Amitabh Bachchan: A towering person of the Indian film industry

??The year 1982. While traveling from Worli to Mahim to reach Mumbai Doordarshan, a panel on the Prabhadevi-Cadell Road drew my attention as well as those of the other commuters. It displayed his picture and a line below it ‘Get well soon!’ When the day changed the number under it indicating the days changed: 15th day, 32nd day like that, and Mumbai? on wheels halted for a couple of moments. Everyone would pray in his/her mind that he should recover soon. I was, of course, not an exception. Many evenings in my life become so beautiful because of this actor and the process still continues. He had fought death and came out victorious and in no time he became a legend.

It is always a challenging task to find out why a particular person becomes phenomenal.? It depends on how and to what extent the society reacts to his/her virtues, vices, strengths, personality and more than that his/her ability to present various shades of expressions. Is it reactive, consistent and positive? In doing so, is the person endowed with the qualities of divinity, or is he evaluated as a human being? Many such things are involved there.

Yes, he has been established in a temple. Many people worship him as god.? He has devotees like Arvind Pandya, who went all the way from Siddhivinayak temple Mumbai to Baroda walking backward so that he should recover. And still the noble and sensitive person in him is taller than this godliness. When he arrives on the screen the pitmen are overjoyed and those sitting in the balconies are also pleased. This is a rare sight in the film world but this happens many times in his case. At the same time there is no point in denying that the number of his flop films is larger than the successful ones. How can we make it out? What things does he possess that others lack? Voice? … Well a long list can be given starting from Raj Kumar and Nana Patekar to Amarish Puri, who owned a voice that attracted people. He lacked a handsome face, the need of the hero material. His height was never his asset. If anything, it had proved a hindrance at times, while presenting characters.

But he had one special thing – tremendous self-confidence. He had achieved it with hard work and gathered it in minute particles. The minuteness is such that we don’t become aware of it easily. But this self-confidence has taken him to an unassailable height. We feel satisfied that at least our eyes can reach there. To see him acting is a lovely festival. Actually, he does not act. He just presents the personality on the screen as we would like, love and appreciate. He does not capitalize on his voice or show a different glow in his eyes to show that the role is well understood and this very absence of display that takes his role to the Gaurishankar peak.

My friend from the film industry once told me that he is an artist who completes his dubbing in minimum time. While dubbing, the spoken words and the lip movements must march perfectly. Even the difference of a single frame is not tolerated. I responded, ‘Oh, he is an artist who has no confusion of any sort about his dubbing. He knows only one language – the language of consistency.’ In addition to it we can see in his acting a combination of his voluminous reading, his curiosity about the world, the influence of his father and the reassuring life --style from an intelligent mother like Teji at home, his repeated encounters with failure, his politeness in not taking the man in front for granted and the resultant intimacy of self-respect.??

For the last four decades he is sprinkling all these on his roles. He has escaped unscathed through his struggle for existence, the Sultani crisis, the life-threatening illness, bankruptcy and accusations that could hang one at the gate of disgrace. How and why? There is no solid answer to these questions. But he had come out of it like gold from the furnace, all bright and glittering. He never stopped, but just continued on and on. The fight still continues with the same intensity. Goddess Satwai had never written this on his forehead. He had written it himself and none in the film industry would, I think, be able to wipe it away. In him we have an actor, who had never told anybody, ‘The line starts where I stand’ and still he is the uncrowned prince of the film world, named Amitabh. 11th October 1942 is the date when this star arrived on the horizon.

Dr.Keshav Sathaye