The Great Tamasha

by James Astill

  When I met him at a later IPL players’ auction, in Bangalore, Mallya was giving the movers and shakers of Indian cricket a headache. ‘Up with Mallya until bloody 3am,’ a well-known cricket agent mumbled to me one morning, looking pale and unwell as he slunk back to his hotel room. ‘It’s not the drink that’s the problem. It’s that he insists we drink his bloody drinks.’

  Since inheriting United Breweries as a young man, Mallya had turned a modest south Indian business into the world’s second biggest purveyor of alcohol. But this success was despite the noxious hangovers induced by some of its best-selling beer and liqueurs. Kingfisher beer was rumoured to be laced with glycerine to help preserve it during the Indian heat. That was not true. But drink three or four and it could feel like it.

  ‘Now,’ Mallya said warmly, as we sat down together in his hotel bar, ‘What’ll you have?’ A rotund 55-year-old, he was wearing a silk designer tracksuit, white patent leather cowboy boots and diamond studs glinted in his ears. I suggested a glass of wine, which was the only drink I could think of that UB didn’t sell.

  ‘Excellent idea!’ he exclaimed, ‘We’ll have a bottle of my new Kingfisher red!’

  According to Mallya, the key to the cricket business was India’s youthful demography. ‘We’ll have over 100 million consumers added to our middle class in the next couple of years and these are not people who want to live like their parents or grandparents did,’ he said.

  ‘This is a whole new generation of Indians, better educated than their parents, earning more, spending more. We’ve transitioned more from a saving economy to a spending economy. Whether it’s clothes, cars, apartments, everything – people want a better quality of life and they are moving away from traditional Indian customs to Western customs. India is changing rapidly. Indians are doing things they didn’t do five, seven years ago.

  ‘They have more spending power, they are much more willing to spend and they’re watching television to find out how. You know when I was growing up there was only one bloody television channel, Doordarshan? Now there are 150 TV channels, 200 TV channels, all of which are making an impression on people. The youngsters are more impressionable than the older generation. So what is happening is the youngsters are spending and living well. And the parents are saying, well, hang on, I’ve been working hard, putting my money in the bank for 30 years, and now I might as well spend a bit of it myself and have a better life too!

  ‘In this context the IPL is a brilliant idea and has in my view a fantastic future, because it’s cricket, which is like a religion in India, because the format is so exciting it attracts the youngest viewers, and thirdly because, for these reasons, the highest advertising revenues in India are developed through cricket. We’ve never had something in India so exciting, glamorous and international as this league. So, as the franchises share in the revenue generated by the league, and because these revenues can go only one way, north, and rapidly north, the prospect of ever-increasing income to the teams is high. And for me the double whammy is that it gives me a fantastic platform for my brands.

  ‘The business concept,’ said Mallya, raising his glass, ‘is sound.’

  ‘And how does your personal image help in marketing it?’ I asked.

  Mallya surveyed me briefly. ‘I don’t look for personal glory,’ he said. ‘It is the media who have branded me “King of Good Times” and given me this great persona. It started off with my being damned by everybody saying, “Here’s this young playboy who’s inherited his father’s business and he’s going to drive it into the ground because all he’s interested in is horses and fast cars and God knows what ...”

  ‘It used to make me very angry. But now I have no qualms. At the age of 28 I had all the hobbies and interests of a 28-year-old. I could not be expected as a 28-year-old to have the same hobbies and interests of a 50-year-old.’

  ‘But you still have the same hobbies now ...’

  ‘So what!’ said Mallya sniffily. ‘That’s called sustainability. I’m not a changing chappie. I may be 55, but I’m still young at heart and young in the mind. If I spend money, have yachts and planes and cars and everything else, for crying out loud, I spend my own money. I don’t live on anyone else. I have said to hell with all that’s written about me. It’s free publicity and I might as well be the bloody brand ambassador myself. I have never been shy of living my life in an open and transparent way.’

  The third aspect of the IPL’s appeal, after tamasha cricket and tamasha prosperity, was arguably most important: Bollywood. Bringing Bollywood, or at least Bollywood stars, into cricket was Modi’s big idea. ‘Bollywood was always the key,’ he told me. ‘You had all India’s men interested in cricket and the women and children follow films, so if you can get them all together, it was always going to be huge.’ I had seen a vision of this six months before the IPL began, at a one-day game between India and Pakistan in Jaipur.

