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Amitabh Bachchan Begins ~ by Subroto Mukerji

India, 1869. Perched precariously on a hillside, high
up in the Kumaon hills near Kaladhungi, which means, in the
local dialect, ‘black stones’, a school called simply the
‘Diocesan Boys School’ came to life. It was started by a band of
Englishmen serving in the United Provinces of British India, for
the purpose of providing quality education, on the English
pattern, to their offspring. By virtue of its remote location, the
salubrious and sylvan surroundings, and the prospect of
scholarly success that solitude often brings in its wake, the
school prospered, patronized as it was by English
administrators and the wealthy merchants of the region. Since
it offered education leading to a High School degree and even
beyond, right up to the Intermediate level (which was then a
qualification that signified a fairly advanced level of scholastic
achievement, and which was equivalent to having set foot in an
institute of higher learning), the school was renamed
‘Sherwood College’.
In the late ‘eighties, however, a disastrous landslide,
that caused immense loss of life and which carried half the
hillside down into Naini Tal Lake far below, so damaged the
buildings that, in the interests of safety and future growth, the
school was re-established at a spot close to Ayarpatta.
Transplanted to land on a series of rolling hillocks below
Dorothy’s Seat, a minor promontory with a small memorial for
an English lady who found it an ideal spot for her haunting
water-colors of Kumaon, the school prospered even more. The
relocation turned out to be blessing in disguise. It was now far
more accessible from the town of Naini Tal, though still a
thousand feet above it, and the terrain made future expansion
—and the laying out of spacious playfields and swimming pools
—a distinct possibility.
India, 1958. June 5th, the school’s Founder’s Day, was
the high point of the school’s annual activities. And the
crowning event that everyone – parents, distinguished guests,
and students – awaited with the keenest anticipation, was the
Annual Play. It is significant that, in a school dominated by the
English idiom and the ‘pukka sahib’ atmosphere, there were
actually two plays that were presented, one in English and the
other in Hindi. The school governing body, the Diocese of
Lucknow, a Protestant organization with a liberal and
progressive outlook, moved with the times and Hindi was the
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wave of the future. Conspicuous by its absence at Sherwood

was the scorn that many Christian-run outfits reserved for the
national language. It was a land of equal opportunity. Even the
school motto, ‘Mereat Quisque Palmam’—‘Merit Goes to
Whosoever Deserves It’—reflected this philosophy.
The governing body, aware of the importance of a
large assembly hall-cum-stage to the social and cultural life of
the community that comprised a residential school of six
hundred students, had designed and constructed ‘Milman Hall’,
so christened after the then Principal who had pioneered the
program. It could seat seven hundred people, and at the far
end of it was a commodious stage with adjoining green rooms,
a couple of rest rooms, utilities, and an elaborate sound control
center. The Hindi play that year of 1958, when I was in class 5,
was a stage adaptation of an excerpt from Victor Hugo’s novel
‘Les Miserables’…’The Bishop’s Candlesticks’. Not many of us
had heard of this guy Victor Hugo, and demand for the book
was high in the library.
We discovered that the book was about the indignities
and injustices that the poor always face, especially as those
prevailing in the post ‘Reign of Terror’ Paris of 150 years ago.
The poor of Paris were a miserable, hunted lot, and none
personified this better than the main character, Jean Valjean.
Having stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving family,
Valjean was forever stigmatized by a society that never forgave
crime, no matter how petty. It was a harsh and cruel time
where the term ‘extenuating circumstances’ was unknown to
judges.
Always on the run after his release from jail, Valjean
finds to his horror that, no matter where he goes thereafter, he
is stalked by the implacable, iron-souled Inspector Javert who
hounds him constantly, hoping to catch him red-handed once
again and put him behind bars for a long time. Desperate,
embittered, the once-amiable and cheerful Valjean becomes a
shadow of his former self, starting at the slightest sound and
expecting to find the heavy hand of the law on his shoulder at
any moment. Paranoiac, his faith in humanity and God
demolished, he is now little more than a fugitive, a hunted
animal pursued by demons he cannot hope to exorcise.
One evening, starving and penniless, Valjean is given
sanctuary by a provincial bishop. The tall, calm man of God
treats him with all the respect due to a fellow human being. But
to the cynical and distrustful Valjean, he is yet another beast in
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human form who will surely exploit him sooner or later. But as
the evening wears on, and the bishop invites him to share his
humble supper, the first stirrings of doubt arise in Valjean’s
mind. Is this man for real? Can it be that there still survives on
this planet a man who can be called human?
The bishop is the last of a line of aristocratic forebears,
the last surviving scion of a once-proud family that had seen
better days. Impoverished, a simple man of the cloth, the
bishop shows Valjean his room for the night, pointing out the
magnificent pair of silver candlesticks that are the last of the
cleric’s once-proud heritage. They mean more to the bishop
than their intrinsic worth would indicate (for they are indeed
valuable); they are to him a symbol of a vanished glory of
which he, too, is a part, no matter how indigent and
insignificant. His eyes grow misty as he fondles them, the last
remnants of a fortune long consumed in the fires of Revolution.
For the tall, dignified old man, they are a thread that links him
to life itself, such as it is—a reason to go on living.
The bishop retires for the night, but Valjean cannot
tear his eyes away from the gleaming silver; it is a fortune
gathering dust on the mantelpiece. It is obvious that he is torn
between his newly awakened respect and regard for a fellow
man, and the need to secure his own future. He is already
branded as a thief; why not be one, then? But no, this man has
taken him in from the cold, dark night, has treated him like an
equal, given him a meal and a real bed to sleep in. He cannot
betray his trust. But what does the good bishop know about life
in the pitiless world outside this protected backwater of a
suburban parish, a cruel world where the poor are criminals
because they have no money? The silver will make him, Jean
Valjean, rich. He will be secure; the bishop will not starve just
because his silver candlesticks are gone: he cannot eat them.
Valjean loses the battle with his conscience. Thrusting the
heavy silver into a sack, he makes a hasty departure through
one of the French windows.
The last Act opens on the bishop entering the spare
bedroom in the morning to greet his guest, to find he has
departed during the night with his precious candlesticks.
Initially upset and dismayed, he comes to terms with his loss,
rationalizing that the poor man needs them more than he does.
As a true Christian, he feels he should rejoice in his brother’s
good fortune. He kneels and prays to his God to deliver him
from the bondage of ties to material possessions. It is the most
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moving part of the play, an old, defeated man surrendering to

