30 Years of Baazigar

Be loyal, and then make a dog's life out of your master's: Cunning Madan Chopra whisks away boss Vishwanath Sharma's property through a lucrative power of attorney, leaving Sharma penniless. On the streets, Sharma loses his riches to Chopra, his daughter to the flu, and his family to poverty. He dies as well and leaves Ajay to fend for himself and his traumatised mother. Ajay seeks revenge, and how!

Directed by Abbas-Mustan, produced by Venus, and inspired by A Kiss Before Dying (1991), United Seven Pictures presents Baazigar!

As Baazigar begins, our hero Ajay hitches a taxi to Bombay. Why does he want to go there? He's looking for something. "Who?" his schoolmate Vicky smilingly asks. Adjusting his fat, black spectacles, Ajay clears his throat and says, "Kaamyaabi" (success). An animated coin flips on a freeze-frame, revealing the title credits: Baazigar. Ajay was the Baazigar, and Shah Rukh Khan was Ajay. 

Prophetic as he always has been (see Khan singing "Chaand taare tod laaun" (Yes Boss) in front of his future house, Mannat), Khan's search for kaamyaabi bore fruit after Baazigar. The telly's Fauji had finally found an audience that went Deewana after him–and I daresay, was a bit scared. He played an anti-hero, after all. Halfway into the revenge saga, Khan threw his lady love down a multistory building and then disappeared in the packed streets of Bombay in broad daylight. Yes, the theatres went berserk. They were unprepared. These three words suffice to introduce Baazigar's director duo: Abbas-Mustan. All their films have unpredictable twists and turns, a few good tunes, a hero named Raj, or a heroine named Priya.

There is a Priya here. Kajol, playing SRK's second love interest (because he threw the first one, Seema, away: cue Priya's dialogue: "Koi apni gudiya ko bhi aise nahi fenkta!") Priya gave Kajol a full-fledged character, complete with her aims, side-quests and "life" as divorced from the hero, different from debutante Shilpa Shetty (playing Seema), whose sole addition proved objectification, romance, and murderous death. She even got an unrequited lover, the cute, reserved, but ever-helpful Karan (Siddharth, who'd worked with Kajol before in the previous year in Vansh). 

Kajol Instagrammed yesterday that Baazigar marked a string of firsts in her career: Her first collaboration with Abbas-Mustan, Anu Malik, other cast members, and–of course–Shah Rukh Khan. The pair would create magic and history on the silver screen two years later with the classic Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. 

No hero, let alone anti-heroes, is complete without a baddie. And who could play the villain better than the self-aware Dalip Tahil, as the scheming narcissist Madan Chopra? He'd shed crocodile tears to get whatever he wanted and rule over the spoils like an ever-entitled king afterwards. For more Madan Chopra revisits, watch the second half of Baazigar, and after that, don't forget to watch Tahil's Instagram feed for some comedic relief. 

Ah, comedy. Comedy in silence and sound both finds its place in Baazigar. Whether it is Babulal, smiling and laughing awkwardly as a guest sips tea in the Chopra's backyard or him forgetting things and spewing dialogues like "Anarkali ka phone tha, ice-cream khana bahut zaruri hai", diffusing the film's whodunnit tension at the nth hour. 

Whodunnit? Whydunnit? Howdunnit? Think about that later as you immerse yourself in the Filmfare award-winning soundtrack of Baazigar. 

From the strings-fuelled title track to "Ae Mere Humsafar"'s whistle hook (that Malik reused in "Ishq hua, kaise hua?"), to "Tere chehre pe mujhe pyar nazar aata hai" (similar to Dum Laga Ke Haisha's "Dard karaara"), Baazigar had melodies to play for years. And yet, no song fit into the film's diegetics. No song connected itself to the film's narrative. Music was just an escape to make the tense film lighter. More so, and this is a hot take, Anu Malik did not deserve the Filmfare for Baazigar. He should have won it for the better-tuned and soulful soundtrack of Phir Teri Kahaani Yaad Aayi (featuring "Tere dar par sanam"), the soundtrack that was sadly not even nominated. 

Talk of unfair Filmfare? Shah Rukh Khan confessed in an interview of having bought a Best Actor award once. Was it for this film? Maybe. But the man gave an all-star performance, besting baddie after baddie in films like Darr and Anjaam, to ultimately fall back into the loverboy, chocolate boy box with next year's Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (I'd argue it is his best film).  

Alright. 30 years of KHKN next year. See you then. Until then, other films!