Bollywood Masala India

There is almost no doubt that the rumour of an off-screen romance plays into the on-screen chemistry in all cinemas. When you sit back to watch Bacall rasp those famous lines at Bogie in To Have and Have Not (“You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do any­thing. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and ... blow.) or whether it’s Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha carousing to the famous Salaam-e Ishq song sequence in Prakash Mehra’s 1978 superhit Muqaddar ka Sikandar (“ Tu masiha mohabbat ke maaron ka hai”), what we know is added to what we see.

But perhaps it is particularly true of Bollywood, in which the act of viewing a film had always been a community affair until the arrival of the multiplexes. In the old single screen theatres, the stalls were always a rau­cous bunch, occasioning those famous shouts that one’s parents always spoke of. “Silence in the five annas,” they would shout, to quieten the crowd so that the dialogue could be heard. Sometimes the noise would arise out of lewd suggestions to the dancing girls or to the vamp, but often they would be friendly admoni­tions to the stars.

Anurodh (Shakti Samanta, 1977), starring Rajesh Khanna and Simple Kapadia, in a theatre in Aurangabad. At the start of the film when Rajesh Khanna sees Simple for the first time, someone in the stalls shouted, “Sambhaal saala, teri saali hai”. (Watch out, you rogue, that’s your sister-in-law.) And although Kaka as Rajesh Khanna was then known, had made it a point never to embrace his heroine through the film, it sank without a trace, leaving behind only its title song as a memory of its existence.

And so the cynics in the audience assume that the producers have floated the rumours of a relationship between the principles in order to give the film a fillip. The relationship between a director and the star may also have something to do with the success or failure of a film but the only noted case of this is Waheeda Rehman and Guru Dutt but one of the two is no longer with us and the other says nothing about the most exciting time in her career. However, it does seem as if that moment in Pyaasa where the camera discovers a young woman in the darkness of the studio and then pursues her relentlessly did become something of a metaphor for the way in which the rela­tionship would develop between Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman.

In most other cases, the off-screen liaison is almost always between the hero and the hero­ine. Therefore the most famous instance of casting to life was in the case of Silsila (Yash Chopra, 1981). Bollywood’s most famous alleged extramarital affair was suddenly on screen. Amitabh Bachchan played a poet/actor who is forced by circumstances to marry the pregnant widow (Jaya Bachchan) of his brother while still in love with another woman (Rekha).

As Amitabh Bachchan says about Silsila, “The gossip about the casting of Silsila was quite unwarranted. We were on location with Parveen Babi and Smita Patel. Yashji came to me, saying he would prefer Jaya and Rekha to do it. I spoke to the ladies.”

“Silsila was made 15 years ahead of its time,” Bachchan has said. “B R and Yashji were bold in their films, especially B R’s extra mari­tal themes.”

Supposed off-screen romance boosted the start power of Raj Kapoor-Nargis, where the audience followed the story of Nargis’ devotion and love in difficult circumstances also Dilip Kumar and Madhubala, or the most speculated bout Indian film romance of all, that of Amitabh and Rekha made them a popular couple until Silsila was felt to challenge family values. Stories that Abhishek and Aishwarya fell in love during Guru has done the film no damage, although Sarkar Raj may have disappointed hopes of greater on screen couples are those between whom there is no suggestion of and off- screen romance, such as Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol. In Indian cinema, where the star is often more important than the actor, and this couple’s star qualities and their interaction is part of their magic.

It’s said that audiences don’t like married women acting but Durga Khote, one of the great stars of the 1930s acted only after mar­riage, and Rakhee in Kabhi Kabhie is listed as Rakhee Gulzar. However, one taboo that is never breached is having family members act as romantic couples. In Hindi film, there’s usu­ally more interest in family members playing their roles as fathers and sons, again the Bachchans, than off-screen couples romancing on-screen.

Take Jab We Met (Imtiaz Ali, 2007), which has my vote for one of the best romances of all time simply because it allowed for a certain eccentricity in its female lead and for a certain ordinariness in its male. Almost a week before the release, the lead pair, (Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur) split. This was after several years, a long time by Bollywood standards, of going around’. Since then Kareena has replaced Shahid with Saif Ali Khan; and Shahid has gone on to Vidya Balan or so the gossip rags say.

But when the film was released and fingers began to point in the direction of publicity stunt, Imtiaz Ali was reported to be furious. He told Mumbai’s favourite tabloid, Mid-day, “If the breakup was a publicity stunt I myself would have initiated it. Shahid and Kareena don’t have to stoop so low because they are well known in the industry and established stars. Though I have been in touch 4h Shahid and Kareena after the rumours broke out, I haven’t asked them about the break up as I don’t like intruding on their personal issues.”

The point?
Films work for a number of reasons. Almost all attempts to dissect the magic have failed because this is something that only succeeds in retrospect. Once a film has been declared a hit, any number of critics can sit down and ‘determine’ why it has been successful. But when all the indications are in place, it is sometimes difficult to say why films flop any­way. The on-screen off-screen chemistry between the lead pair is only one of them. There are many instances in which a love affair in real life sets the screen on fire.

In the good old days, Hema Malini and Dharmendra were one of those bankable star combinations. Almost everything they did together came out trumps at the box office. Films as different as Sholay and Jugnu and Charas and Chacha Bhatija benefited from the combination of his brawn and her beauty.

In his biography of Hema Malini, Hema Malini Diva Unveiled (Magna Publishing
Company, 2005), Ram Kamal Mukherjee writes, ‘There is an interesting story that happened during the making of Sholay Apparently, both Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar were in love with Hema Malini. Sanjeev Kumar went so far as to propose to the actress before the film began. The off-screen triangle came to directly impact the movie’s production at one point. Dharmendra originally wanted to play the role of Gabbar. Director Ramesh Sippy however, told him that if he played Gabbar, Sanjeev Kumar would play Veeru and get to do all the love scenes with Hema. Dharmendra quickly changed his mind and the decision changed the course of both actors’ lives. Ramesh Sippy recollects, “Yes, it was really funny. I didn’t use any personal relationship, but stated the fact. I can’t change my script ... so they had to inter­change the characters.”

One of the strange things about the hit pair is that after they got married, they never had a hit together again. (It is another matter that neither of them was in their prime after that.) But casting has often been determined not by what is best for the film, not by what the director wants, but by what is going on in the private lives of the stars.

For instance, it was supposed to be Madhubala in Naya Daur (B R Chopra, 1957) who was to star opposite Dilip Kumar. Their romance had begun many years earlier but her father, Ataullah Khan, was opposed to it for some reason that has never been made clear by, all the accounts of the liaison. When he discov­ered that they would be on an outdoor shoot away from Mumbai where he could not keep an eye on his daughter, Khan simply refused. He said the scenes could be shot in the studio. B R Chopra replaced her with Vyjayanthimala. Ataullah Khan sued and Chopra counter-sued. The sorry mess is supposed to have ended the relationship between the two stars but the film has gone on to be a classic and has recently re-issued in colour. So here’s a great big ‘What If’ of history. At one point, Nargis was so desperately in love with Raj Kpoor that she decided to see if she could do something about it.

Marriage was the avowed objective of the very determined Nargis, and one day she persuaded Letticia to accompany her to meet Morarji Desai, then the Home Minister of the State. He had recently introduced impor­tant changes in the Hindu Marriage Laws which now made it impossible for a second marriage to take place officially. They both went to Congress House. Nargis was very, very nervous. There was this huge table and Morarjibhai was seat­ed behind it, looking very stern and serious.

“What is it?” he asked.

Nargis was tongue-tied, and Neelam said: ‘Sir, she wants to talk something important with you.’ “Suddenly the tongue-tied Nargis simply blurted it out. ‘Sir, I want to marry Raj Kapoor!’ Morarjibhai put his pen down and said: ‘What! Don’t you know the law? How dare you! Don’t you dare come and ask me this again! Now, both of you—please go!’ And they were unceremoniously bundled out of his office!

What would have happened if Morarji Desai had agreed? Would the myth have lingered on? Or would the famous pairing that gave us Shri 420, Barsaat, Awaara and Jaagte Raho col­lapsed into another star couple that did not matter? (As it is they did some peculiar films together such as Paapi, which is difficult to watch today, except for die-hard fans.) And would we have had Sunjay Dutt?

What also helped was silence.

None of the stars or directors ever spoke of what was going on, even if the liaisons were common knowledge. The press was also dis­creet, until Nari Hira's Stardust arrived and rewrote the relationship between the stars and the scribes. But before that, without actual details, the imagination was allowed much more free play.

Today’s stars seem to be a lot more frank about their liaisons. No one can be sure how much of this is a signifier of a new sexual glas­nost or whether it is simply part of a new mar­keting interest that stretches from the script (heroes and heroines have simple single-sylla­ble names to suit the NRI tongue) to the music videos (they should look good together, be able to move well together) to their real lives.

But we do seem to know that Viveik Oberoi and Aishwarya Rai seem to have spent a good many years together and then kissed in Kyun ... ! Ho Gaya Na? (Samir Karnik, 2004), a film in which Oberoi wore red shoes and drove a red jeep while Amitabh Bachchan stole the show. John Abraham and Bipasha Basu like­wise seem to have had no luck. She tried to put some pep into the formless Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal (Vivek Agnihotri, 2007) and No Smoking (Anurag Kashyap, 2007) but that didn’t help either film. Of their three films as a lead couple, Jism (Amit Saxena, 2003) was a money-spinner but the other two, Aetbaar (Vikram Bhatt, 2004) and Madhoshi (Tanveer Khan, 2004) didn’t ring any bells.

A star, Richard Dyer tells us, is everything to do with the star. All the information we have, all the information we think we have, what we know and what we are allowed to know, all this feeds into the formation of the star persona. This is why star blogs have achieved such readership; they allow us into the minds of the stars even if they rarely, if ever, answer ques­tions about their personal lives. In this intimate relationship ito which we have entered, a rela­tionship in which every society sees itself mir­rored. we do not make too much of a difference between the real and the reel worlds. And we all pay the price for that illusion.