|
Chopra's fascination with the element of anger in Amitabh Bachchan's screen personae extended beyond the frontiers of revenge films like Deewar and Trishul. It flowed into his love stories too and the angry young lover of Kabhie-Kabhie and Silsila gradually took up the gauntlet that was laid down by Vijay Verma, the angry avenger of Deewar and Trishul. In terms of its reach, Chopra's canvas was shrinking ever since he completed Deewar. If Vijay Verma of Deewar carried the angst of the outsider in his struggle for survival, then the battle had shrunk a bit in Trishul. Here, the protagonist was waging an individual war for the assertion of his identity and rights.
In Kabhie-Kabhie and Silsila, the director had passed over into the realm of love. Here was the coupling of two souls - a story of their coming together and falling apart. Obviously, in this two-soul story of agony and ecstasy, there were no spaces to incorporate any concern for the greatest good of the greatest numbers.
Nevertheless, the primordial emotion acquired unusual tones under Chopra's creative vision. This was love tinged with anger. Here there was the usual business of sacrifice - the kind that dominates the Devdas clones of Popular cinema. Yet, this time there was an accompanying sense of bitterness that would be the natural fail-out of self-denial and suppression.
Both in Silsila and Kabhie-Kabhie, the love story proceeds more through suppression than expression. The lovers are forced to accede to extenuating external circumstances and go their separate ways. In Kabhie-Kabhie, it is parental opposition that causes the split. Raakhee and Amitabh Bachchan may have been the college lovers, where the campus poet expressed his ardour through paeans to the campus beauty's eyes. But once college is over, the romance also folds up, since Raakhee's parents have already arranged a match for her. The poet and the pretty lady sacrifice their love for the sake of their parental wishes, setting aside poetry and passion, they settle down to separate domesticity - Raakhee with Shashi Kapoor and Bachchan with Waheeda Rehman. But not happily-ever-after. For Raakhee the old love story lingers as a golden memory that may never intrude in her matrimonial life. All it does is fill her with a tinge of sadness. For Bachchan, the old love story is never forgotten. Instead, it remains as a sore wound that festers forever. And fills his present with the rancour of an unsatiated past. Peace, for this domesticated man - now a husband and father - is hard to find. And the new life is suffused with the fires of unfulfilled desire. Sacrifice yes, but not quite sweet in this case.
As in Silsila, too, where Bachchan is forced to give up the beautiful Chandni for the more homely Jay a Bhaduri. Chandni (Rekha), the woman whom he wooed with poetry and red roses. Bhaduri, the woman he married, simply because she was his dead brother's betrothed and the prospective mother of the dead man's child. Bachchan had to forgo his passion for the sake of propriety again - he had to save his brother's child from the curse of illegitimacy. Nevertheless, this was once again a marriage of convenience soured by the rancour of sacrifice and self-abnegation.
|
