for Outlook India
Till yesterday you could have called Akshay Kumar Bollywood’s Contender No. 1 or the King in Making. Ok, with earnings in several crores, he’d consistently figured among the country’s top taxpayers, had shopped for a grand Portuguese heritage bungalow on Goa’s Anjuna beach, and gained a huge and steadfastly loyal fan base as well. But few were willing to put him in the same league as the other emperors - the Khans, the Bachchans and Hrithik Roshan. You could call it Bollywood’s class system - Akshay had been dismissed as the hero of the front-benchers, the guy who made comedies that made the masses laugh out loud, though we certainly couldn’t get the joke. Rather, we preferred not to get it.
Even as his new film sets new paradigms for success, there’s considerable bewilderment-why this fuss? Isn’t the new film rather pedestrian? The answer is, whatever may be your artistic assessment of Singh is Kinng (and it is a great entertainer, mind you), it’s become the buzzphrase for triumph, be it Manmohan Singh winning the trust vote or Abhinav Bindra bagging India’s first individual gold at the Olympics. With net earnings of Rs 29 crore in the first weekend (source: boxofficeindia.com), the film looks set to become the biggest blockbuster of recent times, having already wiped out the first weekend record of Rs 26 crore set by Om Shanti Om last year. Significantly, for the so-called “frontbenchers’” star that Akshay is supposed to be, SIK is a hit across the spectrum-from mofussil towns to urban multiplexes, all the way to NRI settlements abroad. Last heard, it was smashing all records in Pakistan too. As if this were not enough, the annoyingly catchy songs, especially ‘Jee Karda’, are constantly playing on a radio or mobile near you.

If you ignore a brief hiccup like Tashan, then SIK is Akshay’s sixth consecutive superhit in the last two years. The previous five - Bhagam Bhag, Namastey London, Heyy Babyy, Bhool Bhulaiya and Welcome - are reported to have mopped up over Rs 600 crore gross. Time to finally crown this money-making machine as Bollywood’s king no. 1? Akshay himself is not so sure. “Such titles don’t matter. Why chase something that’s transitory? Our fortunes change every Friday,” he says. The only king, according to him, is Big B but even he needed Akshay’s high-voltage presence to add value to his Unforgettable world tour.
The rise and rise of Akshay is akin to the Mayawati phenomenon in politics: the mainstream media may have chosen to ignore their power and clout but they have only gained in strength in their respective constituencies and simultaneously expanded their base. Ask Akshay if he feels miffed at being neglected all this time and he brushes it aside. “Darling, it’s unfortunate that only when you make a serious film are you taken seriously. It’s a shame that my films that have been made for countless viewers are not seen to be in the same league as those made for a few critics or intellectuals,” he tells Outlook.

That sums up the appeal of SIK as well. It’s a mad, loony, goofy film which makes no claim to being pathbreaking cinema. All it wants to do is entertain, and does it very well if you have an absurd bone in your body, if you can log into the rustic North Indian sensibility, specifically the earthy sardarji humour. What’s more, its recreation of the Punjabi pind (village), its rough and tough but large-hearted residents, and its high-octane atmospherics are nicely real and believable. At the centre of action, of course, is Akshay as Happy Singh, the bumbling village buffoon with the heart of gold, who travels all the way to Australia to bring back the village boy Lucky Singh who has in the interim become the don of a sardar mafia outfit. Akshay carries off all the deliberate improbabilities of the script with great panache.

Outlook caught up with an audibly happy Akshay on the phone just before he was walking in for the Singh is Kinng success party at a Mumbai five-star hotel. Immediately thereafter, he is to fly off to Monte Carlo for a family holiday, something he had been planning since January. “I’m edgy before a release but I can relax now,” he says.

He has been a busy man this year, in India only for a few days in the last six months, for an odd film release or for his ipl commitment. Otherwise, he has been on shoots: Bahamas to LA via Bangkok. The family has been moving along too-wife Twinkle, five-year-old son Aarav and his teacher, so that the kid can keep in touch with the school curriculum. “My son has already seen half the world. He would have learnt far more from travelling than at school. It is such an eye-opener, widens your horizon,” says the much-involved father.

His own journey to stardom has been nothing short of spectacular. He was born and brought up in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk-”1180, Chhatta Madan Gopal, Paranthewali Gali,” he specifies. It’s where his grandmother-in her nineties-still lives. Acting was never in his scheme of things. He went to Bangkok to learn martial arts and worked as a cook to support himself. He came back to become an instructor. A modelling assignment came to him out of the blue and he realised there was much more money in showbiz than in karate chops. The makeup artiste (who continues to be his ‘makeup dada’) at the shoot forwarded his pictures to producer Pramod Chakravarty and he soon landed a role in the forgettable Saugandh. From then on, it has been a slow but steady rise. He began as an action star, turned to comedies in the middle and now his films are a pastiche of stunts, jokes and romance. More than a hundred films later, at 40, he is easily the most bankable star in the industry.

Stars are built on the image they project. Aamir Khan is the conscientious thinking man; SRK is the witty, spontaneous, fun guy. So who is Akshay? “He’s a complete entertainer who connects with the audience the way Big B did in the ‘80s and the way Govinda did. People relate to him,” says scriptwriter Sridhar Raghavan. “There’s no tension or desperation is his persona, there’s a cosmopolitan touch even when he’s playing a rustic. He is intelligent and street-sharp but not an intellectual, fun but not a joker, hero but not heroic, strong but not about machismo. He’s like a pack of assorted biscuits, a sum of many parts,” says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan.

Adman Santosh Desai finds his distinctive masculinity appealing. He is not the feminised macho man like Hrithik or manicured like John Abraham. He’s neither an adolescent Salman, nor the edgy Sanjay.He is the old-worldly male of the Dharmendra variety. “It’s a paternalistic, rustic, self-deprecatory and playful male aura which is endearing,” says Desai.

Akshay is at a crucial point in his career right now. Five future releases - Chandni Chowk to China, Eight by Ten, Blue, Kambakkht Ishq and Housefull have about Rs 350 crore worth of investment riding on them. Will he be able to get the returns?

Memorable roles are still missing on his resume. “But he is growing more and more confident as a performer. Directors will come up with interesting ideas for him,” predicts filmmaker Nikhil Advani. They already are. Nagesh Kukunoor’s Eight by Ten is a psychological thriller. Blue is all about “sharks and treasures and 80 per cent of it has been shot under water,” says Akshay.

His next release, Chandni Chowk to China, could be his most significant film yet. A film written “specifically” for him, it has him as a bumbling cook in search of his destiny in China. “It is full of Chaplinesque action,” says director Advani. “It is the cinema of the underdog, like Manmohan Desai’s films where Amitabh is a coolie, a waiter,” says writer Raghavan. Produced by Rohan Sippy, it has Warner Brothers as distributors and action star Gordon Liu playing the chief baddy. Hip hop star Snoop Dogg has already performed the title track of SIK, but more international stars are going desi for Akshay’s sake-the likes of Sly Stallone, Brandon Routh, Denise Richards and Holy Valance star in Kambakkht Ishq where Akshay plays a Hollywood stuntman in search of love.

Akshay himself is living for the moment. As a parting shot, he tells us: “You cannot manipulate destiny, you can only move it with hard work. God is the greatest scriptwriter, after all.”