Happy Birthday Ayushmann Khurrana: The unconventional star who is constantly pushing the envelope
Happy Birthday Ayushmann Khurrana: The unconventional star who is constantly pushing the envelope
Ayushmann Khurrana who turns 38 today is not much into birthday cakes and candles. As he grows older and especially as he has his own children now, the fascination with the typical birthday celebrations has waned. Ayushmann looks at simple basic pleasures on his birthday, like being with the family.
Ayushmann has vivid memories of his childhood birthdays. He remembers as a child he would get either a video game or a bicycle every birthday. One vivid birthday memory is, going to the store with his parents before one of his birthdays. They got him this really cool yellow bicycle. Ayushmann wanted it in black or blue. But they said he would have to wait for a couple of days. So he just came home with the yellow bicycle.
Ayushmann Khurrana finds his career at a crossroads. His out-of-box cinema which found roaring approval pre-pandemic is not quite the desired fit in movie theatres anymore. Both his pandemic picture show the oddly entitled Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui and Anek underperformed at the box office.
Anek was especially disappointing as it brought together Ayushmann and director Anubhav Singh after Article 15 which in my opinion is the finest film of both their careers. Article 15 is everything that cinema was always meant to be. Thought Provoking, questioning, disturbing and ultimately cathartic because the cop-hero, played with a simmering intensity by Ayushmann Khurrana, succeeds in getting justice for the wronged.
I would have liked to see Khurrana’s rage more overtly expressed. But for reasons best known to this brave actor and his braver director, the performance invariably holds back, and checks itself from losing its cool. It is the sign of a civilized bureaucrat’s struggle with his self to cling to his core of humanism and civility while all around him the world crumbles and collapses into a heap of brutality and incivility.
Playing a cop who is both heroic and vulnerable, committed and confused, violent yet sensitive, righteous yet flawed, is not easy. Ayushmann Khurrana nailed it in this masterly study of caste oppression set against the backdrop of socio-economic backwardness that fosters inequality. Khurrana’s cop-hero won’t tolerate looming injustice. He is the kind of believable hero the Indian middle-class needs. He is Everyman and yet like no man we’ve seen on screen.
Khurrana in Article 15 is the portrait of an establishment man seething at his inability to change the system.In his debut film Vicky Donor (2012) Khurrana played a man who wants to change the way we look at masculinity in popular art. Playing a sperm donor in his debut film Ayushmann proved at the outset how brave he can be in his choices as an actor. No Indian actor had ever done this before.
Yup, this ‘loin’ was going to roar so hard it’d be hard to ignore.
There was no stopping Ayushmann after Vicky Donor. The minute he picked up the oversized Bhumi Pednekar on his shoulder and runs for his dear wife, in Dum Laga ke Haisha we knew he was a lambi race ka ghoda. In this Sharat Kataria film, Khurrana was the reluctant working-class husband in Haridwar who learns to respect and love his wife.
We learnt to love films about small-town heroes from Ayushmann. In Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017) he crossed over from over-fertile to sexually dysfunctional Ayushmann is a hero who likes to show the vulnerable side of screen heroism. In this film, he played a man who…well…couldn’t rise to the occasion. Did Ayushmaan flinch? No! But we cringe each time we see a packet of glucose biscuits. Soggy was never the same again.
Andha Dhun (2018) was the biggest hit of Khurrana’s career so far. In Sriram Raghavan’s exquisitely conceptualized whodunit the actor played a pianist who plays blind. Till the end, we are not sure if Khurrana is just faking it.
Ambivalent heroism came into vogue with Ayushmann Khurrana. So did human frailty, Ayushmann says it’s okay to be weak. Someone has got to be on the other side of strong.
Badhaai Ho (2018) was another successful leap in the dark for Khurrana. Another working class blockbuster this one featured Ayushmann as the eldest son of a family coping with the embarrassment of a pregnant mother at an age when she’s supposed to attend bhajan mandalis. Ayushmann portrayed the character’s journey from mortification to pride in pitch-perfect harmony.
Now is the time to make another leap in the dark. Ayushmann needs to reinvent himself. The EveryMan, a distant cousin of Amol Palekar, the working-class hero is no longer working in theatres.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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