Here’s why Vijay Deverakonda will crack the Hindi code

On Saturday Vijay Deverakonda landed in Patna to promote his first Hindi language film Liger . The crowds were wildly welcoming. Youngsters specially flocked at the hotel where he checked in wanting a picture. News leaked that he was expected at my home for lunch.

There were girls calling up constantly to ask how they can just meet Vijay “for thirty seconds” for a picture. “He charges Rs 10,000 per picture,” I joked. To my shock, some of them offered to show up at my home with the cash.

The Deverakonda craze is growing by the day. Suddenly the A-list brigade in Bollywood has begun to look jaded.

“That’s because Vijay is something more than an A-list favourite. He is an A-lust favourite. Women can’t get enough of him. There is an animal quality to his screen presence ” says Karan Johar who is promoting Vijay as the Next ‘Beast Thing’ in Bollywood.

The song Jawani teri aafat from Liger where Vijay air-copulates with Ananya Panday , has set the internet on fire. The song is a curious reversal of the chui-mui chuo-na-chuo-na touch-me-not image of the heroine from the past. The song gives out very sharp clear signals about the presence of a carnal element in a relationship: it is okay for the woman to lust. In fact, the patent 1980’s words of a woman when lust-shamed, “Bhagwan ke liye mujhe chhod do,” is used in a mock-plea mock-trail in the song Jawani teri aafat.

The message is clear.

“Why should boys have all the fun?” asks Karan Johar. “Vijay’s screen presence ratifies a ‘raw-ism’ that gives the onscreen couple equal rights to lust enjoyment.”

It actually started with Vijay’s Arjun Reddy , the Telugu film that expanded and extended the borders of the love relationships and showed Deverakonda’s demure co-star enjoying her stolen time with her boyfriend. This was a startling departure from the way courtship was handled in the movies earlier.

The “Achcha toh hum chalte hain” demolished the courtship stereotype, whereby the ‘boy’(actually 40-plus Rajesh Khanna ) and the girl (ditto Asha Parekh ) met and fretted over being seen by the ‘zaalim duniya’ rather than enjoying their time together. In a progressive Malayalam film Ishq four years ago, the young man out on date with his girlfriend gets brutally moral-policed when he asks her for a kiss. Moral of the story: don’t even think about it before marriage.

Vijay Deverakonda legitimizes a woman’s right to enjoy her time with her partner with or without the wedding band baaja baarat. That he has made inroads into the Hindi belt is evident in the curious enthusiasm his debut has generated in the North Indian territory.

“Audiences in North India are very curious to see Vijay Deverakonda in Liger. Earlier it was his action scenes that they wanted to see. Now after seeing his sexy songs and dances in Ananya Pandey the audience wants to know if he is the next superstar,” says Bihar exhibitor Roshan Singh.

There is only one actor in Bollywood to match VD (that’s what his team calls him)’s rapidly growing popularity in Bollywood, and that’s Kartik Aaryan . There are many similarities in their success stories.

They are both outsiders who cracked the nepo-code most effectively very early in their career. When Vijay entered the Telugu film industry the dynasties were ruling. He is the first major star in Telugu cinema whose family is not into films.

“It wasn’t easy to break into the cordoned casting system. But I don’t want to romanticize my struggle because there wasn’t any. Whether it is Kartik Aaryan or me,the film industry welcomes you if you have the talent drive and junoon,” says Vijay Deverakonda.

Looks like he has all three qualities. Deverakonda brings back the mojo and the masti in the wooing game. Whether it is the girl on screen or the audience out there, he goes all out and won’t take a no for an answer.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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