Swadesi hero

Dunno if you read my recent interview with SRK in the Mumbai Mirror, and if you didn’t, click here.
A few friends called in to say I didn’t needle the actor enough, that I should have put some more fire and steam into the questions. And they are right. I was far easier on SRK than I have been in the many interviews I have done in my rather infamous career.

There are two reasons that happened. One, I really do like the guy, especially his tremendous sense of humour. I also know SRK dances for money at Punjabi weddings, has a capitalist ideology running in his veins, and is driven by power and materialism. Nothing necessarily wrong with all of this, especially because he doesn’t pretend to be anything otherwise.

My own affection for the actor is rooted in one film he did, the film that affected me the most, the film that, to use a bad cliché, changed my life. And it was Ashutosh Gowarikar’s ‘Swades’, in which SRK played the role of an NRI, Mohan Bhargava. The down to earth sincerity of his acting, the realism with which the movie was directed, the inspirational message it delivered… struck me like a tornado, and am still to recover from it. I have watched ‘Swades’ innumerable number of times, and yet find myself weeping right through the film. Not just because of the story and the emotions pulsating within, but because ‘Swades’ reminds me of the failure and apathy of we, the urban, rich.

That we have done sweet f-all for our people in the villages, that we don’t give a damn about their problems, that we give a rat’s arse whether they live or die. (See how easily we have forgotten all about Priyanka Bhotmange.) To most of us that is a boring India that does not even exist. That we are happy so long as we get our fat paychecks and the malls and the pubs and the theatre and the dating. Swades was a gentle reminder of what this nation can become, if we city slickers take even a little interest in our rural areas. I cannot think of a single work of fiction that has affected me that deeply.

Yup, I know, Mohan Bhargava doesn’t exist, and the movie was just another role SRK played for money, I know all this. And yet, in those hours I spent with the actor, I could not differentiate between Bhargava and Khan. And there’s no way I can ever be nasty with the former, I am too much in love with him. And maybe it’s a journalistic failure on my part that I could not separate fact from fiction.

But I am not ashamed of myself. Only once in your entire life can cinema affect an individual holistically. And Swades did that to me. So I guess I am allowed one screw-up.