Death of a Villain

While this isn’t a very nice thing to say, sad news is something that one comes across daily in the newspapers. Some of it, like the Japan earthquake, you react to and think about – while others, like the release of a new Lady Gaga album, you tend to file away under the ‘indifferent’ section of your mind. So a few days ago when I read that Bollywood actor Bob Christo had passed away, I didn’t cast the headline a second glance and had begun the mental process of filing it away…until my eyes fell upon the accompanying picture:

And immediately, it set off some sort of alarm bell in my head. This was the face of pure Bollywood evil! Granted, we’ve had far greater and more legendary villains like Amrish Puri, Danny and Amjad Khan – but if I were to think of one villain that evoked pure, unadulterated hatred the second you saw him on screen, it was Bob. And I didn’t even know that it was Bob, as the first time I heard his name was when I read about his death!

I speak with very limited experience, of course. Apparently Bob has done over 200 films in Bollywood, of which I would’ve seen less than a dozen. But the point is, he’s always been one of those “as evil as can possibly be” kind of villains, without any shade of grey. Ever! Granted, Bollywood villains were anyway usually pure evil – but once in a while there could be mitigating circumstances as to why the villain was evil – he could be a victim of circumstances. Or the villain would be ‘humanized’ in some way by having a brother or wife or kid. Or he would have a cat that he genuinely felt affection for. Or even the odd movie where the villain would turn nice/see the evil of his ways.

But with Bob Christo, it seemed that he was out and out evil, and his character would never be fleshed out in any way that could possibly evoke sympathy from the viewer. Unlike other villains, Bob was never allowed to portray a character – he was pure evil the second he appeared on screen, and stayed that way until he got brutally killed. He would rape, kill, smuggle, do drugs, loot, plunder, castrate, set on fire, torture – often in the same film. And that was all he did. For example, if Manoj Bajpai was to play an evil, corrupt cop, they’d still show him going back home to his wife and kid; or how he ended up turning evil due to the system being corrupt or a family member dying of an expensive, critical illness. But if Bob Christo was shown as an evil cop, he’d only be shown in scenes where he brutally tortures the hero – they won’t show him going back home to a family or even a pet. Hell, even if they showed him doing something nonchalant like smoking, it would probably be accompanied with evil background music and wicked glint in the eye / with lots of alcohol around to connote decadent lifestyle / mujraa-type dance happening to denote complete lack of morals. The movie would not have a single scene depicting Bob doing something humane – I’m not talking about something saintly like rescuing an injured kitten from the traffic and bandaging its paws, but even something mundane like giving his kid some pocket money.

All this recollection of Bob and the sort of movies he was in (a lot of the smuggling-type ones, I think) did make me realize one thing, though – villains today just don’t inspire that sort of terror anymore. This is not specific to Bob – just think of the villains from the 70s and 80s Bollywood movies. The evil ‘thakur’ who would ruthlessly oppress the simple villagers, the demonic ‘daaku’ that would wantonly terrorize simple villagers just for the fun of it, or the devious smuggler that would ruin countless lives (and the nation’s economy) with his misdeeds. The sort of roles essayed by the likes of Danny, Amrish Puri and Amjad Khan with such conviction that I’ve come across a few people who actually believe they’re evil in real life! Even well into the 90s, Bollywood was churning out movies where Amrish Puri would still be a thakur/zamindar, with his henchmen merrily chopping to pieces any villager that had the temerity to disobey his orders.

Compare this with the villains of today’s Bollywood movies. Half the movies don’t even have a villain, and even if they do, he’d be a watered-down ‘anti-hero’ or a ‘negative role with shades of grey’. He would probably be coordinating a kidnapping or serial blasts over his cell phone while being out shopping with his wife – something that Bob would’ve completely frowned upon. While I do believe that this subtlety has helped improve the overall standard of Bollywood films with lots of experimental films seeing the light of day and the emergence of character actors, I think that as a kid, I would’ve preferred the sort of rubbish movies that Bob was part of. The subtle stuff of today would have seemed slow and boring – and there’d be no fun without characters like Gabbar and Mogambo, who are part of cinematic folklore today.

Bob’s death reminded me of a simpler time when heroes were good, villains were bad and there was nothing in between.