Manmohan Desai’s Naseeb Song, Raj Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan…

(appeared earlier in a somewhat different form on NG)

The John Jani Janardhan Naseeb song was weakly misread by Farah Khan in Om Shanti Om. The former isn’t really about ‘number’. What is noteworthy about the Naseeb song is that it precisely does not feature ‘everyone’. Some of the obvious ‘exclusions’ are Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Shashi Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor, Jeetendra, Vinod Khanna. A similar list could be made for the actresses as well.

So what’s going on? Presumably some of these stars must have been busy on their own assignments but there’s something else too.

The stars that do feature in the song are Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Randhir Kapoor and so on.

Well all the stars that feature in the song had acted in Desai’s films (though I am unable so far to account for Rakesh Roshan! Well he can be the exception that proves the rule!). Shammi Kapoor did Bluffmaster, Dharam did Chacha Bhatija as did Randhir, Dharam aslo did Dharam Veer, Rajesh Khanna did Sachcha Jhoota and Roti, Sharmila Tagore did Aa Gale Lag Ja. Raj Kapoor of course was the great ‘teacher’, Desai had been assistant to him and later began his career directing the legend in Chalia.

So this a bit humorous, even a bit subversive. The event is a jubilee function for Dharam Veer. Normally the whole industry shows up for such an event but here the list is rather selective (of course Shashi Kapoor is not here and Rishi couldn’t be as he in the same film as a character, however no one who did not work with Desai is there!). It’s actually a bit of a Desai ‘family’ gathering!

But the fun doesn’t end here. The ultimate star, Bachchan (the one man industry by that time) is just a waiter here and dreams of becoming a star! Desai is craftier still. In a very important symbolic moment Raj Kapoor is at the center of things because he is asked to ‘play’ the harmonium (as he did in his films, most famously in Sangam). The great showman is therefore given his own ’show’ within the show! And the man who hands him the musical instrument and begs him to play is Bachchan! So Bachchan is connected in a very critical way to Raj Kapoor here (Qalandar has connected certain moments in Abhishek’s career to Raj Kapoor’s persona, another Bachchan therefore!).

Let’s not forget another bit of symbolism to the song. The ‘Allah Jesus Ram hain mere’ refrain. Bachchan is everyman of every(Indian). of course in Desai’s films Bachchan is most famously Anthony and Iqbal and the NAseeb character with 3 names. Raj Kapoor is the ultimate ‘humanist’ of Hindi cinema. If there is an actor before Bachchan who could represent the truly secular, the truly ‘classless’, if there was someone who could represent the ‘lack’ of proper markers of religion and ethnicity and so on it was Raj Kapoor.

Connecting Raj kapoor to Bachchan is therefore brilliant because Bachchan himself functions as another kind of everyman to the extent that he does not represent a religion or an ethnicity to the audiences. As I’ve pointed out before many of Bachchan’s canonical roles are coded with ‘minority’ signs. In the most canonical one of all Deewar, we see the nominal Hindu (Vijay) who has a quarrel with God and therefore refuses to enter the temple but on the other hand accepts the ‘talismanic’ significance of the ‘786′ badge (an important number in Islamic numerology as it denotes the ’sacred refrain’ that must begin every reading of the Koran or in a more general sense every ‘auspicious’ act, the character in Deewar explains as much). But then the badge actually protects him when he’s shot and significantly he only dies at the end when he loses the badge. One should take this a bit further. Bachchan does enter the temple later in the film when his mother is ill but to once again ‘quarrel’. The God in the temple functions in Deewar as an almost malignant force whereas the talismanic ‘786′ protects. This is powerfully, even dangerously subversive.

As an aside I should add that Desai picks up on the potency of this symbolism and Deewar and really takes it to a logical extreme in Coolie. There are credible accounts that Bachchan was supposed to initially die in Coolie. Then Bachchan almost died in real life and due to public pressure Desai changed the ending. As the film now stands Bachchan writes in his blood the basic proclamation that qualifies one as a ‘Muslim’ after he is shot. Later of course he survives. As the film originally stood this might have been the final ‘confession’ of Bachchan! But even in this revised version it is very potent. Nowhere else in Hindi cinema does one find such powerful ‘religious’ subversion.

Raj Kapoor and Bachchan are for Desai guarantors of the secular Nehruvian India of which Desai himself is the last true representative as ‘director’.

This is another instance of how underrated the masala tradition is in many ways. Those writers and directors were far more interesting than might appear to be the case. And today’s talents are rather impoverished to exactly the same degree! Farah Khan for example thought it was just about throwing in every conceivable star and starlet!