#25YearsOfBaazigar: The many firsts of the Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol and Shilpa Shetty Kundra-starrer
Baazigar was a problematic film, and not just because the idea of feeling sorry for a sinister murderer was alien to a 6-year-old me. It was for that, and so many other things that the 1993 blockbuster gave us.
For starters, eyebrows, and its eugenics and genetics. For the only thing that the Chopra sisters, Priya and Seema, aka Kajol and Shilpa Shetty, picked up from their family gene pool was a bushy, caterpillar eyebrow gene that clearly skipped their parents’ generation.
Browbeating one another, and how!
And then there was the fact that rich people party. Always. After college, at home, for Holi. If the party ends in awkwardness, they throw another to shake it off.
Finally, of course, Baazigar taught us that all mouths that are red are not full of gutka. Some are actually spitting blood, in their gory, glorious ways. Fascinating!
But these do not match up to the five gems that Baazigar gave us. Here’s our comprehensive list:
Contact lens
Truth be told, a contact lens was unheard of in a typical middle-class family until Shah Rukh Khan showed us what an eye for an eye can really do. I mean, if you have bad eyesight, you invest in a pair of specs. If you can afford to splurge on yourself, you go buy into this contact lens vicious circle — disposable things that need to be renewed every two to four weeks. If your parents didn’t yell “Paise ped pe nahin ugte” after you made this suggestion, your living room furniture would. And then to suggest owning a pair of coloured lens with the sole purpose of looking different meant a chappal would come flying at you. Duck for cover.
Destroying evidence
If I had a penny for every time I tried to eat my report card after I saw Shah Rukh Khan chew up that photograph, well, I’d probably have enough money to get my stomach washed! Seriously, that man just ate the damn thing up. He could have burned it but he doesn’t want to harm the environment, just his enemies. If it was 2018, he’d probably even Instagram a picture with #foodporn.
Power of Attorney
A ‘power of attorney’ to a business is what a ‘marriage’ is to most millennials — the golden ticket to self-destruction. Once signed, it’s only a matter of time until it comes back to bite you in your posterior. But then, if you were stupid enough to sign it without ‘reading the offer documents carefully’ you probably deserved it anyway. I, for one, learned to never even sign another's slam book before reading all the cheesy questions.
Formula 1 car racing
The only nailbiting race we witnessed before this was a cycle race in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander. Cycle. How middle-class. But rich people, I tell you, do unfathomable shit. In a pre-Budhh Circuit and Narain Karthikeyan-India, rich people could race F1 cars and win. No middle-class mind would dare question the authenticity because vadde log, vaddi vaddi baatein. I dragged myself around in a cardboard box for a week post the spectacle, but the thrill wasn't the same.
How to turn defeat into victory
When Shah Rukh Khan creased his cheek to show off his dimple, almost choking on his heavy breath, to say, "Haar kar jeetne wale ko Baazigar kehte hain," something changed in me. That was going to be my go-to response to anything in life from then on.
"You've failed in Maths!"
"Haar kar jeetne wale ko Baazigar kehte hain."
"You've missed your project submission deadline."
"Haar kar jeetne wale ko Baazigar kehte hain."
"You're a good for nothing loser and you'll never be happy in life!"
"Haar kar jeetne wale ko Baazigar kehte hain."
25 years after I've internalised this dialogue, I am beginning to wonder if this was a rich vs middle-class thing. Perhaps flaunting this attitude was injurious to my middle-class health. *cough*