As Aamir Khan completes 25 years in films, we take a look at a unique actor-filmmaker who seems to be expanding the role of a movie-star in India’s public life
By Mayank Shekhar
Shabana Azmi’s brother, cinematographer Baba, has been a close friend and associate of Aamir Khan for years. Once when Aamir was over at Baba’s place and both were deeply engrossed in a conversation, Shabana walked into the room with tea and asked Aamir if he’d like some. Without giving it much thought, he said yes, and continued with the discussion. She interrupted him yet again, this time to check how much sugar he’d want with the tea. Forced to look her way, slightly disoriented, Aamir paused, asked, “How big is the cup?”
I’m told this is a story Shabana loves to recount quite often about Aamir. I know, it’s not that funny. It still reveals a lot about the actor’s unwavering focus. Not being good at multi-tasking is a common male weakness. Some turn this into a professional virtue. Around the mid ‘90s when producers’ guilds had to impose a ban against A-list Bollywood actors signing up for more than six films simultaneously, Aamir suggested he would in fact take up just one movie at a time. It’s common practice in Bollywood now. Back then, what did that even mean?
A film takes at least at least a year to hit the screen. Heroes are about as big as their last Friday release. Nobody’s out to score a masterpiece. A good film is the one that makes money for the producer. The star is the leading male actor in it, who can then negotiate his most recent hit to land magazine covers, endorsement deals, fatter cheques and faster cars.
About one film or so a year meant you basically never got to see Aamir outside of an annual theatrical outing, each of which could technically make or break his career. These were the years when he did films like Raja Hindustani, Ishq, Ghulam, Earth, Sarfarosh, Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai, still hedging his bets between commercial and offbeat, sensible and downright blockbuster stuff. It didn’t help that he had also entirely stopped speaking to the film press. His contemporary Shah Rukh Khan, an interviewer’s delight, waxed eloquent from all platforms about everything under the sun, which pretty much rose from the backyard of his Bandstand bungalow. In interviews that occasionally appeared in the Saturday supplement of The Times Of India, Aamir would mostly talk about his films, and films alone.
This is probably why in 2006, when he sat among activists of the Narmada Bachao Andolan in New Delhi, demanding rehabilitation of villagers who would lose their land to the Sardar Sarovar Project, most of his fans were possibly surprised. On that same sunny afternoon in Jantar Mantar, he had also sat in solidarity for victims of the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy who had still not been compensated. Only the NBA protest got widely reported. Narendra Modi’s government banned his forthcoming release Fanaa from playing in Gujarat. There was immediate financial loss. Aamir didn’t submit an apology.
It’s not hard to tell why the BJP in Gujarat should’ve gone after an actor’s endorsement of a demand that merely echoed the Supreme Court’s ruling. The issue was broadly political. The state has reasons to fear movie stars for their stardom. They command greater attention and crowds than most seasoned politicians at pre-election rallies do. They’re certainly more loved than politicians, even if Modi’s fans might disagree. Aamir adds to this natural charisma a rare touch of personal credibility. He’s mindful of this image. The political party in question would have known this. They had to act fast, blow things out of proportion – swiftly divert the attention from Narmada. They succeeded. Realpolitik, in the short run, usually wins.
In 2003, when Coca Cola faced flak from a non-governmental agency for pesticide and insecticide content in their drinks, the company chose Aamir to clarify their stand. The actor certified on public television the safety levels of the product he endorsed. The general perception was the star had to service his client — they paid his salary. He says he could have cancelled his advertising contract with Coke over the same issue – become a national hero overnight, fighting for public health against a multi-national giant. But he didn’t. Without the company’s knowledge, he had all claims of Coca Cola first independently verified by his lawyers through a neutral laboratory. Once convinced, he spoke the truth. His argument was simple enough to have escaped general public: It’s not that pesticides and insecticides are added to make Coke. They already exist in water that is used for agriculture. Since the same water goes through five levels of treatment to manufacture Coke, there were considerably less pesticides in cola than in the water we drink or the foods we consume.
In 2012, the actor cancelled all his product endorsement contracts. This would have slashed his annual salary by over Rs 100 odd crores or so. He started a television show that would take up a social issue, and examine it from all sides, every Sunday. It wouldn’t have seemed morally correct to be seen peddling products through advertising, while professing social causes between commercial breaks. He understood this, and on his own decided to take the hit. The show itself raised about Rs 100 crore from public toward chosen charities featured in the said episodes.
Six years since his sour tryst with a social cause, Aamir now had a platform of his own to speak his mind as a public figure. What he said, the nation at least heard, whether they followed or not is hard to verify. The governments of the day – both at the Centre and states – certainly took notice, and in many cases, even swung into action. This time politics didn’t win. The intentions weren’t questioned. The facts were measured. Every Sunday, the topics of national concern, trending on Twitter, would be on every Facebook update, and phone calls would fly across the country with people giving their own take on various social problems.
