Balraj Sahni reflected the people’s angst
Those who have watched Do Bigha Zamin cannot in their life-time forget the heart-wrenching performance of Balraj Sahni. And those who haven't will not know what acting is. One of the finest films ever to come out of the Hindi film stable, it has become a benchmark as much for the sensitive direction by Bimal Roy as for Sahni's portrayal of a man who oscillated between hope and despair, finally ending up in much the way many of his countrymen do — in misery after being short-changed by a system that is supposed to take care of them. His was the story of the quintessential aam aadmi, whose sufferings today do not seem to be any less acute than they were 60 years ago which Sahni projected. That makes the actor and his performance timeless. It's a pity that we needed an occasion like his birth centenary to wake up to the greatness of the artiste. There can only be a handful of actors in mainstream Hindi films who can aspire to be in his league, and yet we are besotted more with stars that are non-actors. But for the concerted efforts of his friends, admirers and family members, Sahni's birth centenary would have passed unnoticed. The aam aadmi may have become a fashionable name today, but Sahni was the original common man, not just in the characters he portrayed on the screen but in his real life as well. His desperation in Do Bigha Zamin was matched by his anguish in Kabuliwallah, his middle-aged romantic cheekiness in Waqt, his pathos in Garam Hawa and his large-heartedness in Ek Phool Do Mali. In all of these roles, it became difficult to separate the man from his character. Sahni was not one of those actors whose commitment to the profession began with arrival on the sets, performance and pack-up. He did not just enact the role; nor did he merely live it. He went further, engaging with society and its problems through a variety of means including theatre. The sensitivities which he displayed on the screen with such telling impact were not a put-on, but they were intrinsic to him as a human being.
But for all his volcanic talent, Balraj Sahni had one failing: He did not know the art of self-promotion. lesser actors of his time raced ahead of him in money and recognition because they marketed themselves aggressively. He got slotted as a ‘character actor' at a time when character actors were only appendages to the star cast. Yet, in many instances, he outshone the heroes and the heroines by his masterly performance. Anywhere else in the world, his calibre would have put him at par with the best actors of the world and made him a household name. But here in Bollywood, he languished in a system which measured — and still measures — the worth of an artiste by the glamour quotient the actor enjoys. The system simply fails to realise that the aam aadmi has never been, and will never be, glamorous. Balraj Sahni would have been just one among the fleeting glitzy had he been consumed by stardom.