Khalid Mohamed

Listen, I’m sure that actors from what is termed as “the South” in journalese, are distinctly audience-friendly. It’s just that they elect to debut, on the Bollywood front, in projects which give them short shrift. Self-publicity — a necessary evil — is also conspicuous by its absence.

Now that has happened to Kerala’s Prithviraj, last week, who enacted a near-lifeless, wordless wonder, while Rani Mukerji did all the yakety-yaking.
Towards the wrap-up reel of Aiyyaa, the hero — for want of a better word — stopped impersonating the Sphinx, and actually talked. Whatever you heard required helluva lot of more diction clarity and support by the dubbing engineer, essential even for the Bollywood A-listers.
Without exception, Mumbai’s actors steer clear from playing second fiddle in women-centric movies. Prithviraj, who conveyed a strong screen presence especially when the camera focused on his eyes, obviously had no such reservations. Indeed, I’d congratulate him for caring a hoot about gender-considerations. But I’d moan, too — boss, was that a role to accept? Forget about author-backed stuff. The thing is, Prithviraj might be remembered in B-circles essentially by those who hit YouTube for Dreamum Wakeupum. He could carry off the Jeetendra-style (updated with six-packs) pots-and-pons danceumum. But then so did Naseeruddin Shah in The Dirty Picture.
Moreover, Aiyyaa hasn’t exactly rocked the cash counters. And you know what that means in terms of market equity. For a brief while back in the 1980s though, the trade did acknowledge that South actors could make whoopee in Mumbai. It was conjectured that Kamal Haasan could be the game-changer with the enormous success of Ek Duuje ke Liye (1981). Raj Kumar Santoshi had even announced Ghatak with Kamal Haasan, only to drop him at the last hour rudely, claiming that it wouldn’t be a commercially viable project. Kamalji out, Sunny Deol in.
Rajinikanth was thumbed up throughout the nation with Andhaa Khoon. Next: Quite a few projects like Uttar Dakshin, Zulm ka Badsha and Bhrashtachar didn’t do sufficient justice to Chennai’s invincible superstar. And it was back to home turf. Similarly, despite the success of Aaj ka Goonda and Gentleman, Chiranjeevi was convinced that there’s no place quite like home.
I began with Prithviraj today since his Aiyyaa act takes me back to a conversation with Mammootty, who had also wished to rock B-town. His debut foray Dhartiputra had made no ripples. “Is there any project,” he had asked, “which will ensure that I am at par with all your big heroes?” Naturally, I had no answer. Perhaps it was the haphazard work ethic of Mumbai, to an extent, which made Mammootty anxious. At a late-night shoot, he had waited for hours to face the camera for a suspense thriller with Raveena Tandon. The shoot was so unstructured that the usually pleasant-natured actor had wondered testily, “Is this the way films are made here?”
Surprisingly, Mohanlal, after the lead role in Priyadarshan’s dubbed-into-Hindi, Sazaa-e-Kaalapani, fetched up in ensemble parts in Company and Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag presumably as a friendly gesture. No go. The superb actor hasn’t ever featured in a Hindi film worthy of his calibre.
I can watch subtitled DVDs of truly gifted actors from the “South” and on the satellite channels regularly. Indeed, there’s a growing following for films from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Plus, a boom of remakes is on, with Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar stepping into the shoes of the original heroes. But if you ask me, we need to see more actors at the ’plexes, irrespective of their postal address.