Best is yet to come

Best is yet to come

For a young restless generation, Saif Ali Khan is the ultimate dude ~ cool and sexy. He represents quality and class, something none of the other top ranking heroes can match, writes Derek Bose

Two blockbusters within one month, Race and Tashan, have suddenly upset the power structure in Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan still leads the pack, but he does not have Aamir Khan and Salman Khan snapping at his heels any longer. The race to the top is now being run, not by the Khan trinity, but by a quartet comprising Hritik Roshan, Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan and of course, Shah Rukh.
The dark horse in this grouping is Saif. Many may however, believe otherwise. After Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, Saif’s career has been on an upswing and clearly, he does not require a Race or a Tashan to be counted among the frontrunners. Several films of late ~ from Ek Haseena Thi and Hum Tum to Parineeta, Salaam Namasate, Being Cyrus and Omkara ~ have firmly established that he has matured, both as an actor of substance and as a bankable star. Race and Tashan have merely consolidated Saif’s position as a safe box-office bet.
On the other hand, it may be argued that Saif desperately needed these two films at this stage of his career and he has got lucky. He is 38 now and for far too long has been part of a crowd, usually functioning (to quote him) as the “third wheel in love triangles”. Like most of his films, Race was a multi-starrer, but it is his spirited act as the ruthlessly greedy and scheming brother that stands out against a rather laid-back Akshaye Khanna and the jaded Anil Kapoor. Similarly in Tashan, it is the crackling on-screen chemistry he shares as a no-brainer with Kareena Kapoor that has been the talk of town and in many ways, proved more of a crowd-puller than the combined presence of Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor and others.
These back-to-back hits hold added significance for Saif because he does not have a major release (barring Kunal Kohli’s kiddy caper Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic) in the near future. This was clearly his last chance to match the score of Bollywood’s other blue-eyed boys ~ Shah Rukh (Chak De! India and Om Shanti Om), Hritik (Dhoom 2 and Jodhaa Akbar) and Akshay (Heyy Baby and Welcome). As for people like Aamir Khan (Taare Zameen Par) and Ajay Devgan (U, Me Aur Hum), it will be quite some time before they would be able to measure up to this double-barreled record. Small wonder, Saif is today in a position to turn down a Rs 30 crore offer on the specious ground that he does not sign a film without going through its bound script!
It has taken Saif 16 years to reach this stage where he is able to take a stand and call the shots. Even when he was not as demanding, many filmmakers accused him of arrogance and an attitude problem ~ an obvious reference to his princely background ~ if only to keep their distance. Rahul Rawail almost sabotaged his career by dropping him from what was supposed to be his debut film, Bekhudi (with Kajol) in 1992. Most people did not take him seriously because he came across as a blue-blooded brat who did not really require a career to survive. The fact is, far from throwing his weight around, Saif had to actually labour hard for more than a decade just to be accepted by Bollywood.
To make matters worse, when he started out, there was absolutely nothing about him to mark him out as hero material. At age 22, standing a little above 5 ½ feet and looking pale and skinny, he did not have a hope in hell to take on the likes of Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dutt, the then ruling hunks of Bollywood. His Hindi was anglicized (an obvious hangover from his Winchester College days in England) and he spoke with a pronounced rasp, faintly close to the baritone of his father, the legendary Nawab Mansoor Ali Khan of Pataudi. From his mother, yesteryear heroine Sharmila Tagore, he inherited a face that made him the butt of many Bollywood jokes. It looked as though Sharmila’s face was pasted on his. A lady editor who wrote derisively about the resemblance ended up with the furniture in her office being smashed by an angry Saif who barged in, allegedly to “assault” her. The incident became a court case and after that the media politely started calling him the “man with a funny face”.
Nevertheless, there were a few patronizing filmmakers like Umesh Mehra (Aashiq Awara), Ravindra Peepat (Aao Pyar Karein) and Harry Baweja (Imtihaan), who, out of respect towards the family, stood by Saif and gave him work during those initial years. But there is a limit to being over-indulgent, especially when all these solo-starrers were bombing at the box-office. Mehra, in fact, persisted with him for a second time with Yaar Gaadar, opposite Somy Ali. Lawrence D’Souza also tried him twice with Dil Tera Deewana and Aarzoo. But nothing seemed to work. From routine romances, Saif switched to doing comedy (Vikram Bhatt’s Bambai Ka Babu) and socials (Kundan Shah’s Kya Kehna). Still, he remained at a loose end.
Simultaneously, a strange thing happened. All films in which he was paired with another hero as the second or third lead, started doing remarkably well. Yash Chopra figured this out early on when he pitched Saif against Aamir Khan in Parampara in 1993. The very same year, Umesh Mehra pulled off another hit, Pehchan with Saif and Sunil Shetty. Then came the Saif-Akshay Kumar series, beginning with Naresh Malhotra’s Yeh Dillagi, Sameer Malkan’s Main Khiladi Tu Anadi, Guddu Dhanoa’s Tu Chor Main Sipahi… In between, Milan Luthria paired him with Ajay Devgan to produce another hit, Kachche Dhage while Sooraj Barjatya got Salman Khan to share screen space with him in Hum Saath Saath Hain. In fact, looking back now, it would be hard to identify a single mainstream hero (or heroine) with whom Saif has not worked.
The double-hero films Saif did during the nineties were as inconsequential as his solo starrers, except that they worked well commercially. There was really nothing about them to distinguish himself and all he was left with was to bask in the reflected glory of their success. The credit of course, was hogged by the first lead and by immediate extension, the heroine. The odd part is that Saif did not ever grudge being relegated to playing second fiddle to the main hero.
The turning point came in 2001 when Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai brought about a dramatic change in Saif’s approach to work and confidence level. Much as it was also a multi-starrer, the way he stood up to the equally high-powered performances of Aamir Khan and Akshaye Khanna, revealed a new resolve in him at proving himself as a serious actor. From then onwards, every character he played has been strongly etched and fleshed out, be it the spooky hotel guest with a penchant for cigarettes in Darna Mana Hai or Preity Zinta’s bumbling suitor in Kal Ho Na Ho, the manipulative conman who betrays his girl in Ek Hasina Thi or the carefree, flirtatious cartoonist in Hum Tum.
There were some disappointments also, such as Line Of Control (LoC) and Eklavya, but those were few and far between. By 2005, when he played a cool and refined Shekhar Roy (opposite Sanjay Dutt) in Parineeta he was on a strong footing and thereafter, it became clear that he was anxious to extend his repertoire with a variety of off-beat roles. Films as diverse as Being Cyrus, Omkara, Salaam Namaste and Tashan bear testimony to a healthy appetite for taking risks and more importantly, his in-born talent that has remained untapped for so long.
Today, if Saif is in such demand, it is for these reasons. He has come to be regarded as the most visible face of a resurgent Bollywood, a cinema that is at once bold, exuberant and bursting with raw energy. But more than anything else, here is one mainline actor who is constantly experimenting, reinventing himself, breaking new ground… For by now, pushing the bar has become a habit for him.