Illusion and
Identity-Crisis in Shashi Tharoor's Show
Businesss
Dr. Ratnesh
Baranwal,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
K.N.I.P.S.S. Sultanpur,
Uttar Pradesh, India.
Abstract:
This
research-paper titled–“Illusion and Identity Crisis' in Shathi Tharoor's Show,
Business” brings about the satirical and humorous picture of Bollywood
film-industry. The novel brings to the light the darker secrets of the Indian
film-industry under the reflection of the complexities, insecurities, broken
promises and the illusion of glamour. The chief protagonist of the novel,
Ashwini Kumar, a young and highly ambitious actor, has rosy dream of being a
superstar in Bombay’s film-industry. He
has to struggle hard and grapple with the challenges of the identity- crisis
and the illusion of the glamour of the film-industry. Ashwini Kumar, a
struggling actor, changes his name as Ashwini Mehta to succeed in this large
industry.
As
a great contemporary novelist, Shashi Tharoor satirizes the Bollywood
film-industry, its illusion, deception, betrayal, confusion and the vulgarity
of the celebrity. The novel presents the illusion of the glamorous
film-industry, the Bollywood culture and the cult of the celebrity. The novel
Show Business is a very entertaining portrayal of the Indian Bollywood
film-industry focusing on the corruption prevalent in this industry. Illusion
and reality are the two different sides of the novel, revealing the paradox and
bewilderment. The difference between illusion and reality, between film and
practical life is very smoothly articulated on the one hand and gets
systematically shattered on the other hand.
Shashi
Tharoor happens to be a very competent Indian English writer, a great
academician and international civil servant, a great politician, journalist,
human-rights advocate, a great patron and adviser of the various committees and
institutions. He got this second piece of novel –– Show Business published in
1991.
Tharoor
has very cleverly used humour and satire in the story by rendering it a funny,
clever and pointed manifestation of India’s glamorous and political realities.
The illusion, created by the film industry and sustained by people’s ignorance
and ‘willing suspension of disbelief, finds its way into their heats and
becomes a dominant impact. The novel unveils the picture of the significant gap
and hollowness between the illusive glamour of the Bollywood film-industry and
time often, hollow, selfish reality of the individual life of actors and
actresses. Tharoor also focuses our attention upon the parallels between the
artificiality and the corruption of the film-industry and the corrupt Indian Polities,
where a film-actor can easily rise up to an M.P., yet fails to tackle the real
challenges.
The
novel very implicitly interrogates fundamental concept of ethics and dharma
(righteousness and the moral duty of a man) in a modern world operated by
illusion, confusion, corruption, ambition, materialistic glamour and success
where people prefer their own personal interests rather than their ethical
duties and values.
This
novel is also very much praiseworthy and remarkable for Tharoor’s excellent employment
of the postmodern techniques such as satire, humour, irony, parody and
fragmentation. It also differentiates the illusive glamour of the filmy world
and the reality of the individual life of the film-stars who have a very little
importance for their moral duties and ethical values.
Keywords:
Illusion, identity-crisis, complexities, insecurities, glamour, deception,
betrayal, vulgarity, celebrity, corruption, paradox, bewilderment, shattered,
manifestation, willing suspension of disbelief, hollowness, artificiality,
implicitly, parody, fragmentation.
This research-paper titled–Shashi Tharoor
Show Business, published on 1991, is a brilliant outcome of his sound observations
and experiences about the Bombay Film-industry. It is much better known for the
illusion of its glamour and the darker realities of the actors and heroines in
their personal and practical life, working in this industry. Tharoor, however,
makes it clear in an interview, while talking to the media persons –– “I remain
solely responsible for what I have made of the material”.
Bombay, the film capital of India has
always been a big centre of glamour, enchantment, the splendid beauty and
dazzling light and lustre of the superstars, heroes and heroines. This industry
is also much better known for its illusive glamour and the darker secrets of
the identity- crisis. Exquisitely the beautiful heroines and handsome heroes are
successfully fighting here in the race of superiority and overtaking. These stars
have to meet with some tough challenges and identity-crisis in order to
maintain their own identity, dignity and glory to win the hearts of the audience.
