If evil is the flip-side of good and comes in many shades, layers & dimensions, why will our greatest entertainment platform – Bollywood – shy away from it? Balaji Vittal’s book goes into wide-angle, long shots & close-ups of the space evil occupies and the role of villains & vamps who have symbolised it across decades. Along the way, it portrays the changing face of the Hindi film villain – from pure evil to super-cool dude as destroyer.Once upon a time, the typical Bollywood movie had simplistic tracks to cater to an audience-base seeking simplistic storylines that were non-complicated and where the victory of good over evil, with action, comedy, naach-gaana, romance, tension & drama thrown in, constituted the basic cinematic narrative. The main players in the mix were invariably the hero-heroine, villain-vamp, comedian. The blissed-out couple’s journey to la-la-land was forever road blocked by the evil, conniving villain, who was punished in the last reels of the film. In between, whenever there was too much tension or rona-dhona, the Comedian entered to do his number and ease the frisson. This entire template was a reflection of those innocent times and consumed with total joy by the masses.For me, the grey area (Villain as Star-draw) the first arrived with the entry of Shatrughan Sinha in the films of the 70’s. Sure, Pran, K.N. Singh and gang brought their own presence & contribution to their projects earlier on, but I had never heard or seen a villain getting the kind of wild applause on entry as Shotgun did! Audiences of the early seventies – when Rajesh Khanna ruled – will remember the bated breath that preceded his entry and the frenzy that followed. No one gave a damn about anyone else and SS starring in a film was enough of a pull to catch the movie. Actually, he dramatically re-defined the look and persona of the villain. With nasheli eyes, deadly (a la Raj Kumar) dialogue-delivery, accompanied by a flamboyant swagger never ever seen in this space, Sinha just had to enter the frame to set it on fire! Two decades later, it was another unknown young actor by the name of Sharukh Khan who zonked one and all with his chillingly seductive brand of villainy. His hyper-obsessive role as an audacious frenzied lover in Darr took everyone’s breath away, putting hero Sunny Deol in the dumps and making villainy super sexy! I have seldom heard the kind of applause in theatres, when SRK plunged the knife into Deol’s body … it was crazy with people rooting for this complex, neurotic, vulnerable and desperate lover unable to face unrequited love. Baazigar and Anjaam too nailed this evil streak, but where SRK raced past Sinha was that he was hugely versatile, which the Bihari Babu was not. Once Sinha stepped out of the villain space, it was over and out time.
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