In this incredible and fascinating feature Subhash K Jha focuses on his experiences about writing about filmistan, stars and especially Bollywood in the year 2000.
Looking back, the first year of this millennium was a whopper for me. You could say it did for me what Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai did for Hrithik Roshan. The year introduced me to a whole lot of new and showbiz experiences, which forced me to face the truth.
Film stars and journalists can never be friends. There can be excellent working relationships between a star and a journo, but a real friendship? You’ve got to be living in a make-believe world.
My friend Khalid Mohamed always warned me about star-journo friendships. There are countless instances in his own life when he has been let down by film folks who he presumed would stand by him through thick and thin. “Be careful; you’re going to get hurt,” he’d warn me when he saw me taking more than a cursory interest in the life of X or Y.
But why do we not learn from our mistakes? Why do we extend more than a helping hand every time a star asks for a mere helping finger? I like stars who keep their distance. Like Shah Rukh Khan. I met him for the first time in January 2000 when the negative write-ups on his first home-production Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani had just started. Shah Rukh turned out to be exceptionally sharp in person.
He speaks fast, but he never loses track of his thoughts. We share the same birth date. He’s the only male star who insists he doesn’t want to be written about. When on his–our—birthday in 2000, I asked him when he would grant me an interview, he said, “Never”.
“Never is a very, very long time,” I replied. Shah Rukh asked me how old I was that November morning. I told him. “In that case, your never is slightly shorter than mine.”
I’ll never forget that off-the-cuff remark. It reminded me of how precious our time on earth is and how most of us squander it in futile bickering and self-defeating prejudices.
For me, 2000 was the year of Shah Rukh Khan. He proved the truth behind the old adage: it’s good to be successful but to be successful, you’ve got to be good. And Shah Rukh is the best, no doubt about it. Mohabbatein proved it. It also proved that besides Lata Mangeshkar, there’s only one living legend in Hindi cinema. And that’s Amitabh Bachchan.
Long before Kaun Banega Crorepati, I knew he would be back at the top where he belongs. Not because he has been blessed with eternal stardom (good God, no, and would the stars who believe this please get down from their high horses before they fall and crush their bloated egoes?) but because he has the right attitude for sustained success.
Having got to know both generations of Bachchans in 2000, I can say one thing for sure: Abhishek is going to be around, if not as long as his Dad, but certainly longer than the overnight stars who get sucked into their self-made vortex of vanity.
Abhishek has Shah Rukh’s intelligence and sharp wit. He also has his father’s diplomatic nature. But it’s compounded by an intuitive warmth which surfaces in those rare unguarded moments when Abhishek forgets he’s talking to a journalist. Amitji—as I call him –never forgets that. There’s always a guarded distance between us. And I respect that distance.
Unlike Abhishek, Hrithik is extremely artless. When we talked about so-and-so star being untouched by his stardom we often mean, he or she keeps up a convincing pretence of being unspoilt by success. Hrithik is the first absolutely normal superstar I have come across. Even my closest star friends (there I go, contradicting myself about the star-journo relationship) lapse into acute artifice. Not Hrithik.
When, during our first interview, he said he couldn’t understand or cope with the hysteria surrounding his stardom, my heart reached out to him. Here’s a guy who’s gone from being Rakesh Roshan’s son and Suzanne Khan’s boyfriend one day to being the nation’s no.1 heartthrob the next day.
What did Hrithik do with his stupendous success? Thank God he has his father to handle his career. Rakesh Roshan was one of the people I had the good fortune to know in the year 2000. We had a minor, and in hindsight, silly, misunderstanding over something he had said about Madhuri Dixit.
In hindsight, I realized I didn’t need to defend Madhuri. After all, she’s a big girl now! When Rakesh Roshan made that wonderful Cola ad with his son and Divya Palat, I asked the gentle and amiable publicist to arrange an interview. To my relief and happiness, Rakesh Roshan rang back. We’re friends—or whatever—now.
Another warring faction that I appeased this year—and boy, do I feel proud of myself—was singer Alka Yagnik. For years she harboured this absurd notion that I had something personal against her. Why? Because I criticized her singing. When would our showbiz wallahs realize that criticism isn’t tantamount to a personal bias (though I must say praise often is)? After hearing Alka waltz through the numbers of Refugee, I took her number from Anu Malik to congratulate her.
For some strange reason, Anu pretended he had to wrack his brain to remember her number.
My friend Mahesh Manjrekar indulged in no such pretence when I asked him for Tabu’s mobile number after seeing her mesmerizing performance in his Astitwa. We had a run-in, Tabu and I, over one stupid quote of hers in an interview that we did for the defunct magazine Showtime. She was unduly upset. I found her attitude irrational and exaggerated. Tabu and I never spoke after that.
Until Astitwa. Not just me, but everyone inside and outside the film industry, though she gave a classic performance in the film. The last time I had reacted so strongly to someone was Sanjay Bhansali after Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. I had to break the ice with Tabu.
Kamal Haasan is another guy who thinks Tabu is simply out of this world. We would spend hours discussing Tabu and every other aspect of cinema. No other film person’s company has enriched me as a human being and nourished my intellect the same way as Kamal Haasan. And to think that we might never have been friends, thanks to a very nasty interview-based article I had done regarding this acting colossus.
Let me explain. It wasn’t me who was being nasty. It was the person who spoke in that article. Later, at an awards function, he met Kamalji (yup, I call him that because he addresses everyone, including his own daughters, with a ‘ji’) and said, ‘You know how journalists are.’
“I didn’t believe him for a minute,” Kamal Haasan told me when we finally got introduced after Hey Ram.
Besides Shah Rukh, the only star-yaar-kalaakar who refuses to do any interviews with me is one of my favourites, Twinkle Khanna. I never thought I’d get to know her. I always wanted to meet her gorgeous mom, Dimple. After having interacted with the mom and her two intelligent daughters I wanted to hand over the Mom Of The Millennium award to Dimple, though she denies any hand in the way her daughters have shaped up.
Good people, pretentious people, beautiful people, vulnerable people…Someday, I would like to write a book on the things that I know about them. Someday, the walls of discretion will break, and we’ll see the stars as they are, plucked from the sky and sent hurling down to damnation by the constant demand on their time, attention, and self-worth.
To end my personal diary with the two greatest stars of the millennium—Lata Mangeshkar and Amitabh Bachchan. When I had not inquired about Didi—that’s Lataji —the phone rang one October morning. “Kahan hai aap?” asked the sweetest voice in this universe.
And I felt as though the mountain had come to Mohamed. Then, late in November, the phone rang. It was Amitji, telling me about the birth of his grandson. At that moment, I forgot and forgave all the betrayals that I had been through during the year. I realized that a star—even a superstar—can be a journalist’s friend, provided the pen is used to cause no pain.