But behind the screen of this illusive glamour, there are the darker realities
and secrets of these superstars remaining unknown to many more.
This novel Show Business highlights the story
of a superstar from a humble beginning to the dizzy heights. The author has to go
through a very sound observation and deeper perception about the analytical study
of the various issues related to the film-industry such as illusion and
reality, the identity-crises of these actors and heroines riding on the horse
of success, the sad plight of the junior artists, generation gap, vulgarity and
nudeness, ingratitude, dirty politics and pre-marital and extra-marital
relationships.
This research-paper highlights some
darker secrets and realities of this filmy world behind the screen. This novel
basically deals with the entertaining story of Ashok Banjara, a mega star of this
film-industry, whose name and fame have started shooting up by leaps and bounds
as a successful Bollywood star. His daily income is as much as the annual income
of the President of India. Unfortunately he is admitted to Bombay hospital because
of a heart-attack and is struggling hard between survival and death.
His father, Kulbhushan, a successful politician
wanted Ashok to become a politician. He did not naturally want that his son
should Join the film-industry. But despite his father’s intentional ambition,
the resolute son, after going to tinsel town and starting hardships, becomes a
promising superstar of the film-industry. His cinematic stardom fails to make his
father happy.
Now, in the Indian perspective, a father
has naturally some ambitious dreams about his son’s career. Besides the father’s
thinking, he does hold undeniable and unchallengeable claim over his son.
India is no doubt a multicultural, multi-linguistic
and multi-religious country. In the Bombay film-industry, there are different
superstars and heroines hailing from the various parts of the country
representing their own culture, religion, tradition of their respective society
in their personal privacy. But despite this kind of specific in diversity
culture, tradition and religion, they are working together in the film-industry
facing the challenges of their own identity-crisis and illusive light and lustre
of this Bollywood industry. There is a lot of difference between their role on
the cinematic stage and the dark hidden secrets of their private life. It
creates an atmosphere of willing suspension of disbelief, the difference
between the illusion of the glamorous film-industry marked by the exposure of beauty
and wealth and the reality of the personal privacy of these superstars and
heroines working together in this industry.
Modernized cities and towns of India
don't have a fraction of the immensely diverse traditional mass entertainments
that the countryside witnesses around the year. Indian films, with all their limitations
and idiocies, represent a great part of the hope for India's bright future in a
country that is still dominated by 50 percent illiterates and uneducated people
even today. As Tharoor asserts in his article “Classic and Contemporary”, published
in The Hindu:
1970s mega movie – ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’–
Amar Akbar Anthony separated in infancy who are brought up by different
families. It was an adventurous movie about the story of three brothers – one a
Christian, one a Hindu and one a Muslim. As adults, one is a smuggler, one a
street-fighter. How they rediscover each other and turn on the villains is why
the audience and flocked to the film in their millions, but in the process they
also received the clear message that Christians, Hindus and Muslims are
metaphorically brothers too, seemingly different but united in their common
endeavours for justice.
The Bollywood film-industry remains as
an embodiment of India’s diversity of the multiple cultures, religions, languages,
traditions and civilizations. Hindi movies give us the reflection for escapist
amusement, as long as it responds as an instrument to communicate the diversity
of India’s ancestral heritage culture and civilization, by giving us a panorama
of a common world to escape, by permitting us to dream with our nacked eyes. The
popular entertainment can give us unity in diversity. Once Tharoor himself
admitted it one of this columns, while appearing in one of his interview ––
“American scholars Susane and
Lloyd Rudolph recounted a story that they had heard from an Indian Muslim
friend who, as a child, was once asked to participate in a small community
drama about the life of Lord Krishna, dancing as a Gopi around the Lord. Her Muslim
father forbade it. In that case, said the drama’s director, we will cast you as
Krishna. All you have to do is to stand there in the classic pose, a flute at
your month, and the other girls will dance around you. And so the Muslim girl
played Krishna that is the popular Indian culture from which so many of us have
emerged”.
