rukh his due, he never fought shy of taking risks outside their banners, even when he was at the pinnacle of popularity. He not only accepted negative roles in films like Baazigar and Anjaam (1994), but also worked with the likes of Aziz Mirza, Kundan Shah, Ketan Mehta and Mani Ratnam, who refrained from making run-of-the-mill flicks for the box office. The other two Khans were still caught in the crass commercial muddle at the time.

It was primarily his ability and willingness to try out different things that made Shah Rukh such an endearing personality. He had the ­panache of what the film magazines called a 바카라�metrosexual바카라� to pull off a Lux soap ad with the industry바카라�s leading ladies of the past and present as effortlessly as he played a gritty coach of a women바카라�s hockey team in Chak De! India (2007).

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All through his career, he has remained the ­personification of humility and unbridled ­energy that made him the most loved star of his generation. The whole of India was outraged when he was detained at an US airport.

The middle class바카라�backbone of his support base바카라�has always found his success story quite ­relatable in the post-liberalisation era. He has ­always been a common man바카라�s hero, reflecting their dreams and aspirations as well as faults and ­foibles. It has made Brand SRK one of the longest-lasting in the annals of Indian cinema.

SRK has proved that you don바카라�t have to be larger than life on screen with bulging muscles to win over your audience. You can do that simply by stretching out your arms with a glint in your eyes and a dimpled smile on your face.  

(This appeared in the print edition as "Before And After The Khans")

(The writer is a National Award winner for Best Critic on Cinema.)