Busy as a bee, working round-the-clock, that too for someone who till recently had no work and was trying to set records in diaper-changing/ those days are over, today I work like Jeetendra in the 1970s, three shifts, non-stop/ producing, directing, guiding, managing and captaining (non-playing kind) kabaddi teams, a tougher job than what guru (Dhirubhai Ambani) achieved to become guru/ you see, I was getting nowhere as an actor in Bollywood despite my Swiss schooling, Italian college, American filming and running behind Dad/ I think I was too sophisticated for Hindi cinema, Mani Ratnam saar told me after directing 1/8 th of Guru/ But then Bollywood does not recognise talent/ The Khans, Kapoors and even Devgan marched ahead with hits and superhits, crossing the Rs 100 crore mark while I had to be content with one-and-a-half films in five years/ Other stars became more versatile/ Shahrukh and his cricket team are branching out to soccer, Salman into arm-wrestling, Devgan and Kajol into kho-kho and so on.
The famous Bachchans? KBC limps along with some tough and challenging questions: what colour is the sky? (a) green (b) pink (c) yellow (d) blue. Prizewinner gets Rs 1 crore but has to suffer Kavi Bachchan poems from angry old man and getting hugged by 50-odd contestant mummies from Jhumritalaiya to Jamnagar. Mom makes occasional noises in Parliament and Ash still practises the red carpet walk at Cannes. What then does Abhishek do?
No movies, let alone hit movies. Dostana, I am told, was a hit more due to the ‘bum power’ of John Abraham. So Dad, I and Ash decided to revive Indian culture and tradition with ancient sports. No modern games for me. Cricket has anyway been taken over by Shahrukh in the IPL, hockey and football have followed suit, Sania Mirza, the first-round heroine, has grabbed tennis and if I had hesitated, Indian games too would have been taken away. I thought of wrestling but neither I nor dad have the physique for the sport. So it was kabaddi which has a national flavour (‘Hu tu tu’ in the north, ‘Chadugudu’ in the south and so on). I adapted it, put up my own team and we won the tournament. Ha, what more can one ask for? Dad and I agreed on the religious flavour to our team’s win. It was ‘ganpati, ganpati’ all the way and what a wonderful mascot. I proved that I am a true Mumbaikar by shouting all the Ganesha shlokas. It was embarrassing to be gifted with the biggest modak of Siddhivinayak temple since I prefer Swiss chocolates but my followers did full justice to it.
The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 [AT] gmail [DOT] com
