Sushant Singh Rajput’s death has triggered many conversations about Bollywood and the entertainment industry as a whole. In a touching post on Instagram, late actor Irrfan Khan’s son Babil opened up about his father’s attempts to elevate the art of acting, and what his father taught him about cinema.
In a long Instagram post, Babil described how Irrfan was defeated at the box-office by “hunks with six-pack abs delivering theatrical one-liners and defying the laws of physics and reality.”
Babil said that before he went to London to study cinema, his father Irrfan told him to make people abroad aware that Indian cinema is much more than Bollywood. “Before I went to film school, he warned me that I’ll have to prove my self as Bollywood is seldom respected in world cinema and at these moments I must inform about the indian cinema that’s beyond our controlled Bollywood (sic),” he wrote.
“There was literally one single lecture in the world cinema segment about indian cinema called ‘Bollywood and Beyond’, that too gone through in a class full of chuckles. it was tough to even get a sensible conversation about the real Indian cinema of Satyajit Ray and K.Asif going. You know why that is? Because we, as the Indian audience, refused to evolve,” he added.
Babil said that his father spent his life trying to elevate the art of acting ‘in the adverse conditions of noughties Bollywood’. “My father gave his life trying to elevate the art of acting in the adverse conditions of noughties Bollywood and alas, for almost all of his journey, was defeated in the box office by hunks with six pack abs delivering theatrical one-liners and defying the laws of physics and reality, photoshopped item songs, just blatant sexism and same-old conventional representations of patriarchy (and you must understand, to be defeated at the box office means that majority of the investment in Bollywood would be going to the winners, engulfing us in a vicious circle). Because we as an audience wanted that, we enjoyed it, all we sought was entertainment and safety of thought, so afraid to have our delicate illusion of reality shattered, so unaccepting of any shift in perception,” he wrote.
He said that efforts to explore the potential of cinema were sidelined. He added that now there is change. He admitted that Sushant’s death has sparked discussions. He wrote: “Although I resent that Sushant’s demise has now become a fluster of political debates, but if a positive change is manifesting, in the way of the Taoist, we embrace it.”
