We all love the angry young man of Bollywood. But when he takes his role a little too seriously in real life, it isn’t a pretty sight. Our filmstars are going through a rather tough time when it comes to managing their anger in the public sphere. Just days after Vivek Oberoi attacked a journalist after the latter asked him one uncomfortable question too many, recently Saif Ali Khan was booked by the Mumbai police for assaulting a fellow diner at a five star restaurant. And then, of course, is the all-too-public spat involving Shah Rukh Khan and Shirish Kunder. All of which makes us wonder if our stars need lessons in anger management. Or are we just blowing up issues just because a celebrity is involved?
Psychologist Dr Hozefa Bhinderwala says it would be inhuman to scrutinise Saif’s behaviour at the restaurant. “Brawls like this are normal. What one must understand is that a star has the same pressure, and often even more, as that of a commoner. Their privacy is constantly invaded. And 12.30 in the night, all you want to do is enjoy yourself, but then you have people telling you to shut up. Aren’t restaurants normally loud? The person who went up to him knew his celebrity status. It would be immature to make any assumption before we all see the actual CCTV footage,” he says.
But this, of course, isn’t the first time Saif has been involved in such an incident. He’s still some way short of Bollywood’s resident enfant terrible Salman Khan. Govinda too has been embroiled in a similar case after getting “slap happy” with a person on the sets of his film Money Hai To Honey Hai. Bollywood historian S.M.M. Ausaja feels it’s only the current generation of stars who’re ill-behaved in public.
“The previous generation of stars — be it Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar or Amitabh Bachchan — believed in holding their temper in. They believed that the way you conduct yourself in public is very important. So no matter what the provocation, they never got into any physical fights,” says Ausaja.
In the 70s, Star and Style’s Devyani Chaubal wrote extensively against Amitabh Bachchan (actually she criticised everyone except Raj Kapoor and Rajesh Khanna, who were her favourites). Even when Bachchan was at the peak of his career, he got an inordinate amount of flak from her. But Big B, the then angry young man of Bollywood, never reacted adversely to it.
Filmmaker Suraj Barjatya, who has worked with several big actors in the industry, says that as actors, celebrities like Saif have to go through a lot on a daily basis. “They put in so much effort, which most times we don’t even realise because they make it look so easy on screen. And at times, things affect them more than they are likely to affect others, as they are extra-sensitive, as a result of which they tend to lose themselves.”
So are the stars too fragile to make the shift from reel to real life? Dr Bhinderwala opines, “If things like this are happening every often, then I think Saif must take some professional help.”
Barjatya, however, suggests an alternative. “I suggest an hour of meditation, or some kind of yoga like pranayam on a daily basis, which could help them be more at peace with themselves. Yoga is something that benefits everyone, actors are no exception,” Barjatya says.