his God, putting himself confidently in His hands, praying for a
higher perspective on life and the strength to sever all ties with
the contaminating human craving for mundane possessions.
There is urgent knocking at the door; it is Inspector
Javert, with Valjean and his booty in custody. He reveals that
the bishop’s silver is too well known to be disposed of so easily,
and asks that he press formal charges in writing. The bishop
takes pen and paper, and writes out a brief note. A disbelieving
Javert reads aloud that the silver candlesticks, hitherto in
possession of the Bishop’s family for generations, are now the
legal property of Jean Valjean, acquired by way of part
compensation for invaluable services rendered, services that
cannot quite be compensed in material terms. The silver is only
a token of his great esteem and personal regard. A frustrated
Inspector Javert, shaking his head and muttering to himself,
takes his leave, while a stunned Valjean kneels contritely at the
bishop’s feet, only to be pulled upright and hugged. The
indigent bishop, himself uplifted by his good deed, has
transformed Valjean from animal to man; it is obviously a
turning point in both their lives.
Let us take a quick look at the two principal actors in
the drama onstage. The part of the convict Valjean is played by
darkly handsome, stockily muscular Ramesh Yadav, a final year
student with a talent for sports and a lethal uppercut in the
ring. His pride shattered, his confidence in humanity destroyed
by circumstances, Valjean has become a fugitive, an animal of
the shadows, merely existing, not daring to think that he will
ever live again. He has been thoroughly and quite
systematically dehumanized by society. Ramash Yadav brings
Valjean magically to life.
The bishop’s rôle has gone to Yadav’s batch-mate, a
tall, slim youth with a quiet, pensive air and dreamy eyes. The
voice is outstanding in its clarity and power, quite astonishing
coming as it does from that willowy frame. As the bishop, he is
utterly convincing, his poignant pride in the once-great family
name he bears contrasting sharply with the stark reality of his
obvious penury. Clinging to the last shreds of his sense of
identity, he treasures the great silver candlesticks: they are the
tangible link between him and the vanished glory that is all he
has inherited. They are the gleaming symbols of his sense of
self-worth, which is sinking day by day.
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His name, according to the hand-made programmes

so eagerly sought today by souvenir hunters, is Amitabh
Bachchan. In a powerful portrayal of a proud man sinking ever
deeper into the quagmire of poverty and helpless to do
anything about it, he turns in a performance that stirs the
audience to tears. It is his obvious relief and exultation at being
unshackled from his false values, and his newfound vision of a
higher reality that drives home the point of the story. In his
humility and compassion for another, he does not realize he
has transformed his own life as well as that of another. A most
effective supporting rôle by Ramesh Yadav highlights Amitabh
Bachchan’s incredible talent. No one is surprised when the
coveted prize for the ‘Best Actor’ goes to him.
Every phenomenon has to be born sometime,
someplace. But what is unique about the birth of the Big B is
that it lay palpable in the air of Milman Hall long after the play
was over…for years afterwards, in fact, right till the time when
the unknown advertising executive from Allahabad with the
impeccable bloodlines exploded onto the screen in ‘Zanjeer’,
underscoring his arrival by playing a supporting role opposite
then reigning matineé idol Rajesh Khanna in ‘Anand’, bringing
yet another audience to its feet. It is still fresh in my memory,
though I was but a boy of nine then, the play that was called
‘Aur Subah Ho Gayee’.
I had been one of the fortunate few who had
witnessed history in the making on that tiny stage in an
obscure residential school tucked away in the Kumaon hills.
Something very rare had unfolded before my eyes that summer
evening in 1958. The memory returned afresh when I saw
‘Amar, Akbar, Anthony’: there was the bishop again, this time
in a comic rôle.
In due course, the shock waves of the explosion would
spread far and wide as Amitabh Bachchan strode the globe like
a colossus ― a phenomenon unique to Indian cinema.

 Subroto Mukerji 

Class of ’64, Sherwood College, Nainital, India