Bachchan & Inscription

Inscriptions form a very important part of Amitabh Bachchan’s career. Perhaps uniquely so in Bombay screen history. The foundational moment is once again Deewar. What is inscribed on Vijay’s hand defines his destiny. From then on his life is guided by this mark or the stain it leaves on his soul. But there is an interplay between two inscriptions here. The second one turns up in the form of the talismanic ‘786’. The first one launches him on a path of possibility. The later one protects him from perils on this journey. When the interplay ceases at the climax and he loses the second inscription he meets a tragic end. Among the most oft-quoted of the film’s scenes — Vijay when cornered refuses to accept the morality or ethics of the existing social order until the inscription might be erased. He cannot bring himself to sign till the earlier signature can also be effaced. But the latter is ineffaceable as he later admits. The scene just prior to this opens with a shot of him signing a commercial purchase document for a building that he intends for his mother. In the very next sequence the latter of course exits his house and Vijay in disappointment and anger tears up the document. Inscriptions on paper might be destroyed but those on the body are seared for life.


The second inscription then makes its own journey to Coolie where it becomes an even deeper part of Iqbal’s identity. But this film has a far more startling moment towards the end when Bachchan’s character etches out with his blood the holiest of inscriptions. Sacred to a minority faith. One is unlikely to find in Bachchan’s canon a scene more potent than this one for this economy of inscriptions. Certainly nothing more laden with meaning was written before or after this. Also in Coolie an inscription that has since acquired the order of an ‘event’ spills over from the ‘off screen’ — the one that erupts all of a sudden within the body of the film. A shot where the viewer is reminded that Bachchan was injured and as everyone knows almost lost his life. This ‘freeze’ interrupts the film. A singular moment in the histories of all the cinemas of the world.


In Trishul the obsession that drives Vijay is to see the name of the mother, inscribed on a billboard, higher than that of his father’s, higher than every other such hoarding in the city. For this inscription to then be ‘conjoined’ with that of the father the latter must pay with his life. Again these commercial documents keep showing up. He has to keep inscribing them in various ways, even unethically, to settle his accounts with his father or to earn his father’s ‘counter-signature’ against his name. The climactic moment occurs when having ruined his father professionally he returns his ‘assets’ to him, a bunch of documents this time inscribed with his own name but gifted away to the father. It is the son’s signature that rescues the father at the precise moment at which the genealogical revelation comes about.

Heera ‘enters’ Lawaaris rather interestingly. He signs his name but when asked to do the same with his father’s name resists a bit and then has his interlocutor do it. A certain Deewar economy haunts even this moment. The name that is signed is of course not that of the biological father. Heera learns this very soon and the rest of the film becomes in large part a quest for the actual father. For this reason the film also complements the ‘work’ of Trishul.

Deewar is re-imagined in Agneepath. In a crucial scene Vijay suggests that the ‘writing’ on one’s forehead defines ultimate victory in life. A destiny shaped by an invisible inscription.

Finally Black. Here an incredible teacher inscribes letters on the arm of his student to teach her how to read and comprehend.

To him also belongs the most legendary verse of Hindi cinema. The poetry of Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila.. which is nonetheless never inscribed anywhere. Poetry will return shortly here with a Bachchan signature..

In so many of these provocative segments the name of the father is linked with that of ‘writing’. Derrida might have been pleased!

Why is the ‘786’ talismanic? If his father’s name becomes a destructive destiny for Vijay, if it places him outside the authorized social fold he relies on a somewhat repressed (outsider) minority faith to fill in the gap. His own Gods cannot follow him outside the limits of bourgeois community. To pray for his mother though he must cross that border and enter her space. But then he cannot hold on to the inscription of the other. Bachchan is first seen in Deewar seated outside the temple, he enters it only once for his mother and it is in some sense here that the ‘end’ truly begins. He enters into a final bit of commerce at the temple — his life for his mother’s. Just before he is about to get shot he drops the ‘786’ badge, desperately lunges for it but he cannot reach it. He has forgotten his wager at the temple. He cannot be ‘protected’ by both gods at once.

But there is a non-diegetic aspect to all of this as well (Coolie has already been mentioned), an art-twinning-life element. The title of Agneepath as well as the verse recited in the film’s climax comes from Bachchan’s biological father! In the Deewar climax the father is completely absent, it is only Vijay in a certain solitude with his mother (with the brother as ‘audience’ towards the end). In Agneepath as this scene is ‘re-written’ the father’s poetry intervenes! The actor’s actual father ‘contaminates’ the character’s dialogue with his mother. Just once the signature ‘Bachchan’ actually crosses ‘Vijay’ in the ‘text’ of the film. The off screen biological history laces the re-visited Deewar one! One can then move over to the non-diegetic side in a speculative way — for there is nothing as important in life for Amitabh Bachchan as those inscriptions of Harivanshrai Bachchan. How often has Bachchan (the son) quoted a certain thought from Bachchan (the father) throughout his career. ‘Jeevan mein apne man ka ho to achcha hai, apne man ka na ho to zyada achcha’. An ethic for life..

“Speak, Memory”