Click to play videoHe is India’s most recognizable face and arguably the greatest star in the Mumbai film industry. Over the years, he has been the one man who has towered over India's popular culture.
In the 1970s, he was the angry man of Bollywood. Two years back in Black, he belted out what was possibly his most outstanding performance in his filmy career spanning over three decades and over 150 titles.
This week, Amitabh Bachchan returns with yet another big bang, playing the controversial role of a 60-year-old man in love with an 18-year-old girl in his new film Nishabd.
The Big B was a special guest on the CNN-IBN show, Unspoken Relationships-Nishabd Show, where a panel comprising Nishabd director Ram Gopal Varma, ad guru Alyque Padamse, singer Suchitra Krishnamurthy, actress-filmmaker Revathi and noted Kuchipudi exponents Raja and Kaushalya Reddy debated the dos and don’ts of man-woman relationship in the Indian society. The show was moderated by Sagarika Ghose.
Nishabd is a love story between a 60-year-old man and an 18-year-old girl played by Amitabh Bachchan and Jiah Khan respectively. In the film, Bachchan is a professional photographer who is married to Revathi. Bachchan’s character gets attracted to his teenaged daughter’s friend, who comes to stay with them.
The attraction between the man and the girl is mutual, putting him in conflict with his feelings and his responsibilities towards his family. It inevitably leads to turmoil in his family life.
Sagarika Ghose: Amitabh Bachchan, when you first saw the script about a 60-year-old man falling in love with an 18-year-old girl, did you feel a sense of empathy with the character?
Amitabh Bachchan: The thing that attracted me was the fact that it was something different that we were attempting to do. For actors, it is very selfish to choose as many challenging roles as possible. This was a challenge for me. We very briefly discussed as to how Varma would treat the film. I liked what I read, particularly how it ended. We went ahead and did it.
Sagarika Ghose: You are someone who enjoys adulations from lots of young women who are 16 and 18. Do you think you could ever be in that situation where as an older person you could find yourself being drawn to energies of someone much younger?
Amitabh Bachchan: This is play-acting. This is fantasy. This is make believe. Seldom do we try and equate two regions.
I think that the concept of the story really is that we had not wanted to go into the fact as to how did this happen, why should it happen, what is society going to say, what do you feel about it. People could say that I am 65 and why am I doing this? It is not about all that. I think that is about a situation that has happened and it is there in the film. I don’t know why it happened, but it has happened.
Sagarika Ghose: Ram Gopal Varma, was that your motivation to make a film on a unique situation to show that love happens at unlike places?
Ram Gopal Varma: I don’t think that the point is about whether it is an old man, a middle-aged man or a young man. The point is about capturing a man’s feelings. The feeling doesn’t have an age. A feeling is a feeling. All these come from a certain programming, but if the feeling comes from within you, then there is nothing that can stop it. Then it is a question of the strength of your feeling vs your righteousness. Nishabd is basically about a conflict about these two.
Sagarika Ghose: So is it a battle between heart and mind?
Ram Gopal Varma: Yes.
SHOULD AGE DIFFERENCE AFFECT A RELATIONSHIP?
Sagarika Ghose: Alyque Padamse, in the battle between heart and mind, as Varma talked about, when an older person gets involved with a younger person, is there a feeling ‘I may be doing morally wrong’?
Alyque Padamse: I think that age has very little to do with it. It depends on your state of mind and your approach to life. I think that I am still in college. I do not know what Amitabh feels, but I feel that way.
As the young audience here grows older, they will realise that the person that you were in college is what you are for the rest of your life. You may find your footsteps going little slower, but as long as your is ticking over and your heart is pumping blood, that means you have got the same approach to life that you always had. It is a youthful approach.
Sagarika Ghose: Suchitra Krishnamurthy, as someone who has had an experience of a relationship with someone mush older, did you often feel that you should try and be someone you were not and try and be like an older person? Did you feel that you had to try and match with what your partner expected you to be in terms of wisdom?
