| Bollywood Clones By Shekhar Deshpande
Has
Bollywood figured out the cloning secret?
Jaya
Bachchan with son Abhishek.
A remarkable phenomenon associated with Bollywood has
gone virtually unnoticed. As we will see, this phenomenon
extends beyond Bollywood, but it surely has a formidable
presence there. It is the fantastic ability of film
stars to produce offspring that have a striking photographic
resemblance to them. Call it what you like, but there
is no mistaking just how remarkable the resemblance
is.
First you had Dharmendra and Hema Malini. Their marriage,
it seemed, was made in heaven and then in some films.
They got together and did what they had to. Then we
have Sunny and Esha. Sunny, one imagines, had all that
he wanted in the world, a chance to shine in a brilliant
career of his own, to get the best education that would
dig out his talents and put him on the right path. Esha,
one follows, is looking up to her brother to see how
he uses the fortunes of the family and makes a name
for himself. Sunny must have tried everything and he
tailored his career to what the film industry wanted.
Now we have another Dharmendra, this Sunny boy, making
films. The great thing about this is that Dharmendra
looks exactly or almost like his son. And, Esha, having
had all the opportunities settled to capitalize on her
resemblance and heritage from her mother. Like father
like son, and like mother like daughter.
Feroze Khan’s son Fardeen Khan.
Before we explore this further, this is a difficult
dilemma for someone who grew up on Dharmendra (Bless
me!). As it is, I miss home, and all about it. Dharmendra
is very much part of my memory. But now I have Sunny!
What does that mean? I have a young Dharmendra to keep
my memory alive! With all that Jazz about how important
the NRIs are for India and Bollywood, one has to surmise
that the design in this drama has to be quite admirable.
Dharmendra has produced another one of himself so the
NRIs do not miss him too much. Now that is an achievement,
don’t you think?
This feat of procreation does not stop nor does it begin
there. One always wondered about the Kapoors. First,
we had Prithviraj, then Raj and then Randhir and so
on. The genetic programming in the Kapoor family is
nothing short of amazing. They produced a family that
spoke clearly in favor of the father’s genes. After
a while, almost everyone in that family resembled all
the great patriarchs.
It is part of our collective memory that Raj Kapoor
had many affairs and after each one of them, he gave
his wife a new child. What an incredible control he
had over his genes! He not only blessed his wife with
another child in an act of reaffirmation, but in doing
so almost obliterated her presence. His kids carry a
stronger genetic imprint of their father than his wife
(or for that matter of his mistresses). So much for
the woman’s place in the family! It is not until we
have Dimple and Hema Malini that women carry the task
of procreation with the same precision that men had
achieved. So much for feminism and its new accomplishments!
Hema Malini’s daughter Asha Deol.
Considering that these folks come from the film industry,
this phenomenon is particularly striking. Where image
is dominant and where men act and women appear, the
idea of producing kids in your own image gives a whole
new meaning to the divine power of producing the world
in His image. The likeness of oneself makes for a good
career move; it imprints one’s immortality in an image,
and it makes nepotism a bad excuse for losers. As films
have producers, we have a new understanding of the term.
Either the producers are gods or God is a producer.
Or, in an Indian context, many gods must give their
consent to the nepotism of genetic imprints. We must
agree that this is, after all, God’s work. After all,
whoever He or She is, he/she must like remakes or even
sequels. The idea of shooting also takes on a new meaning.
It is not only shooting straight, but shooting with
continuity, a necessary quality in basic filmmaking
techniques. There must be a divine purpose in filmmaking
and in the community of filmmakers.
Sunny, Dharmendra and Bobby Deol.
This phenomenon is not limited to a few isolated cases.
One of the most alarming features of my life since leaving
India some 20 years ago is that I keep coming across
the children of so many film stars I left behind: there
are the Babita daughters Karisma and Kareena; Dimple
Kapadia’s twinkle Khanna; Hema Malini’s sha Deol; FerozeKhan’s
Fardeen Khan; Rakesh Roshan’s Hrithek Roshan; Jeetendra’s
Tusshar; Nutan’s Mohnish Behl; Rajkumar’s Puru Rajkumar,
to name just a few. There is a glut of these look-alikes
in an Indian film industry. I could not describe to
you my eternal curiosity at seeing the photograph of
the children of Amitabh Bachhan and Jaya Bhaduri or
of Pataudi and Sharmila Tagore. To this day, their images
are a grand puzzle. How do they do that? Is this rare
feat reserved for the genes and sperms of the rich and
famous? Are the poor folks around the world creating
their children in their own images as well?
It turns out that the desire to see the resemblance
of yourself in others is a peculiar phenomenon. As the
new child is born, everyone rushes to see who the child
looks like. There is a great relief, of course, if the
child looks like you. Most of the time! But then as
Boris Becker found out, the child he produced with an
African woman in a quick tryst ended up looking so much
like him (and so unlike her) that he had to fight and
lose a court battle in disclaiming the child.
Dimple Kapadia’s daughter Twinkle Khanna.
There is reason to believe, as the history of photography
makes clear, that this urge to see yourself in everything
(including the permanent mirror of photographs) is attributed
to the rise of individualism. The technology of photography
moves into the space of desire to create a better image
of yourself. It appears as if this urge is mastered
by the upper class, a class that loves its own image,
so it can create it and cherish it in full glory. Whether
it is Kirk and Michael Douglas or Raj and Randhir Kapoor,
it is the triumph of the will to create the world in
your image. The world of films, a perfected world of
man-made illusions, is a great instrument with which
to mark the larger world with this will.
There are no photographs of the children of the poor
even if they look like their parents. The poor are hardly
absorbed in this task in any case. For them their mortality
is standing right in front of them. There is no mediation
of photographs between their existence and death. Survival
for the day is more important than saving oneself for
posterity.
Babita with her daughters Karisma and Kareena.
Let us not underestimate this desire among the haves
to leave behind their own image in permanence. We begin
to see “cloning” in a new light. Are these successful
attempts at cloning? And, if they are, we better claim
perfection in it altogether. This makes all theother
feats of genetic engineering inconsequential. In animal
and plant world, there does not seem to be any desire
to mark the offspring in graven permanence, and they
have achieved the same without all the expensive research
and without all the cheerleading that we cannot do without.
This genetic achievement, in which the photographic
resemblance and the programming of talents and careers
are guaranteed, goes far enough to reveal the motives
of the class that wants to pursue cloning to win over
the fear of mortality. In fact, Bollywoood’s upper class,
as we have seen, has turned the gods’ tools against
them and used life to extend life.
Jeetendra with daughter Ekta and son Tusshar.
We have to keep pondering how this is achieved. To this
date, we have no recipe from them and no inkling on
how it could be done. This leaves not just the poor
folks like us in the dark, but it makes the little film
makers’s careers more difficult. The industry is dominated
by those who are successful in creating their own. Those
one-film wonders on a lower rung of the ladder have
to try and test different formulas but like Colonel
Sanders’s chicken and the test of Coca Cola, this will
remain a mystery. Their careers will go nowhere. Their
offspring may have to become clerks in the shopping
markets instead of cashing in on the reputation of their
parents. We always believed there is something grossly
unfair in this world. It is entertaining, but it is
not a just world.
Rakesh Roshan with superstar son Hrithik Roshan (and
Amisha Patel).
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