If you are a movie buff and if you belong to the rare type who liked both the entertainment obsessed commercial Hindi films and the ‘art’ based parallel cinema in the same breath, and if your tastes are varied — in short, if you have an omnivorous palate then I am sure you must have been in a fix on the wake of the recent Rajesh Khanna-Naseeruddin Shah row.
Now it is no row actually, since Khanna is not around to defend himself or make a counter allegation. The fix is the offshoot of a casual remark made by Naseerudin Shah in an interview to a newspaper in which he called the first superstar of Hindi cinema a mediocre actor with little talent, and that the latter was in a way responsible for the deterioration of the standard of our movie-making in the 70s, read he meant that the rise of Rajesh Khanna’s then was synonymous with the low standard of Hindi films that began with it.
Many found the remark offending—some because they were iconoclastic, others because of our traditional modesty of not saying ill of people who are gone. Quite naturally, the actor’s daughter, a former actor and a celebrated columnist now, lambasted Shah by calling him being mediocre in criticising a man who is not there on this earth anymore to defend himself. There have been scores of articles by columnists and critics both agreeing and disagreeing with what Naseerudhin Shah said of Rajesh Khanna, all from intellectual and critical perspectives.
Many praised Naseer’s free spirit and outspokenness, others sided with the fans of Khanna, who felt it was unbecoming of one good actor to say ill of other equally good actor, what if each of them belonged to an all together different schools of acting. But no one has so far come up with the perspective of someone who is the fan of both of them; a fan who applauded Nasser’s intense acting in the parallel cinema such as ‘Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai’ and Rajesh Khanna’s pathos invoking role in movies like ‘Anand’, in which he played a cancer patient, who wanted to live full till the last moment of his life with same enthusiasm and appreciation.
Rajesh Khanna ruled hearts in the 70s and was rightly the first superstar of Hindi cinema. He gyrated slowly while dancing, which was his own style; he rolled his head slowly to a side with closed eyes while delivering a romantic dialogue—the style which was very popular with fans in those days, something mimicry artists are never tired of making fun of in order to make you laugh in comedy shows. No doubt his histrionics were based on a special romantic genre that was taking its birth following the success of popular Hindi novels, which were being churned out at breathtaking speed by writers like Gulshan Nanda, Prem Bajpeyi, Ranu and others, which sold like hot cakes on railway book stalls and at other places. Housewives, shopkeepers, students, office goers, anyone who could read Hindi in north India loved to read those novels—in short, those commercial fictions had become movie substitute for one’s reading pleasure.
Quite naturally, the roaring success of these commercial novels in Hindi that had little literary value, had made way for similar script-writing for Hindi cinema in the 70s, something Naseerudin Shah sees as devaluing for its standard, and there he holds Rajesh Khanna as a mediocre actor for successfully enacting those characters that catered to the taste of his entertainment seeking fans and viewers.
Rajesh Khanna had essayed some really good roles in many movies. He was an equally great actor like Naseeruddin Shah is, though they belonged to different genres. To imagine Naseerudin playing Rajesh Khanna’s characters in movies like ‘Anand’ and ‘Bawarchi’ is impossible and you know why. Make a remake of these movies with any strong, really good actor of Naseeruddin Shah’s standard and see if he can recreate the magic of Rajesh Khanna and succeeds in leaving the same indelible footprints of impression in your mind like the latter had done.
So, every actor has his strong points and frailties. Naseerudin Shah is undoubtedly a huge storehouse of talent; his acting is intense, he is more intellectual and has seen more international audiences and fan following than Rajesh Khanna, but on the count of popularity in commercial cinema, he lagged behind, for he had no specific signature style of acting, which in a way is the hallmark of good acting. One likes him like one likes no one else. But one also likes others. The measure of an actor is based on these likings; it is the people who make an actor last. If Khanna lasted a decade in the popularity chart, his contributions to Hindi cinema is then undeniably worth an honorable mention; you may or may not give him credit, but you must not downplay his credentials as a good actor.
(The writer is District Information and Public Relations Officer, Ganjam. The views expressed are his own)