My eyes brimmed over while watching Sachin: A Billion Dreams . I had never been his biggest fan. Yet, growing up in 1990s India had put forward some inescapable truths. Excellent skills aside, Tendulkar had become a beacon of aspiration for a middle-of-nowhere generation in dire need of a cleaner identity. Ironically, these cricketers were perhaps brought up on a staple diet of angry-young-man Bollywood potboilers, melancholic British rock bands and volatile American tennis legends. In a way, they became their own middle-class heroes, a concept that extended itself naturally to role modelling in a country averse to shades of grey.
Tendulkar’s ascent coincided with the rise of the ‘aspirational romance’ phase of commercial Hindi cinema. Love stories back then were advertisements of everything but actual love. More than the girl and boy falling for each other, it was essential that the audience fell in love with them. For that, the characters had to project the brat-to-babe graph, family-respecting core, steely determination and good-hearted affections typical of whomever best epitomised the prevalent national mood.
Traditional template
As it turned out, a curly-haired boy attaining swashbuckling manhood on the most public of platforms was India’s favourite obsession. Consequentially, subconsciously or not, filmmakers often used ‘vanilla’ romantic heroes as glamorous channels to invoke imaginary traits of Tendulkar’s traditional template. Many iconic Bollywood hits of the decade might have explored, and dramatised, different facets of his little-known personality – like he were a mythical figure whose attributes were being translated into fictional ‘adventures-of’ chapters.
Take Sooraj Barjatya’s avatar of vegetarian heroism, Prem: forever the blue-eyed son and younger brother, a joint-family idol whose love politely blossoms in the language of Barman-ish musical montages. I always imagined Prem’s unnaturally happy-smiley values to be adequate adaptations of young Tendulkar’s deferential household existence. If he hadn’t discovered a bat, he seemed a perfect mousy-voiced fit in the extended Rajshri Universe. His childhood friendship with Vinod Kambli seemed like the foundation for Andaaz Apna Apna and kitschy David Dhawan buddy/rival comedies like Aankhen, Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, Haseena Maan Jayegi and Judwa .
Raj ( Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge ), Rahul ( Dil Toh Pagal Hai,Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ) and Suraj ( Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya ) were the adolescent and ‘riskiest’ loveable rogue manifestations of the player: large-hearted brats gloriously aware of the pressures and customs of the nation they embodied. Academically irrelevant and passionately conservative, they exuded the kind of familial boyish warmth that served as romantic metaphors for Tendulkar’s single-handed exploits and sportsmanship on the field. The movies we watched at night became cinematic addendums to the straight drives belted out in the day. I vividly remember a news channel scoring his Sharjah Desert Storm innings to Duplicate ’s ‘ Mere Mehboob Mere Sanam’ – it sounded strangely thrilling, and oddly confluent.
Broadening the spectrum
At the turn of the millennium, with the shake-up of the match-fixing scandal, new voices entered the fray. The grammar of Indian cricket changed. Tendulkar was no more the lone crusader. The stage was now a multi-starrer. Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai altered the multiplex landscape. Mainstream scriptwriters might have admired the spunk of Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag, and internalised their pugnacious revolution through edgier avatars.
So Raj ( Mohabbatein ) would rebel against the stubbornness of heritage to become the piped piper of gen-next desire, and Rahul ( Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham) would revolt against the holy nuclear family for love. Veer Pratap Singh ( Veer-Zaara ) would subvert the idea of eternal love by suffering in self-induced exile, while a gang of noble Delhi louts ( Rang De Basanti ) would revolt to enforce their own brand of justice.
These weren’t the most orthodox heroes. Because they were dramatically waking – even standing – up to the frailties of the obsolete world that confined them. There was enough redemption to trust in their ambitions, despite the theatricality of attitude. Like their ‘Bleed Blue’ counterparts, they were inherently still good, though non-exemplary, people – off the pedestal, a little more human, attainable and accessible.
A different landscape
The Mahendra Singh Dhoni era brought with it the aggressive emergence of independent and hinterland cinema. Reality became a genre. Niche pockets welcomed the talents of small-town ‘outsiders’ like Anurag Kashyap ( Black Friday and No Smoking released the year an untested Indian team won the inaugural World T20), Irrfan Khan, Kay Kay Menon and Kangana Ranaut.
Personally, my sensibilities were always inclined toward the more “adult” narratives: the flawed-genius (Brian Lara), gritty-crafter (Steve Waugh) and ballsy-prince (Sourav Ganguly) being archetypical examples. Which is why I’ve particularly enjoyed the recent trend of troubled millennial ‘non-heroes’ populating the confrontational Virat Kohli era. Varun Dhawan ( Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya, Badrinath ki Dulhaniya, Badlapur) and Ranbir Kapoor ( Rockstar, Wake Up Sid, Tamasha, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ) have made careers out of playing conflicted, naïve men-children that are far from aspirational. They are designed as fiercely driven, unattractive, self-conscious and politically incorrect lovers – focused solely on earning the emotions of their partners, irrespective of their relationship with viewers. We accept their passion and restlessness as a reflection of our status as imperfect individual stories that thrive more on expression than impression.
Thanks to the ongoing validation of Kohli, internal angst is such a ‘heroic’ trait now that righteousness feels pretentious, resulting in us (as well as modern storytellers) viewing the conventional good guy (Siddharth Shukla in Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya , Abhay Deol in Raanjhanaa ) with mild contempt. It’s also why ’90s visionaries like Barjatya and Subhash Ghai struggle to find relevance today. Characters (say, Apurva Agnihotri in Pardes ) who would’ve been arrogant villains 20 years ago are now layered protagonists, while all-around knights are treated as third-wheeled disclaimers.
While Tendulkar and his sanitised cinematic counterparts carved out auras of unattainable adulthood in our early years, Kohli and his quasi-masculine manifestations have redefined the notion of youth for our older versions. As a result, for many, even a mediocre documentary likeSachin is a throwback to simplistic, black-or-white times – times when we wouldn’t scoff at holier-than-thou heroes, smirk at their practiced blandness or doubt the integrity of their one-dimensional temperaments. It makes us mourn – and celebrate – the death of technical correctness and manufactured innocence.
