Andar ki baatein: on inside references in movies

The new film Agent Vinod has a scene where the eponymous spy (played by Saif Ali Khan) looks into the eyes of a girl named Ruby (Kareena Kapoor) and deadpans the lyrics of a beloved 1960s Hindi film song: “Yeh jheel si neeli aankhen / Koi raaz hai inmein gehra?” (“These lake-blue eyes / Is there a secret deep within them?”)

The lines work well enough in the given context – this is a world of double-crossers and triple-crossers, and Vinod (probably not his real name) doesn’t know if Ruby (definitely not her real name) can be trusted – but the seasoned viewer will catch another, more playful layer: the girl who was serenaded thus in the 1960s film – Kashmir ki Kali – was played by Saif’s real-life mother Sharmila Tagore. (In an earlier scene in Agent Vinod, Ruby injects Vinod with truth serum and persistently asks “What did your mother call you when you were a child?” - a question that might acquire a different shade when you remember that Kareena and Saif are in a relationship offscreen.)

Incidentally the actor who performed that old song was Kareena’s real-life grand-uncle Shammi Kapoor. A few months ago, another new film, Rockstar, paid tribute to the recently deceased actor by replicating part of the song, with another young Kapoor – Ranbir – imitating Shammi’s famous gyrations.

If any of this confuses you, you are clearly new to the world of Hindi movies. In an industry dominated by the cult of the star personality and built on dynasties – with star children and grandchildren proliferating everywhere – it isn’t surprising to find sly little allusions and homages of this sort. Nor is this an entirely new phenomenon: sticking with the Kapoors, one wonders if Raj Kapoor was being a touch devilish in giving his grandfather Dewan Basheswarnath a tiny part as a judge in his 1951 film Awaara, considering that the old man had once “decreed” that no one from his family would join films!

Much has been written on mainstream movies indulging their stars, even if it means winking at the audience at the cost of a narrative’s internal rhythm: I’ve lost count of the number of times Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan have appeared together in “cameo” scenes that exist merely to add to the family-video collection (Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag and Delhi 6 being among the most embarrassing cases). But nudge-nudge moments can exist even in lower-profile films – the ones we tend to associate with integrity - and in scenes involving non-starry actors.

Early in the 1987 movie Jalwa, two friends – one doing push-ups, the other walking by – see each other from a distance and engage in a bit of playful name-calling. “May your mother-in-law run away with a eunuch!” one yells. “May your sister-in-law marry a gorilla!” the other replies. Credible buddy-buddy banter, you’d think, but there’s a subtext. The actors playing this scene – Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapoor – were wedded to sisters in real life, and their mother-in-law was the venerable actress Dina Pathak. There is probably a minuscule chance that the dialogue is coincidental, but we should know better.

Shah and Kapoor were – then, as now – among our most respected actors; the sort of performers who are (in a somewhat simplistic view of acting) expected to always "sink" into their parts and leave “themselves” behind. But both men have appeared in films containing inside references that are best appreciated by the other members of the crew. In fact, Kapoor’s character in Jalwa is named Albert Pinto, which is an allusion to one of Shah’s early roles (the name has also slyly been used in other films such as Jaane bhi do Yaaro - which also mentions its own director, Kundan Shah, in its opening scene).

When we see a finished film – especially a good, satisfying film created by a pooling together of notable talents – it’s possible to forget that the cast and crew weren’t just professionals doing their jobs; that they may also have been exhanging private jokes behind the scenes and finding small ways to keep themselves entertained during what is often a mundane, long-drawn-out and frustrating process.

This isn’t excuse-making: I'm not condoning movies that overdo self-indulgence at the expense of the narrative. But it’s also worth remembering that when movie characters are played by people whom we are familiar with (even if they are supposedly chameleon-like actors), we rarely experience them as blank slates anyway. On a conscious or subconscious level, we bring what we know of them – their real lives, their previous roles – to the experience. It’s part of what can make the movie-watching process intimate and unreal at the same time. You smile indulgently at the Saif-Sharmila reference, but for that moment you forget about Agent Vinod.

[Did a version of this for my Business Standard column]