Mr Bharat or Aamir Khan Lite? The irresistible rise of Akshay Kumar
So how did Akshay Kumar, tandoori knight and khiladi number one of the late 1990s, become Aamir Khan Lite?
Anyone who has lived through the wasteland of '80s and '90s cinema will recall Akshay most from the mud wrestling sequence with Rekha from a 1996 movie called Khiladiyon ka Khiladi, set to the tune of In The Night No Control — a masterpiece of kitsch if I ever saw one.
He is not alone in having embarrassed himself during the era — remember Mela and Aamir Khan?
But while the Khans quickly claimed respectability, except Salman Khan with his two serious face-offs with the law, Akshay struggled to be accepted.
It’s not that he didn’t try. Right-wingers of all persuasion are happy to claim him as their very own Mr Bharat, but they forget he was the male star in their bête noire, Deepa Mehta’s 2005 film that was to be shot in Varanasi, Water. The movie, for which Shabana Azmi so famously shaved her head, was never made, ostensibly because it was depicting Hinduism in a “bad light” – as if Hinduism is a fading actor who can only be shot in soft focus and from a certain angle.
But that was then.
Akshay is now the darling of a particular kind of viewer who always wears his heart on his sleeve and his flag in his breast pocket. Akshay discovered this new persona in 2007’s Namaste London, a film that so obviously was a homage to the original Mr Bharat, Manoj Kumar.
So, whether it is Rustom where the businessman based on Prem Ahuja's life suddenly becomes an arms trader and a traitor looking to sell out India’s secrets and not just a happy-go-lucky businessman with a glad eye, or Airlift where the self absorbed Kuwait-based tycoon becomes a flag waving saviour, or even Jolly LLB 2 where the exam-cheating shady lawyer is transformed into an earnest terrorist-busting legal eagle who is also able to distinguish between good Muslims and bad Muslims — a favourite theme of right-wingers, Akshay is now clearly making movies with a message, one eye on the box office and another on national honours.
That the films succeed is a reflection of how Indian society has changed. The pro-globalisation, outward-looking consumerist of the 1990s, embodied by the popular Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, has been replaced by the proud, slogan-shouting nationalist who is a spy one minute, a toilet-building good husband another moment.
Akshay has not only attached himself to worthy causes and put his money where his mouth is — by making such movies entertaining — he has also consciously tried to be the perfect movie husband. Whether he is fixing a drink for his Gucci-loving wfe in Jolly LLB 2 or training the young woman spy in Naam Shabana, he is the kinder, gentler, gender-aware man.
It helps that he can do a nifty video calling out the men who assaulted women on New Year’s Eve in Bangalore.
So is it a surprise that he is now espousing Swachh Bharat in Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and calling a halt to all lota parties for women? Building a toilet for his wife just as Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal for his beloved Mumtaz Mahal? Or that his next is a movie based on the man who created the low-cost sanitary napkin, Arunachalam Muruganantham, whom wife Twinkle Khanna based her short story on in the collection, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad?
No, and expect much more from the new-found sensibility of the actor with India on his mind.
Of course all that Mr Bharat has to do now to destroy his new-found cause cred is to do Housefull 4, or is it Housefull 5? Perhaps, that is something he could avoid.