Film fandom can be very stressful. How far do you go in defence of your idol? When do you begin to accept that there’s a real threat to your favourite star? And how do you deal with that? Particularly with your friends who have either shifted allegiance to the new kid on the block or have discovered the charms of a new star.
In all my teenage years of hero-worshipping Amitabh Bachchan, even when picking a fight on behalf of Him, there’s just this one phase when I actually wanted to bludgeon a particular friend for his equally die-hard support of a star who briefly threatened Bachchan’s fiefdom. What made it particularly hard for me was that this rising star was a Bengali. Hence, there was a parochial bias for him despite the challenge he was posing to my idol.
This was in the mid-1980s. And the star was Mithun Chakraborty. And this particular friend, who trimmed his hair in the mould of Mithun, with no sideburns, really got my goat when he threw the star’s blink-and-you-miss appearance in Do Anjaane at me as his prowess against Bachchan (though it must be said that his one-scene cameo in the film has become something of a cult).
Owning the 1980s
Bachchan had taken a sabbatical from films in favour of politics, and more importantly, allegations in the Bofors issue had sullied his image. By the end of the decade, he was delivering turkeys like Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi, Toofan and Jadugar. In contrast, Mithun Chakraborty was having a great run. In 1982, Disco Dancer gave Hindi cinema a new dancing star. As a 14-year-old, I witnessed the craze the film and the star evoked even in a then-sleepy hill town, Shillong. I watched his Tarachand Barjatya film Sun Sajna (I am not sure how many have even heard of this film) sitting on a modha in between the aisles as there were no tickets to be had. His 1979 film Taraana (another Barjatya production, still remembered for its song ‘Gunche lage hain kehne’) ran for so many years at one theatre in Shillong that the producers gave the owner a van as a gift.
By the mid-1980s, Mithun Chakraborty was churning out hits like Kasam Paida Karnewale Ki and Dance Dance (B. Subhash’s follow-ups to Disco Dancer), Muddat, Dilwala — all of which played to his dancing star image — and then one of the biggest hits of the era, in a role that was markedly different: Pyaar Jhukta Nahin. Its stupendous success helped the star cross over to the important family segment which would probably give his action and dance films a miss.
Over the next few years, Mithun would star in two distinctly different kinds of films — the ‘family’ melodrama (like Swarg Se Sundar) and the multi-starrer action potboiler (like Watan Ke Rakhwale) — finding remarkable success in both. In between were the ‘smaller’, more intimate dramas directed by Bapu where he got to show his acting chops — Pyari Behna and Prem Pratigyaa.
A star for the masses
He could also, in an out-and-out Dharmendra film like Ghulami, hold his own with just one phrase that has become one of Hindi cinema’s enduring dialogues: ‘Koi shaque?’ When he shook his leg to ‘Julie Julie’ in Jeete Hain Shaan Se, there were few in the audience — at the time largely comprising the working class — who could resist him.
And to gauge his draw among the subaltern masses which largely thronged the theatre in that decade, one had to just watch a night show of Mujrim at Paras cinema in Nehru Place, New Delhi. As I did. To the daily-wage workers who made up the audience, neither the musty smell pervading the theatres nor the paan stains that littered the foyer or the absence of air-conditioning mattered.
Watching Mujrim with them, the weariness of a long hard day toiling under the sun giving way to the whistles and cheers that accompanied ‘Raat ke barah baaje’ and ‘Boom boom laka laka’, was to be mesmerised by a star’s aura. There was something primeval about it. This was how a film was meant to be watched. And Mithun Chakraborty was the star who made it watchable. Even when the films had nothing going for them.
That, in hindsight, turned out to be the bane of Mithun’s career. Though the trade would anoint him as the heir apparent to Amitabh Bachchan’s status as number one star of the industry, his stardom coincided with the onset of a particularly bad phase in Hindi cinema.
The birth of an actor
‘LOOKING FOR FTII GRADUATE OF 1973 BATCH, TALL, DARK, WELL-BUILT, BENGALI, NAME STARTS PROBABLY WITH ‘M’. CATCH HOLD OF HIM AND SEND A RECENT PHOTO IMMEDIATELY.’ – Mrinal Sen to K.K. Mahajan.
This will go down as one of the most important missives in the history of Indian cinema. The enfant terrible of arthouse cinema in India, Mrinal Sen, was looking to cast for his new film. He visualised someone with a good physique and rustic charm but could find no one who fit the bill in his circle of actors. Then he remembered the 1973 annual convocation of the film institute in Pune he had attended. Among the diploma-winning students, one stood out, horsing around, cracking jokes, oblivious to the stalwarts of the industry present at the function. Ebrahim Alkazi, who was also present, told Sen that the boy was a Bengali actor. Thinking back, Sen realised that the young man might be just the actor he was looking for, but he had forgotten all about him, except a vague memory of his face. That’s when he sent his cinematographer K.K. Mahajan the telegram.
Undaunted by the task, Mahajan tracked down a photograph of the young man in question and Mithun Chakraborty was on his way to becoming an actor.
