If you host a party, like Feroz Khan did during Yalgaar, and have a couple of renowned criminals on your guest list, perhaps you deserve a dubious reputation.
If you, like Govinda and our Bengali babu Mithun Chakraborty used to, attend a party hosted by hardcore underworld names, your associations may need to be closely examined.
But if you attend a party, like Sanjay Dutt did, where a couple of bigtime underworld figures are also present, why should that stain your reputation? Does it mean that every time Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan attend a huge wedding or premiere, they should scan the list of invitees? So I, for one, wouldn’t cast aspersions on Sanjay Dutt’s character solely for attending Feroz Khan’s party where Dawood and Iqbal Mirchi were also present. But the problem with Dutt was that his ill-timed dalliance with underworld elements went too far. Unlike Govinda, Mithun, Jackie Shroff and other actors who fraternised with the underworld (Samir Hingora and Hanif were their close friends) in the eerie 80s but got away without causing any real harm to anybody else or to themselves, Sanjay Dutt’s disastrous cocktail of stupidity and bravado ultimately did him in.
Anybody who has known Sanju for some time will accept that he has always had a reckless predilection for swaggering on the left side of the law. His wild driving has been legendary in Pali Hill and Carter Road but the charmer always got away with it. If you think his crashing one night, dead drunk, into Reena Roy’s white Pali Hill bungalow was a folly of his youth, even in recent years his rash driving and run-ins with rickshawallahs were not uncommon. It took a serious lecture from his lawyers for Sanjay to drop the reckless and don the humble look, especially in court.
While out on bail from jail he was fortunate enough to enjoy stardom and freedom for 11 to 12 long years before July 31 caught up with him. If only his taste for mindless (macho?) blood sport like hunting and his affinity for guns (he once went on a shooting spree all afternoon in Pali Hill during his drug addiction days), had been curbed by those who could have controlled him, instead of simply covering up his tracks, perhaps the Dutt saga would’ve read differently today.
Unfortunately for Sanju, even the sympathy for him has most times bordered on whitewashing the truth. For instance, the untimely death of his mother has often been cited as the trigger point for his drug addiction when the truth is that the substance abuse had started when Nargis Dutt was still hale and hearty!
There are many who’ve also been clucking with sympathy that since Sanjay Dutt chose to voluntarily come back to India from Mauritius in 1993 and didn’t abscond a la Nadeem, he deserved to be let off lightly. But did Sanju really have a more attractive option before him? His dad was an MP here, a popular and much-respected personality. Sanjay’s own acting career — the only work he’s really qualified for — was India-based. Where else could he have gone to begin life anew? What could an actor like Sanjay Dutt have done except to come home and face the music?
Now that he has survived it for 14 years, the question is, is the misguided Sanjay Dutt of yore a closed chapter? Is the mature, well-behaved Sanjay Dutt that everybody’s simpering over, for real?
One hopes for his own sake that at least the current stint in jail will stop his newfound humility from turning out to be only a lawyer-induced façade. After all, this is the actor who came out on bail in 1995 to a hero’s welcome. At the premiere of Yash Johar’s Gumrah, the roads were blocked by eager mobs who stood drenched in a heavy downpour to catch a glimpse of the TADA-charged star. So it is likely that a renewed stint in jail will not damage his stardom but might strangely enhance his appeal. Sanjay Dutt is the celebrity son who has come a long way from the lanky, stupefied non-actor of Rocky to the polished, reliable and daringly versatile performer of Eklavya, Munna Bhai and Parineeta. Actually, that’s just it. Sanjay Dutt will be fine if he restricts his derring-do to the screen alone.
Hey, psst!
* Madhuri Dixit’s fans will soon get their first glimpse of her in a teaser trailer of Aaja Nachle that will be screened along with Chak De!
* The first Indian film to be released simultaneously in Pakistan as well as India and the rest of the world will be Kaafila, directed by Amitoj Mann (who made Hawayein on the Sikh riots a few years ago). Unlike Mahesh Bhatt’s Aawarapan which was released in Pakistan after it flopped here, Kaafila will have a simultaneous release on August 10 and the promos of this Hindi film are already drawing crowds across the border. What a coincidence that Kaafila is a Sunny Deol starrer, the same actor whose Gadar had unfairly fetched him the tag of being stridently anti-Pak!
Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International