Chal Chal Chal Mere Ram Piari

Recently I saw a song from an Amitabh movie where the ageless star pushes his car, with an overweight and overaged Amrita Singh looking over. The song was CHAL CHAL MERE RAM PIARI (Walk on, oh walk on my John Doe), where the Mega star's car named RAM PIARI (the Indian version of the common name Johny) walks besides him, sometimes smiling and winking at him.

This lively car is apparently alive and kicking, obeys the order of his master who stands and dances outside to the tune of this song.

This movie was from a time when Amitabh Bachhan, though at his declining phase, was still the one man Bollywood industry. So much so that, producers like Manmohan Desai et all churned out one junk after another from him. The girls opposite to him were mostly discarded actresses ftom yesteryears, who had nothing to lose and everuthing to gain from standing next to the aging superstar.

Not long ago, I was watching another junk INSAANIYAT (Humaneness) churned out of the legendary actor's superstardom. Lowering expectations, I continued watching it with some degree of amusement. As expected, Amitabh stood taller, towering above both his co-actors Chunky Pandey and Sunny Deol.

The overshadowed duo in this typical Bollywood formula movie would duel it out to secure their own turf, until our Super hero Amitabh, the peacemaker arrives at the scene. Chunky comes dancing like a monkey, together with Sunny Deol start singing locking their arms around each other "TU MERA BHAI, MEIN TERA BHAI (you are my brother, I am your brother). 

Their bromance (brotherly romance) continued, as the song progresses they wrap arms around each other's waist and touching each other's cheek just short of kissing. Any westerner who would see this might mistake Chunky and Sunny as perfectly eligible for gay marriage.

They shake their hands and legs a lot to which the apparently visible crowd of bystanders in the background hardly care. But things change when Amitabh joins in at the end of the the song to shake his long lanky legs a little bit as a fitting finale to the song sequence with the crowd erupting with cheer. 

The same would apply to many movies of our time, when Mithun or Govinda would dance their hearts out but a single leg swish from Amitabh will madden the audience with whistles and applause. Sitting on my sofa and watching this movie, I could feel transported to a vicarious deja vu which engulfing me, recapturing these scenes at movie theatres and my Engineering College Audio Visual (AV) Hall, as they would erupt at the slight shake of the superstar's long, lanky legs.

It's another matter, I can't watch such movies these days, even if someone buys me a movie ticket to a Dolby Digital Theater, along with ample supply of pop corns, soda and headache relieving Mortrins, you still wont be able to drag me to watch this movie again. But those were the days of unique dominance in Bollywood by a unique actor.

Gone are those days. Now only two remaining superstars on their own rights are Amitabh who is already into his 70s and the Tamil icon Rajnikanth who is inching towards 70. With no one presently commanding the same stature, after them the concept of "one man industry" is destined to die its own natural death.