  My wife and I had been invited to the game by an enigmatic friend, Suhel Seth, an advertising guru and socialite. If 200 people run India, as is often said, only half-jokingly, many are to be seen at the frequent parties Suhel threw in his south Delhi townhouse (a stone’s throw from the home of Lalit’s tycoon father, K.K. Modi). Modi junior met us at the stadium gates to dispense our match passes. We were late and the then-boss of Rajasthan cricket was irate, urging Suhel to get a move on because the game was about to begin.

  It was the last of a five-match one-day series, which India – 3-1 up so far – had already won. Both teams were therefore resting their stars. But from the state of the ground, it might have been a World Cup final. This was my first experience of watching cricket in one of India’s smaller cities, where cricket fervour is undiluted by the distractions of metropolitan life. The atmosphere in Jaipur’s small Sawai Mansingh Stadium was unlike anything I had experienced.

  As Salman Butt and Imran Nazir walked out to begin the Pakistani innings, the noise in the stadium was stupendous. Perhaps that was why I failed to notice a large white sofa positioned on the boundary at deep midwicket. But I could not fail to spot its intended occupant, Shahrukh Khan, or ‘SRK’ to his fans. The film star wandered into the stadium a few overs into the Pakistani innings and began a slow perambulation of the boundary. The Jaipur crowd duly lost its mind. It became a sobbing mass of 30,000 SRK maniacs, most of whom wore a moustache.

  Shahrukh, a 42-year-old star, had ruled Bollywood for two decades. Born into a middle-class Delhi family, he got his break acting in television dramas in the late 1980s. Having graduated to the film industry, he had since acted in over 70 Hindi movies, generally as himself, a slightly gawky, likeable and charismatic clown. He was paid around $3 million a picture for this shtick.

  Being self-made, his success was unusual in Bollywood, which is dominated by a handful of film dynasties. Shahrukh was also reckoned to be the film industry’s canniest businessman: these days he made his films through his own Red Chillies Entertainment company, through which he would also invest in the IPL. He was the first Indian film mogul to appreciate the money-making potential of conjoining Hindi cinema and cricket.

  Hence his appearance at the Sawai Mansingh, just a few days after the release of his latest movie. A song-and-dance confection called Om Shanti Om, it was chiefly memorable for a routine in which SRK danced in a pair of tight silver trousers with dozens of Bollywood babes, while lip-synching: ‘All hot girls put your hands up and say “Om Shanti O-om!”’ His extremely pretty co-star, Deepika Padukone, was also at the game, unrecognised as the huge star she would shortly become. She was sitting shyly behind my wife and me in the plush VIP box to which we had been led.

  It provided a superb view of the game, which was entertaining in itself. Mohammad Yousuf and Shoaib Malik had come together at 77 for three and were playing beautifully. They made a pleasing contrast, the elegant and wristy Yousuf and Shoaib more of a stiff-armed biffer. But when SRK suddenly surged into our box, surrounded by bodyguards and flunkies, the game was suddenly forgotten.

/>   The film star made a bee-line for Rajasthan’s governor, a former Indian foreign secretary called S.K. Singh, who I happened to be chatting to at the time. With a look of reverence on his shiny, wrinkle-free face, Shahrukh launched himself at the governor’s feet. Having thus demonstrated his humility, he rose, beaming to all around him, as the VIP crowd of politicians, judges, army officers and their wives simpered in star-struck wonder. My wife, whose affections are not easily bought, was simpering too.

  As Shahrukh was introduced to her, his eyes locked briefly on to hers, then darted away, then returned for a last fleeting inspection of her face. ‘Sooo pleased to meet you,’ he said in his friendly baritone as Mian flushed pink. I was impressed.

