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Friday, August 10, 2007, was an unforgettable day for Indian sports. While Dravid’s boys thwacked the English on their own soil, Shah Rukh Khan bowled one of the finest deliveries of his career with Chak De India. After a dry spell where Yashraj Films consistently served plenty of predictable fluff with scant regard for substance, the foremost filmmaking house in the country today hit back by showing just why it is right up there. Aditya Chopra’s team more than made up for its recent disappointments by crafting a wholesome and substantial film without stinting in any way on the entertainment value.
Propelling Chak De India was writer Jaideep Sahni (who showed his flair for original thinking early this year with the small but successful Khosla Ka Ghosla), followed by director Shimit Amin whose debut film Ab Tak Chhappan was polished, precise and far from gauche. Combining an extremely well-knit screenplay with unrelentingly deft direction, 16 unknown, and not even glamorous, girls simply carried you with them, with one single known actor compelling you to watch Chak De India without blinking. And you watched disgraced captain Kabir Khan acquitting himself with aplomb, not Shah Rukh Khan even in one frame.
I think destiny reserved Shah Rukh Khan for Chak De India. In the past, SRK missed the opportunity to be part of great Hindi cinema, time and again.
Shah Rukh Khan missed being Munna Bhai. It was Shah Rukh who was Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s first choice for Munna Bhai MBBS where Sanjay Dutt (who had a great equation with the producer after Mission Kashmir) was to have done the small guest appearance which Jimmy Shergill ultimately did (as the terminally ill patient). When Shah Rukh’s back packed up and he had to be operated in London, his dates went haywire and he had to back out of Munna Bhai MBBS. It turned out to be propitious for Sanjay Dutt. Dutt sportingly ambled over from a guest role to the main one, much to the consternation of director Raju Hirani who had his reservations over the actor pulling it off. But that one goofy, lovable screen character gave Sanjay Dutt the respectability his gangster roles could never have. Meanwhile, the closest Shah Rukh could get to Vinod Chopra after that was the adulatory book on the actor that was recently written by Anupama Chopra, wife of the famous producer!
Shah Rukh Khan also missed being the Bhuvan of Lagaan. Ashutosh Gowariker had gone to Shah Rukh with the script of his film but he couldn’t find a producer to back the project. Shah Rukh himself was evidently not keen to put his money on Gowariker’s script. And, heaven forbid, Shah Rukh had plans of getting big time names like Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev for the film instead of the unknown villagers who gave Lagaan its winning colour. Finally, when the film moved from Shah Rukh to the diminutive Aamir, it gave the latter Khan his first big taste of cinematic respectability.
Shah Rukh also missed being a part of Rang De Basanti. When the film was released last year, Shah Rukh himself admitted to me that he still had several versions of the script lying with him since Rakeysh Mehra had approached him with it. After its success, Shah Rukh had the grace to accept that he had not been able to see the final shape of the film from its script.
But his playing Kabir Khan in Chak De has more than made up for all his misses. It was with Yashraj Films’ Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge that Shah Rukh got initiated into superstardom, a blockbuster that crowned him as the ultimate king of romance. It was with the same banner that he had earlier played with fire (Darr) and got away unscathed. Today it is once again a Yash Chopra production that has given him the platform to prove that he can drop his mannerisms and his stutter to just be a character — neither romantic like Dilwale… nor the blackguard of Darr, but an honorable, stand-alone Kabir Khan who makes you jump the gender hurdle, examine the bias against a field sport other than cricket, question the parochialism that exists within us and look uncomfortably at the alacrity with which one damns a minority member for shaking hands with those across the border. Imagine doing all this while entertaining with dignity and without being preachy!
In fact it is the damning of the minority that makes Chak De India a fitting cinematic celebration of our 60th year of independence. Because it is only in India that there will be such overwhelming applause for a story well told of a wronged Muslim who fights and wins back his honour. One really wonders if the tables had been reversed, if there had been a story about a disgraced Chopra or a Sahni seeking to clear his name across the border, if our neighbours would’ve thumped it on its back and accepted it so unconditionally. Atta India!
Unbelievable but true
Whatever did Yashraj have in mind when it offered Chak De India to Salman Khan? In one of those inexplicable moves, the banner had first offered it to Salman who lost the film (he’d upped his price to show who had the upper hand). And Shah Rukh stepped in without demur.
Ram Gopal Varma may also take a bow because his Company was Jaideep Sahni’s first foray into film writing, while director Shimit Amin too, is an RGV protégé. Too bad Ramu couldn’t come up with a Chak De despite having discovered both these fine new talents.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International