Suchitra Krishnamurthy: Expectation is irrelevant. But what one must question at a more academic level is that a 19-year-old and an 18-year-old women’s body may be physically mature, but they do not have mature minds. So how much of this relationship is exploitative and how much is just conditioning? You are giving her the power of just her sexuality ultimately. I believe such relationships have only to do with sexuality, nothing else.
Sagarika Ghose: Revathi, you play the role of the wife of the man in the film. In playing this role, did you ever try and explore what is it that draws your husband in the film to this young woman and away from you? What is that draws older men to younger women?
Revathi: I think this particular situation is common in most marriages. You take each other for granted. The magic and the romance that was there in the beginning is missing. It just happens that you want to get back that magic, which doesn’t happen with your spouse.
I felt that the husband was moving away. There was a part of him that was dormant many years back or just buried within himself. The girl coming into his life brings all those emotions back. It brings to life certain things maybe he had forgotten.
Sagarika Ghose: Amitabh Bachchan, is that what draws the character to the young girl? He is a photographer. He is questing for the ideal picture. Is this the visual ideal in a way that she represents?
Amitabh Bachchan: Some of the points that Alyque has expressed and what Suchitra has expressed are indeed incorporated in the script. There is an answer and there is a question that comes up during the course of the film. We can’t obviously talk about it now because the film hasn’t released yet. Those points and those issues have been answered in the film.
Sagarika Ghose: It is all right to talk about an older man and a younger woman, but what about an older woman and a younger woman? Is that freedom available to a woman in our society?
Woman in the audience: I don’t think so. I think we have double-standards in India where it is acceptable for a man of any age to marry a much younger woman. It is difficult for an older woman to have a relationship or even think of having a relationship with a younger man.
Alyque Padamse: In Bollywood, you have Nargis marrying Sunil Dutt, who was older than him. There was a considerable age difference.
In an audience poll on the show on the question - Should age difference affect a relationship?- 30 per cent of the audience voted "yes” while 55 per cent said “no”. The rest 15 per cent voted “can't say”.
IS SEXUAL FIDELITY IMPORTANT IN A MARRIAGE?
Sagarika Ghose: How do you feel Raja Reddy? Won’t you hurt your wife a great deal by getting married to her younger sister?
Raja Reddy: No. It is not hurt actually. I keep my first wife, Radha, as well as Kaushalya happy. She fell in love with me. I asked her to wait for one year and not get emotional. She said if I wanted to marry her, then she would just marry me.
Her love was blind and she insisted that I marry her. She conveyed the point to her sister, who made all the arrangements. Radha was very happy, so there is no question of hurting my first wife.
Sagarika Ghose: So what is the relationship between you now? Are you all happy? Aren’t there some sort of jealousies and envies or even some sort of sexual tension?
Kaushalya Reddy: It is not about sex. We actually are in love with the art, the dance form. We are bounded together because of the dance, the art.
Sagarika Ghose: I have a quote from Oscar Wilde that says “Don’t ever try to unlock the secrets of a marriage.” Would you agree with that? Whether a marriage functions on fidelity or infidelity, it is an accepted part of marriage. There are different kinds of relationships that exist.
Amitabh Bachchan: A lot of it has emanated from the fact that there has been a media speculation as to what the story is about and the fact that it is related to Lolita. It is not. It has nothing to do with Lolita.
There is no physicality in the relationship. There are no sexual overtures at all. It is just about the situation that the man finds himself in having received an overture of affection from an 18-year-old. And that is what the film is all about.
Sagarika Ghose: How does he deal with his wife? Does he tell his wife?
Amitabh Bachchan: That is an interesting question and a good one. One of the things that attracted me when Varma told me the story was that he wanted the character to be very strong and honest.
He said that if he is finding himself in a situation, which is somewhat embarrassing or critical for his wife, then he would want a scene where he would actually walk up to his wife, confront her and say that he was in love with the girl. He would say, “I don’t say how it has happened, but it has happened.”
Sagarika Ghose: Revathi, you play the role of the wife. In the character when the husband comes to you and says that he is in love and that love has happened, what sort of empathetic reaction did you feel for a wife in that particular situation? Did you feel that you are going to accept this because he was your husband or that you were going to stand up and fight for your man?
