KBC - Season Five

by Krishna Shorewala | August 19, 2011

I still remember the day distinctly. I was fourteen years old. There was a film being shot near my house, a rare event in our locality. I ran down to see it, the movie buff that I was even then. The shooting was happening at the Ford showroom nearby. The film, as I would later discover, was Baghban. The stars in the scene were none other than Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini. Somehow, amidst a big crowd, I managed to slowly push myself to the front. I was the youngest one there. There they were: Hema Malini looking as radiant as ever and Sr. Bachchan looking even taller than I had imagined. As a huge fan of their films, naturally, I was grinning ear to ear. Things were nearly wrapping up when I reached. But as the actors were leaving, something unexpected happened. For a brief moment, Amitabh Bachchan looked straight at me and just smiled back warmly, perhaps amused by that idiotic grin on my face. Of course, he will not remember it. But it was one of the most unforgettable moments of my life.

The story of Amitabh Bachchan is known to one and all. Few public personalities have seen as many ups and downs in their lives as he has. Even fewer have braved through them and emerged victorious like he has. The late 1990s were not kind to him. Age had finally caught up with him and his star power as leading man had waned with some severity. All his film projects had failed and worse still, his company, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited, a revolutionary idea at the time, had run badly aground after the 1997 Miss World debacle. The event misfired badly and left the actor and his company with lawsuits and debts running into astronomical sums. It was the leanest phase of his life. And then, at the turn of the new millennium, he did something no actor of his stature had done before. He opted to shift to the television screen and host a game show. It was an Indian adaptation of the highly successful British show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The show was Kaun Banega Crorepati (“KBC”) and it catapulted Bachchan back to superstardom and brought him back into the hearts of a billion Indians.

KBC, in its first phase, was the most popular television event of all time, taking Ekta Kapoor’s soap opera phenomenon Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi head on. It was, by far, one of the most watched television series then. Young and old, families and friends, all sat together at 9:00 p.m. and watched KBC on Star Plus. Amitabh Bachchan, with his (now) signature French beard and his distinct style, became the darling of the masses once more and continues to remain so to this day. Four seasons later, KBC continues to remain strong, although not as popular as it once used to be. He has returned once more to host Season Five which premiered this week on Independence Day on a new channel: Sony Entertainment Television.

"Toh computer ji, lock kar diya jaaye?"

Image above (and on thumbnail) is taken from Soumik Kar's photostream on Flickr, here.

Image (but not the rest of the work) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

The new season has all the elements that made the older seasons so popular. However, the one major issue I have with it is that it plays a lot more into bad reality television clichés by delving into each participant’s history, hopes and aspirations. In my opinion, it cheapens the experience by selling people’s miseries and woes to the audience for the sake of higher ratings. Unlike Indian Idol and the like, KBC had consciously (and laudably) refrained from doing so, so far. However, with Season Five, even KBC has played into cheap sentiment and has devoted a solid half hour to explore their player’s backgrounds.

Nevertheless, the show works, even now. I have often wondered why it continues to hold such appeal over any other game show since a decade and I can point to only one thing: Amitabh Bachchan. Even today, people recognise him as the man who came to Mumbai with little more than the clothes on his back and the few notes in his pocket. Unlike actors like Shah Rukh Khan who have managed to divorce their opulent present from their more humble past, Amitabh very much remains connected to it. He does so by bringing a degree of warmth, humility and honesty on screen that is uncharacteristic of any other film star, old or new. He goes out of his way to make his contestants and audience feel comfortable, almost like an equal. Perhaps it is because he has seen so many highs and lows in his life that his persona still comes across as so human despite his magnificence. His command over the Hindi language is formidable. His ability to quote sayings and couplets of his father and other writers is a reminder of what most other actors today lack, a strong sense of their own language and roots. With a single gesture, he can put you at ease; with a single smile, he can make you feel valued irrespective of whether you are a billionaire or an ordinary fan watching him act.

As you may have realised by now, I am a huge fan of Big B. And the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that I am not alone in this regard. Quite the contrary, in fact. For all the controversies and tough times, he has maintained an image that is larger than life and yet, very humble and approachable. And as long as he is around, KBC is not likely to run out of popularity any time soon. He is the true lifeline of that show, not any sum of money or cheap sentiment that the show may have to offer.

Krishna Shorewala is a graduate of the N.L.S.I.U., Bangalore. He blogs at Confessions of a Cinephile.