The journalists around me I realised resented the show Satyamev Jayate (“Truth Alone Wins”) the most. It possibly reminded them of their own impotence. Most had hopefully joined their profession with the same missionary zeal the weekly programme stood for. One eye on the eyeballs had made most of mainstream news media blind towards addressing genuine, deeper, long-term public concerns. Scribes were best trained to execute shoot-and-scoot, “aaj ki taaza khabar” kind of reporting.
Satyamev Jayate was public affairs journalism at its finest. It didn’t break news, though it made some. And it came from a Bollywood star. Popular columnist, reporter Nalini Singh acknowledged this humiliation on behalf of her profession. The public acceptance of Satyamev Jayate must have also ensured healthy profits. In an interview to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Aamir put the show’s viewership figures to 500 million. This could be contested. But then, which estimates can’t be. Besides in Hindi on Doordarshan and Star Plus, the show was simulcast in 6 languages on Star Network, and streamed online on YouTube. The channel managed to sell its ad-spots and make the money, they’d be happy to fund the next season.
This, right after blockbusters like Ghajini and 3 Idiots, serious critical acclaim with Dhobi Ghat, and Aamir was once again labelled a genius, which may be an inaccurate description of his true talent. If anything possesses is a striking clarity of thought, which often eludes most geniuses. Talking to him on several topics, you sense his gift lies in finding a nutshell. He doesn’t let complexities get in the way of a good first-principle argument. It’s to his credit that at least in pop-culture, he’s been proven right most of the time. This helps him repeatedly defy conventional market wisdom.
If I’m not mistaken at least three, if not four films on the revolutionary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh had released in the same year 2002. They all bombed one after another. Aamir’s Rang De Basanti in 2006 was about the same era and the same set of revolutionary freedom fighters. The film remains a landmark in Indian cinema. Apparently movies on serious issues, set in a village, or based on sports, don’t work in Bollywood. There’s enough empirical evidence to support this. Lagaan was both a village and sports film. Taare Zameen Par was on the serious issue of child education. Peepli Live was a rural film, plus on the grim subject of farmers’ suicides. They are all now considered Bollywood hits in their own right. In fact the worst sufferer from market logic over “serious issues” is the entire business of journalism itself. Satyamev Jayate proved quality, research-based programming on important subjects could deliver an interested audience.
So what does Aamir Khan know that others do not? That people respond to engaging stories, effectively told? I suppose everybody knows this. What sets Aamir apart is he can tell a good story from a bad one, and pick the most effective ones to bring to life on screen – the size of that screen doesn’t matter. More importantly, the honesty of his intent – even in a grotesquely mad-cap comedy like Delhi Belly – shows. People respect his choices. They’re willing to bet on him. He becomes the change we want to see in our films, and now on our television, and even in our public life.
What about stardom? Is he the biggest star we’ve had? That is subjective, of course, like any discourse on stardom ought to be. By the early 2000s, the prevailing commercial logic was, “What you see is what sells (Jo dikhta hai woh bikta hai).” You saw the same heroes’ billboards map the streets of post-liberalised India, selling everything, from films to face-whitening creams. In 2001, after Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai, possibly at the peak of his career, Aamir altogether disappeared from pictures and public space in general. He came back in 2005. In that sense, he’s not like the super-stars we’ve always known.
I still feel the narcissism within him is possibly deeper than most of his contemporaries. Money remains secondary. He’s taken his public persona and work more seriously than others. He genuinely wishes to be remembered. His legacy will survive public memory for much longer. You can imagine an extensive Aamir Khan films’ retrospective at a major world festival five decades from now. I’m not sure if this may be true for any of his competitors. And I’m not sure still if he thinks about these things too much. Most who find a deeper meaning to their lives probably don’t.
The first time I met Aamir was in 2002, when Lagaan’s Oscar nomination had just been announced. His under-stated home then could pass off for a corporate CEO’s apartment in a quiet, private corner of the posh Pali Hill. Ten years later, when I met him last, not much had changed. Except at noon, having finished a weekly phone-in programme with All India Radio, he was figuring out ways by which the list of Indian organic farmers could be passed on to listeners of his radio show. Between meetings with business associates and his chartered accountant, taking edit calls on the next episode of Satyamev Jayate, and after sitting for an interview with me over two long breaks, he finally parked himself in the couch to chat with a Rajasthan doctor who’d come down to brief him on some latest developments. The doc had featured on his show, and had been granted audience at Mumbai’s Mantralaya. They were working together on making generic drugs more easily accessible in Maharashtra. This is before Aamir had to head out for costume trial for his next film Dhoom 3. He was clearly running late that day. But that didn’t stop him from getting deeply engrossed in each conversation. You could tell a mass communicator vastly expanding the role of a movie star – one film, TV episode, radio show, newspaper column, at a time.