Revathi: I would stand up and fight. I would not accept it. It is impossible for a woman who is normal, who thinks that she is very secure, has a husband, her child, her home and her family. She has spent her entire life thinking about them. It is not impossible for her to accept that.
Sagarika Ghose: Ram Gopal Varma, when you made the wife react very strongly, were you conscious that you were breaking with the certain social convention because, in India, a number of women would tell their husbands: ‘Do what you want, but don’t endanger the marriage, my mangalsutra and my sindoor. Were you actually trying to make a break there?
Ram Gopal Varma: I frankly don’t say that I have thought so much about it. I don’t believe in the institution of marriage. My mind works half in the underworld and half in a horror genre. I don’t think that I am comfortable to make a comment on this.
Sagarika Ghose: But you did feel that you wanted the wife to react angrily?
Ram Gopal Varma: It is about dealing with specific people. Everyone is a different person, the wife and the husband. The reaction to a certain situation might vary in different situations going by his age. Nishabd is a story of such a character whom I picked up for a certain time. They do not represent anybody else I know.
In the audience poll on the question - Is sexual fidelity important in a marriage? - 76 per cent of the audience voted "yes” while 21 per cent said “no”. The rest 3 per cent voted “can't say”.
IS INDIAN SOCIETY ACCEPTING UNCONVENTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS?
Sagarika Ghose: Has the Mumbai film industry explored unconventional relationships enough?
Amitabh Bachchan: I don’t think so. Because the Indian film industry has always resorted to very formatted story ideas and escapist commercial entertainment. It has not really delved into it.
But in recent times, there has been a great maturity in our audiences. There has been a great maturity in the kind of people that are making films. There is a huge amount of acceptability for the films that were in the past not popular as they are now. This bodes well for all of us. It is very exciting to find that somebody like Ram Gopal Varma, who is normally associated with, as he said, the underworld and gangster films, to be delving into a more sensitive subject.
I was shocked that he could have the sensibilities and the aesthetics. I just loved the way the film has been treated. I knew that questions would arise like: is there physicality and is there a sexual angle to it? There is nothing like that in the film. There is not a single shot that even remotely addresses this.
Viewer’s question from Kolkata: You have been associated with Indian cinema for long and Nishabd looks like a niche film. How does it feel like associating with a niche film like Nishabd ? It looks like a very different film. Why have you chosen this film?
Amitabh Bachchan: It is because these are the only roles that I get at 65. When I was younger I was playing leading man, we were not approached with role like this. I think a lot of leading men would hesitate to do something like this as it does not fall into the recognised format of the leading man.
They would not risk their reputation or the box office. We are guided by the box office and that is a very frank confession. We always want to play safe and play in films that would get the box office running.
Second viewer from Kolkata: As per you, what is it that an 18-year-old girl would find attractive in you?
Sagarika Ghose: Why are women going crazy about you (Big B) all the time?
Alyque Padamse: Amitabh Bachchan and Sean Connery. I have asked 20-year-old girls who they would like as a boyfriend and I was astounded as they said Sean Connery or Amitabh Bachchan.
Amitabh Bachchan: She has the answer from Alyque.
In the audience poll on the question - : Is the Indian society accepting of unconventional relationships? - only 3 per cent of the audience voted “yes” while an overwhelming 95 per cent people said “no”. The rest 2 per cent voted “can't say”.
ARE CELEBRITIES MORE FREE TO HAVE UNCONVENTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS THAN OTHERS?
Sagarika Ghose: Alyque Padamse, are celebrities under the spotlight that they can’t be as free as they would have been? Have they not been in the media gaze that they are all the time?
Alyque Padamse: I would say no. Celebrities are so much in the spotlight. Shilpa Shetty, for example, and the whole thing about racial discrimination that now they are saying they are examining everything. Bill Clinton in the White House - if he had been an ordinary man, it would mean nothing. It would have passed off without a comment. Celebrities depending on their attitude, if they are not bothered, then that is a different thing, have to rely on the box office, so they have to walk a very tightrope so that they don’t offend the majority of audience.
Sagarika Ghose: Amitabh Bachchan, do celebrities have to live up to a role model of society?