  Back at his pitch-side sofa, Shahrukh gave a television interview – for the benefit of over a hundred million people watching the game at home – with live India–Pakistan cricket as the backdrop. This was priceless publicity for Om Shanti Om, which was of course name-checked in the interview. The stunt had been arranged by Modi. But some of his colleagues at the BCCI were unimpressed. One later accused Shahrukh of disrespecting cricket. Playing hurt, the film star vowed never to attend another game in response. The redoubtable Niranjan Shah then waded in, to say he had no objection to ‘Shahrukh or any other film personality’ coming to watch India play ‘as long as they are not promoting their films’. Om Shanti Om was meanwhile on the way to becoming Bollywood’s biggest ever box-office hit.

  Bollywood stars flocked to the IPL like drunks to a free bar. And it was no wonder. After the first season, polling by the BCCI suggested as many viewers were tuning in to ogle film stars as to watch cricket. A survey by the Economic Times showed that of the top ten individuals most recalled by IPL viewers, only five were cricketers. The IPL was razzle-dazzle entertainment spiced by sport, not the other way around. ‘It’s fast-paced entertainment, it’s fun, it’s glamorous, it’s got stars,’ Multi Screen Media’s affable boss, Manjit Singh, told me. ‘And yet it also has the elements of a sport.’

  ‘Cricketainment’, as Modi called his melding of sport and glamour, handed an obvious advantage to franchises owned by film stars. Shahrukh’s KKR was from the start one of the most popular and profitable IPL sides, despite struggling to win two games in a row. Kings XI Punjab, the Mohali franchise, similarly benefited from Zinta, who had been one of India’s biggest stars for a decade. Entering her mid-thirties, she was now on the way out as an actress. Too old to play the cutesy tomboys that were her stock-in-trade, Zinta was finding it hard to get good roles. Throwing herself into the IPL was therefore an excellent way for her to remain on-screen, and stave of the threat of midde-aged anonymity.

  Most other franchises also tried to buy in some ‘glamour quotient’, as Indian marketers refer to Bollywood stardust. Delhi Daredevils paid a Bollywood action hero, Akshay Kumar, over $2 million to act as its brand ambassador. The Daredevils’ boss, Amrit Mathur, also told me he could sell 15 per cent more tickets for a home game against KKR merely by floating a rumour that Shahrukh would attend.

  Some Indian fans found this celebrity onslaught wearing. But it was more belittling for Bollywood. Until a decade or two ago, cinema was more important to Indian imaginations than cricket. From the 1940s to the 1980s Hindi films were the country’s main source of entertainment and a popular art form that at its best bristled with intensity and national purpose. In the films of the 1950s and 1960s, now remembered as the greatest Bollywood age, directors like Raj Kapoor and Bimal Roy produced all-India epics, often celebrating the lives of the plucky poor, especially new arrivals to the fast-growing cities.

  In the 1970s Bollywood reflected a darker mood, as naive optimism gave way to anger at the corruption and brutality that seemed inherent in Indian society. The star of this time was Amitabh Bachchan, a son of Allahabad, who dominated his cinematic era as no other film star ever has. Playing tough guy heroes, typically forced into crime by cruelty and injustice, Bachchan was the greatest hero Indian popular culture had ever produced. His films were national legends, endlessly playing in the thousands of single-screen cinemas that dotted India’s cities and small towns. They made Bachchan one of the most powerful men in India. When he was injured on a film set in 1982, Indira Gandhi flew to Bombay to be by his bedside. He recovered, stood for parliament for Congress and won the election with almost 70 per cent of the vote. There was no danger of the ‘Big B’ suffering Tiger Pataudi’s electoral indignity.

  But Bollywood’s subsequent history is less inspiring. The best contemporary Hindi films are at least superbly produced. In recent years the spread of new multiplex cinemas, which draw an affluent middle-class audience, have also led to the release of interesting niche movies, higher-brow and less musical than the popular norm. Yet the days of Bollywood providing India with national stories, reflecting the hopes and anxieties of millions, are long gone. The most successful films tend to be convoluted love stories, involving implausibly rich and sanitised characters, who wear Western designer clothes and speak Hinglish (‘Array bhai! Shit! Chalo, let’s go!’). Often filmed outside India – in London or the Maldives – they project a rich, Californian-flavoured and, in fact, non-existent India. The singing and dancing are often wonderful. But the plots are often incoherent and the characters two-dimensional.