Shashi Tharoor’s Show Business points out
the great analytical and authentic accuracy about the socio-cultural life of
the common Indian life. Actually he ridicules and criticizes the Indian film-industry
for its artificiality and superficiality. He has beautifully illustrated the illustrations
in a ridiculous way –– when the rich boy meets poor girl, or vice-versa or boy
meets girl, love at first sight. He utters ––
It is impossible: all these rich girls – poor boy fantasies the Hindi
films, churn out fly in the face of every single class, caste and social
consideration of the real India, just giving the lower classes the wrong ideas.
After all, the dramatic rise what the papers call eye-teasing, which is really
nothing less than the sexual harassment of women in the street, is not entirely
unconnected with Hindu films….... Except that in real life, the rich girl won't
look at him, let along sing duets with him.
There
are too many Hindi movies in the Bollywood film-industry which have created
distraction for the hundreds and thousands of Indian-viewers who watch them
each year.
Tharoor
also compares Hindi movies to a new religion:
Indian Cinema has many remarkable affinities to the
Indian religion….. Hinduism is agglomerative and eclectic: it embraces and
absorbs the beliefs and practices of other faiths and rival movements. It
co-opts native dissenters – The Protestant work –– ethic, for instance in the
Karma-Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita. The Hindu film is much the same: it barrows
its formulas from Hollywood, its music from Liverpool, and its plot limes from
every bad films that Hong Kong has ever produced….. The Indian film is the idealized
representation of the Indian attitude towards the world.
The world's
largest film-industry is found nowhere on the Western frontiers of the United
States of America but rather, found in India in Bombay.
In the West Europe,
some very bold and enthusiastic Hollywood actors do their own stunts and Ashok also
used to do his stunts in order to win laurels. This incident is reminiscent of
a hear total tragedy that stalked Amitabh Bacchan during the shooting of a
film-coolie Tharoor further utters ––
My lips remain locked on hers and I am a were of the
pressure of her teeth: there seem to be out two thousand of them, each as large
and strong as a key on Gopi Master’s harmonium. She must chaw neem twigs before
breakfast and unfortunate actors after. As I try to move she half rises, mouth
still glued to mine, and pushes me down with affirm hand, Boy, she is strong.
The other hands is pulling my T-shirt out of my waistband, Christ this is
serious.
Ashok
Banjara’s name and fame starts-shooting up by leaps and bounds in the
film-industry and later he gets into
politics and does get elected to the parliament, but finds himself a complete failure
in this now set-up. Despite being a successful actor, he fails to succeed in
politics. Because of his frustration as a failure in politics, he resigns himself.
Tharoor displays very remarkably why a film-actor does not become a successful
politician.
It is too difficult to understand what
Tharoor intends to aim at. Does he suggest something different what H.W.
Longfellow suggested in his famous poem “A Psalm of life” ––
Trust no
future however pleasant,
Let the dead
past bury its dead,
Act-act in the
living present,
Heart within
and God overhead.
On the ground of the above discussion,
it can be very briefly summed-up to say that Shashi Tharoor has beautifully dealt
with the serious issue of identity-crisis and illusion of the Bollywood film-industry
in the novel Show Business. By virtue of Ashok Banjara’s character who happens
to be the chief protagonist of the novel. He has to come across many tough
challenges of maintaining his identity as a superstar in the film-industry Bollywood
industry has the two sides –– one is the illusion of its glamour and the other
is the dark secret and reality of the private life of actors and actresses. This
is a dark secret known to a few.
Works Cited
Boyd,
William, “Show Business: Review”, The New
York Times, 27 Sept., 1992.
Ramanan,
Mohan. “The Great Shashi Tharoor Show”, New
Perspective on Indian Writings, edited by Narendra Kumar. Prestige Books,
2004.
Thakhar,
Jennifer, “Identity Through Bollywood Cinema: The Real Zone?”
thakharjemnicscraftmail.com. Web
Tharoor,
Shashi. Show Business. Penguin Books,
1991.
---.“Classic
and Contemporary”, The Hindu, 2
Sept., 2001.
---.India from Midnight to Millennium and Beyond,
Penguin Books, 1997.