Amitabh Bachchan: I think that it is a very individual choice. But to just add to that I feel that if you are a public figure and a celebrity, you are going to be watched and be written about. Therefore, whatever you do in public, you should not be too distressed as that can be written about.
The other thing is what is the intent of the media when they highlight an issue like this. Is it really to get the TRPs going? Are they really interested in the relationship, the intensity of the relationship or the social angle of it? That really is the question and I think that there are many people who would answer for and against both.
Sagarika Ghose: Ram Gopal Varma, what do you think about the role of media? Does the media push stereotypes and expect celebrities to conform to certain stereotypes?
Ram Gopal Varma: The media’s role is the same as mine - to entertain people. It is the intent again. What the media tells about the celebrity depends in the intention it has behind it. Are they concerned or are they treating it as a gossip to give an interest piece of news? It is more or less true for the media and the public who watch it. I think nobody in today’s time takes things seriously.
In an audience poll on the question - Are celebrities more free to have unconventional relationships than others? - 55 per cent people voted “yes” while 33 per cent said “no”. The rest 12 per cent voted “can't say”.
Sagarika Ghose: In Abhimaan , Amitabh plays a role where he becomes jealous of his wife’s success. So does professional rivalry play a part in a marriage?
Woman member in the audience: No, it is a thing of the past. My generation won’t have this problem at all.
Sagarika Ghose: What about the unconventional aspect of Amitabh Bachchan’s roles? The young man who falls in love with a widow, a young man who falls in love with a terminally ill young girl. Don’t you think that is quite attractive as well?
Member in audience: It is attractive. He has carried it so well in Nishabd. The promos are talking for it. He need not do anything. It intrigues your mind and it intrigues my mind. I want to think about a relation with a man 11 years older than me. I am definitely going to watch such roles played by him.
Sagarika Ghose: So does Amitabh make you think about all his different roles?
Alyque Padamse; The only role that I would like to replace Amitabh Bachchan in is ‘Sexy Sam’ in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.
Sagarika Ghose: Revathi, do you think Amitabh Bachchan has been someone who has altered the notion of the romantic leading man?
Revathi: Yes, I think he is the kind of person that most women dream about. Like one girl in the audience said that I would go to watch a film done by Amitabh Bachchan, it is true. The look at those eyes, the joy and the pain is amazing. Like Varma said, he could carry this film. It is just perfect for him.
Viewer’s question from Bangalore: Which one of all your roles have you found the most challenging? The role that you have thoroughly enjoyed playing?
Amitabh Bachchan: I wasn’t aware that I have played so many varied roles. The directors would be able to answer that question why they want to subject me to this torture and giving me all these roles to play.
But as I said earlier, it is an actor’s prerogative. The first thing on his mind is - what is there for me to do? Does the role have a lot of meat for me? Will I be able to get my teeth into it? And at the same time do I have a nice leading lady. If I am able to sing a couple of songs and if it does well in the box office, I think all actors look for that.
If you were to push me against the wall and say which particular role I have really laboured for would be my role in Black and to some extent my role in Nishabd. The character that I play in the film wants the audience look into his brain so that they will be able to think and there are several such moments in the film that Varma has crafted very interestingly and intelligently where he is actually giving an opportunity for the audience to think what he is going to say next.
But, in fact, it is turning out to be a moment for the audience to watch him think and then think themselves. That is really the beauty of how this character has been portrayed and I have enjoyed doing that.
Sagarika Ghose: In your films, don’t you have a feeling that you go thus far and no farther? You go a little bit towards the unconventional roles and then it comes back to the family man. Do you feel that in your roles, you would like to be a little more unconventional?
Amitabh Bachchan: It is because Indian cinema wants poetic justice in three hours. You don’t get that in a lifetime. And that is what is really attractive about Indian cinema. Whether we like it or not, there is a push to want to keep seeing it again and again.
Viewer’s question: You look hotter than any of the younger actors today. What is your diet and work out regime that makes you look so sexy at over 60?
Amitabh Bachchan: I can’t talk about that in the show. But it is because of the brand that I endorse.
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow IBNLive on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest)
More on IBNLive Right Now
MOST SHARED
PHOTOGALLERY
