Actor Jeevan in ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’
The sublime has to be followed by the ridiculous just as the profound as to be followed by the puerile. After yesterday’s post about our own inconsequentiality, triggered by NASA’s exceptional images of the sun, it is time for something decidedly pedestrian.
Speaking of pedestrian, I was thinking about a particular scene from a 1977 Hindi movie called “Amar Akbar Anthony” directed by the late Manmohan Desai whose movies were like street food— delicious in the immediate but eventually damaging.
The scene features the late actor Jeevan, one of my greatest guilty pleasures of Hindi cinema. Although Jeevan spent almost his entire career playing highly exaggerated, caricaturized and over-the-top villainous characters, his basic talent was never in question. Desai, who before he committed suicide in 1994 embodied everything that is glorious and ignominious about mainstream Hindi cinema, could not have found a more effective vehicle than Jeevan to portray his brand of comic book villainy.
In this scene Kishanlal, a chauffeur played with his characteristic flair by Pran, confronts his boss Robert (Jeevan) for whom he had taken a fall after a car accident. After running over someone Robert pleads with Kishanlal to take the blame. In return Robert promises to look after Kishanlal’s family during the chauffeur’s incarceration. Once out of the prison Kishnalal discovers that Robert had happily forgotten all about his promise.
Those of you who might have watched Manmohan Desai’s movies would know that the filmmaker made a career out of shunning nuance and subtlety like the plague. I had asked Desai in the early 1980s about the singular lack of nuance and subtlety in his movies. His response was “Woh jo rickshaw chalanewala meri picture dekhne aata hai uske paas itna time nahi hai. He wants to see the obvious and I will give him the obvious.” (The rickshaw driver who comes to watch my movies does not have the time (for nuance and subtlety).”
Once you put it that way, everything about the scene makes sense. Robert is a Christian and a villain. Therefore he has to wear a three piece suit with a gold chained watch and cufflinks, eat a cake, and drink whisky. All this while his underlings are watching the confrontation between the master and the slave with servility that they are paid for.
First Kishanlal tries to remind Robert, who pretends not to recognize him, that he used to drive his car. “Kaunsi gaadi? (Which car?)” is Robert’s priceless response. It is as if the egregiousness of his failure depends on which car Kishanlal used to drive.
As Kishanlal complains that Robert did not pay a penny to his family in his absence, let alone thrice the salary that he had promised (for the sake of accuracy Robert had promised twice the salary but why quibble?), the boss says with delightful disdain, “Hum soch rahen hein whisky mein taste kyun nahi aa raha hai? Hum is me ice dalna bhool gaya tha. (I wonder why the whisky lacks the taste. I forgot to put the ice).”
As you wonder why Robert is talking about ice in his whisky, Manmohan the master of the obvious offers a segue to Kishanlal. “Han seth, jab tum apni whisky mein baraf dalna bhool sakte ho to kisi gharib ke pet mein roti dalna kahan tak yaad rakhoge. (When you can forget to put ice in your whisky, why would you remember to put bread in the stomach of the hungry?”)
After this exchange comes the one that has stayed with me for over three decades for its sheer corniness. Jeevan pours his whisky on his shoe and tells Pran to wipe and shine it. This is Desai’s version of rubbing salt in someone’s wounds. He is rubbing whisky in Kishanlal’s wounds. It was the ultimate in humiliation in a Manmohan Desai film made for the rickshaw driver—victimizing the victim by making him shine the boss’s shoe. “Barabar safaa karo. Chamkna chahiye, Shakal dikhne chahiye. (Wipe it clean. It should shine so that I can see my face in it.)”
Thirty three years after I saw it and 25 years after Desai explained to me the rationale behind his brand of filmmaking, I am foolish enough to dwell on this scene. And I am not even a rickshaw driver but a journalist with a lot of time. If this is not the theater of the absurd, what is?
PS: The exchange I am talking about is between the cues 2.50 and 5.37.