  That is not just my view. On a week-long tour through Andheri and Juhu, the north Mumbai suburbs where Bollywood lives and works, I heard it expressed by many top directors, producers and actors. When I asked one of India’s most famous actor-directors whether Bollywood had made any good films in the past two decades, apart from his own, he looked pained. ‘Difficult,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to think of even one. But please don’t write that I said it.’

  One reason for this slide is television, which has warped the market for Hindi films in several ways. In particular, it has created huge competition for Indian eyeballs, leading to the closure of many single-screen cinemas, and shortening the average cinema run of any film. A big hit used to play at the cinema for several months – or, in the case of Sholay, Bachchan’s biggest hit, for many years. But only a serious blockbuster now runs for even a month.

  The growth of Indian cricket has exacerbated this pressure. During the IPL or a big one-day tournament, Indians simply stop going to the cinema, which has squeezed the calendar for possible film release dates. Cricket, not Bollywood, is now India’s biggest form of entertainment. ‘Whenever movies and cricket compete in our country, cricket wins,’ Rajesh Sawhney, boss of Reliance Entertainment, one of India’s biggest film production companies, told me. ‘The IPL has altered the whole media landscape of our country. For two months of every year you now have a dark period in the multiplexes of India.’

  The upshot is that, to have much chance of success, Bollywood films must light up the box office within a week or two of their release. This has encouraged film producers to rely on a small stable of established stars, like SRK, a constellation that has hardly changed in two decades. With so much focus on the main star, the producers appear meanwhile to have given rather little thought to their scripts.

  A related reason for Bollywood’s bad, or at least out-of-touch, movies is the people who make them. Unlike television – a meritocracy by Indian standards – the Hindi film industry is more or less a closed shop, dominated by a few dynasties whose creative talents have not obviously increased over time. Like cricket, Hindi film has always been controlled by an elite group. But whereas in cricket this is becoming less true as its talent pool spreads, in Bollywood the barriers to entry have risen. One of the biggest film families, the Prithviraj Kapoor dynasty, was started by a star of silent Indian cinema in the 1930s and is now into its fourth generation. Prithviraj’s great-granddaughter Kareena Kapoor is India’s biggest female star and her cousin Ranbir one of the biggest stars of all. Such Bollywood royals are as super-rich and pampered as the characters they often play. No wonder their films seem largely unconnected to the lives of almost any Indian.

  I had a glimpse
of Bollywood’s elite culture on a film set in wintry Srinagar. The film, called Rock Star, was being directed by Imtiaz Ali, a young self-made director from Jamshedpur, the Tata steel town. With this background, unusual in Bollywood, Imtiaz was considered to have a rare common touch: his two previous films, Love Aaj Kal and Jab We Met, had both been smash hits. This was why I had sought him out, and he was wonderfully thoughful and kind. Rather to my surprise, many Indian film people are. But I couldn’t see any evidence of a common touch in Rock Star, which was clearly pitched at a Westernised, middle-class audience. It was a complicated tale of a young Punjabi rock star and his doomed love affair with a beautiful Kashmiri, a story that flitted through India, Italy and the Czech Republic. The film set was one of the most pleasantly sophisticated, Anglophone and polite workplaces I had ever experienced. With a budget of $11.5 million, Imtiaz had assembled the cream of Bollywood technicians and producers. All were friendly and interested to discuss Hindi film. But none, apart from Imtiaz himself, seemed to hold it in particularly high regard.

  When I asked the film’s well-known cinematographer, Anil Mehta, to name the last popular Bollywood film he had enjoyed, he pulled a face. ‘That’s a difficult one,’ he said. He had tried to like a recent blockbuster, Dabangg. ‘We all did. But really I didn’t. Being of the elite, Western-educated, I naturally prefer Western films.’

  When the cameras were rolling, the actors spoke their lines in Hindi. But as soon as Imtiaz shouted ‘Cut!’ most of the actors and crew spoke in English. It was also the home language of Bollywood’s foremost dynasty, according to Ranbir Kapoor, who was playing the lead in Rock Star. ‘Hindi is dying,’ he told me earnestly, over a cup of the Darjeeling tea that Imtiaz prescribed for all his shoots. ‘The language you hear in the films of the 1950s, its beauty, that’s gone. Today’s actors can’t even speak proper Hindi.’