Quiz them about cops in the movies, and they crinkle up their noses. “Come on, they make us look like complete idiots,” huffs a senior assistant commissioner at his office facing Mumbai’s scenic Bandra seafront. “Our cabins and chowkies haven’t changed as if they haven’t been painted or cleaned in years. And they still show police stations with portraits of our great political leaders of the 1950s. Times have changed, but not the movies.”
In the course of writing a script, which features the character of a top cop, I’ve been meeting Mumbai’s police force. The reaction to their potrayal in the movies, ranges from the contemptuous to the forget-it-they’ll-never-change. C’est la Bollywood. The stars and stripes on uniforms are often cloudy, they’re even shown to wear full sleeve shirts when they cannot — unless it’s so wintry, that a woollen arm-band can be worn. It’s another story that the city’s temperature never reaches that brrrr point .
Neither can cops wear their hair long. “But I’ve seen some movie heroes in our uniforms with hair as long as hippies,” the assistant commissioner shrugs, adding, “Worst of all, the police always shows up in the end like helpless clowns. The hero has already single-handedly demolished a army of bad guys. A few paunchy constables jump out of jeeps, blow whistles and it’s the end. Maybe that’s why I’ve just stopped going to the movies.”
Chulbul Pandey aka Salman Khan in Dabangg and Bajirao aka Ajay Devgn in Singham, both hugely successful movies, at least make cops out to be valorous instead of the conventional ninnies in uniform. Constables have particularly applauded Devgn’s daredevilry in Singham, when he takes on a blackguard politician portrayed by an over-the-top Prakash Raj.
A sub-inspector, in the course of a chat laughs, “Yes, constables seem to have loved that movie.
They’d like their superiors to be as idealistic and romantic. Ajay Devgn not only knocks out the opposition, he also has a typical dream sequence with the heroine.”
Whatever the quality of a films, and however fantasticated its plot may be, everyone from the police comissioner to the sepoys welcomes a positive image for their profession. Cops have been vulnerable to gross distortion and on the other end of the spectrum, hyper-glorification on the Hindi film screen. Either they are venally corrupt or paragons of virtue.
Till the 1970s, the censorship code disallowed any ‘criticism’ or ‘denigration’ of the police force. In the event, genial character actors, Ifthekar and Jagdish Raj, occupied police chief desks, their parts being strictly cardboard cut-outs. Or there would be the morally upright Dev Anand in CID.
Occasionally, an objection would be raised to the denigration of the police force, like the use of Pandu Hawaldar for the title of a Marathi film. Other professions have protested against vilification, too, like the depiction of a nurse as a part-time sex worker in Satyaji Ray’s Pratidwandi (1971).
Circa, the 1970s, the policeman with grey areas was finally permitted by the censors, starting off with Zanjeer. The cop here takes the law into his own hands, vendetta is achieved. The far more realistic Ardh Satya, was more vocal in its discourse about what drives a cop to corruption and alienation from his duty. Down the years, Sarfarosh, Shool, Naajayaz, Sehar, Gangaajal, Ab Tak Chhapan and A Wednesday are some of the few films which have displayed a semblance of authenticity.
Overwhelmingly though, the movie cop remains a figment of imagination. A senior inspector was kicked about Akshay Kumar’s as a casanova inspector in Khakhee. But he wasn’t as amused about the loser cops in the Dhoom 1 and 2, in which the bad guys burgled the scenes away from the lawforce.
“See, we already have too much on our plates to go about checking out how the movies are representing us,” the inspector reasons. “No one has yet shown the amount of workload and responsibilities we have to shoulder. No one cares about flak we get, least of filmmakers. The best thing is to just laugh it off.”
The inspector cites the example of John Abraham as an undercover cop. Recently, in Force, he flaunted a hugely pumped-up body. According to the cop, “Many of us gym and keep in shape. Show us with brawn if you must but how about some about brain power too?” Touche.