The Rahul Gandhi script is straight from a Bollywood potboiler

In less than a month, Rahul Gandhi has re-written the entire script. Pappu has metamorphosed into an Angry Young Man, ready to avenge all the wrongs, real or imagined, on behalf of his family, party, the poor and country. In retrospect, we can now confirm that his “nonsense” moment on the ordinance to set aside the disqualification of convicted politicians was the release date of his new thriller, Sholay 2, when he shed his confused bumpkin image and emerged from the chrysalis as the new Amitabh Bachchan in the politics of feigned anger. It is a script straight from Bollywood, which a country enamoured of Bollywood will have to accept as real. [caption id=“attachment_1190937” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rahul PTI[/caption] Here’s the plot. An illustrious family that’s being doing public good all along is faced with a situation where two generations - Grandma Indira and Dad Rajiv - are murdered by enemies of the people. To save the young son Pappu from being targeted by blood-thirsty villains, the all-trusting widow places an old family retainer, Mannu Singh as caretaker of the estate while her tender-hearted son is busy saving tribals here and Dalits there. But evil is afoot in the mansion left to the caretaker’s devices. Mannu Dadu, our hero’s erstwhile Guru and mentor, has allowed himself to be influenced by bad people. Instead of keeping up the family’s good work he is busy hatching plots with wicked and rapacious businessmen and allowing the family wealth to be looted. Pawan Uncle and Ashwani Kaka are deemed to be evil influences on once-trusted Mannu, and soon the old man is seen to be consorting with True Evil. Why, he even wants to pass an ordinance to protect bad people and crooks. The young Prince, till recently playing cameo roles of do-gooding in the Odisha hills and UP and Maharashtra villages, recently returned to the castle and not only finds it in ruins, but discovers that his mother is ailing. But even in this bad condition she is thinking of feeding the poor, and as the son returns to bring her life-saving medicine, she tells him that power is poison. But the son who always abhorred power and pelf, except for the odd Rs 1,600 crore castle in Nayi Dilli belonging to a defunct company started by his grandad, finds he can no longer contain his long-suppressed anger against his family’s murderers and the enemies of the poor. Phata poster, nikla hero. The Angry Young Man can no longer suffer in silence. To combat the degenerate old man, now playing Bahadur Shah Zafar but in reality a puppet of moneyed interests, Pappu has to become Amitabh the Avenger and raise an army of loyalists, to fight for good causes. But the biggest fight is against Gabbar “NaMo”, the all-powerful bandit from the Badlands of Gujarat, a man whose name is whispered by mothers to scare little minority children and who is taking advantage of Mannu Dadu’s descent into bad ways to threaten the kingdom and the poor. Worse, Gabbar NaMo is C-o-m-m-u-n-a-l, exactly the cause for which our hero is willing to fight to the finish. In one memorable line in the script, he said “woh mujhe bhi mar denge”. So, as the screen displays “Intermission”, we are left with images of our Angry and Determined Young Man now willing to sacrifice his life, like his Granny and Dad, ready to fight both the Old Retainer gone bad and the Bigger Villain NaMo. He takes this pledge to defeat Evil on his mother’s sickbed. Even Salim-Javed could not have written a better script. It works in Bollywood. In seven months we will know if it works in real life. Fact: Bollywood’s heroes and heroines, from Amitabh Bachchan to Dharmendra to Hema Malini, Jayaprada and Raj Babbar, have never really managed to make a transition from silver screen to political stage. The story in the south has been different, with NTR and MGR and even Jayalalithaa making the cut in film-crazy Andhra and Tamil Nadu. But even the south is tiring of cut-out heroism and film scripts. More recent hopefuls such as Chiranjeevi and Vijay Kanth have not set the Godavari or Kaveri on fire. Rahul’s Bollywood script is a journey in reverse: a real life politican widely written off as an incompetent, wants us to believe that what you have seen so far is the film, and what’s ahead is the real thing. When it may be the reverse. Ho-hum. The critic rating so far: One-and-a-half stars. Category: U