India’s answer to James Bond
Despite winning a National Award for Mrinal Sen’s Mrigaya, it would be a while before Mithun would find his feet as a star. He spent more than half a decade on the margins of stardom, despite his now ‘epochal’ take as Special Agent Gunmaster G-9 in Ravikant Nagaich’s Surakksha and Wardat.
Among his first lead roles was Mera Rakshak, which has, according to an entry in Wikipedia, Mithun “playing [a] key role… along with a goat who acts as the ‘Rakshak’ (bodyguard) in the film”. It was Nagaich who put him on the road to stardom with Hindi cinema’s version of 007, CBI officer Gopi, aka Gunmaster G-9. Surakksha became his first major box-office success. He returned as Gunmaster G-9 in Wardat, and formed a winning team with Nagaich in other capers of the era. Laugh if you will at the apocalyptic events G-9 is called upon to save India from and the ‘stunts, car-chases, fights, dancing with scantily-clad girls, some romance and comedy by agent Khabri’, but even over 40 years later, Gunmaster G-9 remains our only answer to anything resembling a spy franchise. And much before Disco Dancer changed the sound of music in Hindi cinema, Bappi Lahiri’s served up foot-stomping numbers in these films (‘Mausam hai gaane ka’, ‘Tum jo bhi ho’, ‘Tu mujhe jaan se bhi pyaara hai’).
If Gunmaster G-9 made a star of Mithun, Hum Paanch consolidated his position. In a film that boasted actors of the calibre of Sanjeev Kumar, Naseeruddin Shah, Raj Babbar, Amrish Puri and Shabana Azmi, he not only held his own but also outshone them.
The worst of Hindi cinema: Mithun’s Dream Factory
As the 1980s drew to a close, Mithun Chakraborty created what was known as the ‘Dream Factory’, but what came out of it were nightmares that had trade analysts scratching their heads at the business model these films perfected. Beginning in the early 1990s, Mithun greenlit close to a hundred films that were literally assembly-line productions, all — sometimes four to five simultaneously — shot in the vicinity of Ooty, where he had established his hospitality business. Films that went by the titles Cheetah, Shapath, Ravan Raaj (which had the logline ‘A True Story’!), Yamraaj, and film-makers like T.L.V. Prasad, Kanti Shah, Rajiv Babbar and Arshad Khan represented the high noon of a genre of films that gave the word surreal a new spin.
In 1989, Mithun had a world-record 19 films, including front-bencher favourites like Guru (which had one of the biggest openings in the history of Hindi cinema at the time), Ilaka, Daata, and the underrated Mujrim. Only three years later, he was wowing all those who had dismissed him as an actor, with Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Tahader Katha (only a year ago, he was lifting his lungi, playing Krishnan Iyer MA in Agneepath).
This almost schizophrenic choice of films reached its apogee in 1998, the year he won his third National Award for Swami Vivekananda. This was the year of Hitler, Military Raaj, Chandaal and Gunda. In 2005, he received another National Award best actor nomination for Kaalpurush (again with Buddhadeb Dasgupta), around the same time that he was setting new standards for one-liners like ‘marbo ekhane, laash porbe sashane’, ‘public-er maar, Keoratalar paar’ and ‘ek chhobole chhobi’ (untranslatable gems of our pop culture).
Potential unrealised
For a star and an actor who was once seen as a contender to Amitabh Bachchan, it is unfortunate that the MLA- and Minister Fatakeshto-s, a Mafia Raaj and a Loha overshadow his more nuanced work in, say, Titli or Guru (Mani Ratnam). Or that later directors failed to capitalise on his romantic appeal. Or that his disco years put to the shade his attempts to break the mould.
Those who remember the star for his crowd-pleasers tend to forget that Basu Chatterjee cast him in winning romcoms like Shaukeen and Pasand Apni Apni. Sitara (directed by Meraj, long-time assistant to Gulzar) showcased his acting prowess as did Rakesh Roshan’s Jaag Utha Insaan in atypical roles. But these films failed the box-office test as did a few others at crucial junctures. The failure of big-ticket films like Boxer, Bhrashtachar and Yugandhar, which rode on his shoulders, and the two fiascos with Amitabh Bachchan, Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi and Agneepath, would also put his stardom on skid row.
Deserving of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award?
Whether he is deserving of a Dadasaheb Phalke Award is up for debate. However, there is no doubt that in the 1980s, he was a crowd-puller like few stars in Hindi cinema. Few plumbed the depths Mithun Chakraborty did with his gallery of films that a critic memorably termed ‘brand of impossible heroics and made-for-the-front-row lines’. At the same time, few scaled the heights that Mithun did with three National Award-winning performances — Mrigaya, Tahader Katha and Swami Vivekananda.
Looking back today, I know that despite the threat he posed to the Big B in the 1980s, he will never be acknowledged as a star or actor in the same league. And surprisingly, I am not sure if that is something I am happy about.
Name any other actor who can carry off a Ramakrishna Paramahansa with as much elan as a Jallad. In the same year too. That, in a sentence, is what Mithun Chakraborty is all about.
