I want to be Anthony Gonzalves

I was born the year the Americans landed on the moon. Which meant that by the time I got to high school, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot to cheer about. Those born in the 80s or later can jump up and down about outsourcing, one whole Olympic gold per billion, and Aishwarya. Oh and Coke, Nike, and foreign exchange convertibility if they care. Those born in the earlier part of the century might have gotten a chance to sit on Nehru's lap and talk Lady Mountbatten. Perhaps play poker with Gandhi, or the back nine with Sarojini.

By the time I was a twinkle in Mummy's eye, there was shall we say a certain lull, a paucity, a vacuum, in role-models of the political variety. Maybe it was just me but I did not find myself waking up too often to Binaca-polished cheers of "I want to be like Jagjivan" or "I wish I could grab a drink with Morarji". I was led to believe Sardar Patel was India's Roosevelt - soft voice, big stick and all - and that all the aforementioned were great people one might role model. The problem was that the entity conveying said greatness was Simon & Schuster not a real hero him(her)self.

So lacking a Kennedy amongst us, my child-like need for a hero - which existed because well, because I was a child - sought solace elsewhere. So like a lot of other kids my generation, I gravitated toward sport. There I discovered the situation was slightly better but not egregiously so. Perhaps a pale yellow alert in the Bush-Chaney grading system if you examine the summary facts:

• After the firangs made us play on astro-turf, we didn't win an Olympic medal in the national sport: hockey. Before the firangs made us play on astro-turf, the only Olympic medal we won was in hockey. By the time I was old enough to dissect a frog, hockey had became like the rest of Indian history - just about anyone who could run and carry a stick was able to raid and plunder: the Dutch, the Germans, the Aussies. Chak De anything but Indian hockey in the 80s.
• I grew up barraged by noise about how I was living in the mecca of Indian soccer. Turned out, the two best players in the Calcutta league were imports from the middle-east - college kids Jamshed and Majid - who with all due respect would be lucky to be ball boys for a real European club's second social team
• Vijay made it to the quarters of one Wimbledon and choked - supposedly an achievement which Indian tennis buffs talked about for decades. Ramesh's first serve wouldn't make Lindsey Lohan proud, assuming Lindsey plays tennis when not attending to other pressing affairs of health
• Prakash won one major tournament and since then his biggest contribution to India has been his daughter. Mind you he deserves high marks for that. Lots of famous Indians have not left behind scions similarly pleasing to the eye so credit to PP where its due
• Miandad with that last-ball six. And Imran for about three series when he would either hit an Amarnath or two on the head and / or bowl about three of our top chaps in two overs with a cricket ball I am convinced was tampered with a Thumbs up bottle cap. That sort of thing made it hard to focus even on the 1983 and 1984 wins. Losing off the last ball and that too to Pakistan - it has taken twenty years and the 20-20 victory to clear that palate somewhat. To this day I wake up in the middle of the night cursing "He knew he had to get 4!!! Anything but a full-toss. Anything. A Trevor Chappel. Anything, Sharma, anything!!"

So where did that leave little old me, desperate to believe the local offerings had to be better than battery-packed hooch without a Kingfisher in sight?

In one word, Amitabh. Anthony Gonzalvez. Vijay. Veeru. Coolie. Kaalia, Babu Moshai. No matter who you were, what mood you were in, and no matter what his ridiculous outfit du jour (and they were all ridiculous - white suit with white shoes, yellow shirt with an orange jacket, both showing a hirsute chest while he fought a shark or presented watermelons to a love interest), he could at least take you to a make believe world that was far more pleasant than the real one you faced as soon as you got up from the popcorn strewn seat. He could be Rakhi's Kabhi-Kabhi lover or Rakhi's Shakti-shali son, and Oedipus couldn't have carried the role more convincingly. To all those Kolkatans out there who will claim "Yes but Utpal was a better thespian", here's what I have to say to you: "I saw Amitabh in concert a few weeks ago in SF and at 68 he still pulled a crowd that caused a two hour traffic jam. So, bondhugon, get over it!"

After the concert I also realized that there are some good reasons why Anthony Gonzalvez stood up so clearly as a role-model for a boy desperate to believe that better pickings had to be available than the ones at hand.

1. Like me, he couldn't dance if a necklace depended on it. Take this for example. Who in their right mind dances like this? Walk in, break up two perfectly decently paired people and break into song? If that isn't enough, steal the necklace right off of the poor unsuspecting muppet of a girl?
2. Awkward, gawky, no Amir Khan romantic. Just like me. I could totally relate to expressing love to a woman through a watermelon - purely as a matter of looking out for her daily intake of fruit.
3. He was taller than all the Pakistani cricketers including Sikander Bakht.
4. The rest of the pack. Take Jeetendra for example. Yes he had similar wardrobe malfunction issues but bracketing him with Amitabh was like clubbing David Boon with Usain Bolt as members of the set {Good Runners}.
5. Rekha.
6. His dad. I always thought Harivanshrai Bacchan outdid his son as an artist. Take Path Ki Pehchan. Or Madhsushala, or, well, pick up just anything senior B did. (Unfortunately senior B needed a better PR agency. Since his face wasn't plastered across every poster defiling every corner of town, Harivanshrai didn't get to build similar brand equity.)
7. His knowledge of English, and issues with its illogicalityness.
8. Only he could die 30 minutes after being shot right in the chest and one would suspend disbelief for that period. Or have the "Maa ka locket" save him because the bullet ricotched off it while he was riding 100 miles an hour on a motorbike. Jump off bridges onto a train as a 4 year old and reach the train 21 years later. Not everyone could carry that off, not even, well especially not Utpal.
9. Sholay. You know, people rave endlessly about Gabbar's entry when they talk about Sholay. Helen and her dance. But here's a less well known two minute clip that I find I can recite back to front because of just how well it is delivered. Possibly the smartest piece of comic relief in Indian cinema if I might go out on a limb.
10. Sanjeev-Anthony bhai-bhai. For the record, my parental unit are from UP and had adopted Calcutta as their home. Bachchan married a good Bhaduri girl and had worked in Calcutta for some time doing some odd job. So my intensely logical mind drew the following obvious connection: take the Venn intersection of the 100 million UP-ites with those that have Calcutta as their adopted home. Then ignore the small things - like looks, height, and voice. Once you do that, the parallels are unmistakable - like me, he is another Bhaiyya from UP with ties, tenuous as they might be, to Calcutta. Practically brothers you might say. Sanjeev-Anthony bhai-bhai.