Arnab Ray: Superheroes in India? Old Hat

Can someone tell me what all this hullabaloo is about? Krrish and Enthiran and Ra.One — a new wave of Indian superhero movies, the so-called next level, reflective of the recently acquired international taste of the Indian audience?

What? Superheroes new  to Indian cinema? I beg to disagree. All our action heroes, for decades, have been superheroes. Spiderman and Green Lantern can just stuff it.

Sure our Indian superheroes did not wear Tron-and-Ironman inspired suits (Ra.One) or  Zorro-like masks and capes (Krrish).

They did not need to, being comfortable in their own skins. They also had enough fashion sense not be caught wearing a underwear over their trousers or over-tight, trapeze-artist-like body-suits.

Our heroes knew that you do not need a six-pack or bulging biceps to overcome evil. Just one muscle is compulsory, saar. A dhak-dhaking heart full of pyaar.

They did not need an unintended encounter with a spider in a radioactive lab or genetic mutations to become mega-men. Just a diet of ma ka doodh in childhood and a steady supply of home-cooked gajjar ka halwa and mooli ka paratha provided all the rocket power they needed to fly and fight the baddies.

Those who think only Spiderman can swing has not seen Jeetendra  and his anti-gravity white shoes. Those who think only Superman can fly has not seen Balayya wafting through time and space. Those who feel Bruce Wayne had a rough childhood surely have not heard of Mithunda’s character in Ma Kasam who, after surviving an attempt to poison him by his desperately poor mother, became so poisonous himself that when a cobra bit him, it died.

Dr Xavier of X-Men is the biggest bad-ass in a wheelchair. Sure. Only if you have not seen a wheelchair-confined Sunny Deol in Heroes decimating a full group of goombahs, with such force that gigantic cracks develop in the floor.

They have Captain America. So what? We have Captain Vijaykanth. And Mr India. Wolverine you say? Meet his baap in Ram Lakhan’s Anil Kapoor. And the coup d’grace? Our national heritage, Rajinikanth can obliterate the whole DC and Marvel universe with one twirl of his goggles.

Do our superheroes have weak points? Sure they do. Just like the Western superheroes have theirs, like Achilles his heel and Superman, Kryptonite. And their vulnerability points are not their paunches (they use these as flotation devices) but the izzats of their behen-s and mashooqa-s, a fact used strategically by their arch-nemeses. And what villains we have had— the Loin, Dr. Dang, Dong, Shakaal, Mogambo, Ajgar Jurrat… I am sorry but sissies like Joker, Penguin, Magneto and Lex Luthor have nothing on them.

If the definition of superheroes be restricted to the traditional domain, well we have had these for some time too. Dariya Dil (1988) had a song  Tu mera Superman which had Govinda as Superman and Kimi Katkar as an outrageously voluptuous Spiderman. And ages before Ra.One and Kkrish, Puneet Issar had played Superman in Superman (1987) where Dharmendra played his father (presumably Jor-El), a movie that had a thrillingly surreal sequence where while a plane is being hijacked, Jagdeep, his face contorted by strong stomach motions, goes to the loo where a lady who introduces herself as Musclewoman from Zambia tries gamely to seduce him. Peter Donner or Bryan Singer could never even come close to this level of heroism.

So dear new generation folks, please do feel free to be awed by G.One’s superhumanbaazi and to be scared of a villain played by Arjun Rampal. By all means. But remember, all this has been done before.

Many many times. Because, simply put, superheroes are as desi as ghee.

— Arnab Ray is the author of the best-selling May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss