Amitabh Bachchan’s Alaap was the Wake Up Sid of its times, where the rich choose to be poor and expect sympathy

For the unversed, Bachchan plays a singer named Alok in the film who leaves his father’s house when he is expected to follow convention. Alok lives for his art so for him, the idea of becoming a barrister, like the rest of his family members, is unfathomable. When his father finds out about his unconventional career choices, he hits him at his most vulnerable spot and this pushes Alok to leave his father’s mansion and live in a much smaller accommodation. To get back at his father, he gets a job that is seen as lowly by the society, which further hampers their relationship. Their disagreement devolves and now, it is about their ideological differences and how far one can go to get back at the other.

Om Prakash plays Amitabh Bachchan’s father in Alaap.

Alaap was unlike anything that Hrishikesh Mukherjee ever made. The protagonist here was lost, and struggling to get by in his life. When Alok falls sick and doesn’t have the money to get some medication, he sticks by his ideals but in this case, his ideals have become an obstacle for him and those around him. In some ways, he is similar to Dharmendra’s Satyapriya from Satyakam who would rather die than compromise on his ideals. In a significant scene, when he meets his father years later, there is a deep sense of care that is evident between the two, yet neither of them extends an olive branch. Alok can see that his father’s stubbornness is making him suffer and the father can gauge that Alok is not the same jovial man he once was. After Alok leaves with a heavy heart, his father says, ‘To survive, you don’t really need anyone’ as the director underlines the subtext that surviving isn’t the same as living. By this time, Alok is a recluse and has distanced himself from everyone who loves him, his wife, his sister-in-law and his sister, while being fully aware that they would rush to him in a heartbeat. His health doesn’t allow him to practice his music anymore, and as viewers, you start to question if all of this was even worth it.

Hrishi-da’s films carried a certain sense of optimism, even in the face of death (Anand, Mili), which seems missing in Alaap. He once explained his state of mind while making Alaap, which gives an idea as to why Alok was a defeatist till the end. “It was released during the Emergency when I was very depressed. I thought it was the end of my life. I couldn’t believe that Mrs Indira Gandhi had become a dictator,” he told Filmfare in a 1998 interview.

Alaap wasn’t accepted by the audience at the time and even after all these years, it hasn’t found the right audience. Talking about what did not work for the film at the time, Hrishi-da said that perhaps, it was because Bachchan was seen as the angry young man, no one appreciated him singing classical songs. “Some people said I made a blunder by making him sing classical songs in Alaap when he was busy holding guns and booze bottles in other films,” he said in the same interview.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee (left) with Amitabh Bachchan and Asrani on the sets of Alaap. (Photo: Express Archives)

It can be perhaps argued that the biggest flaw of Alaap are the extremely impractical choices are made by its protagonist that makes him seem him a rich person pretending to be poor. When a doctor offers him good medication because of his family’s status, he refuses because he wants to be treated as a regular tonga-puller. When his sister-in-law insists that his wife, played by Rekha, gets a private room at the hospital after delivering a baby, they refuse because his ego is somehow bigger than his wife’s comfort. When his son is crying due to hunger, he decides to teach him ‘Saraswati vandana’ instead of getting him some food. It is also hard to justify why a well-educated man would get a job to spite his father than actually earn some money so he can take care of his family. Alaap tries to serve Alok’s self-actualisation needs when his family, and him too, are struggling to meet their basic needs for survival.

In an otherwise glowing filmography, Alaap is the film that stands out and not because it was a ignored gem but mainly because it is the kind of film that struggles to find its core. It’s the kind of film that if Zoya Akhtar had made it today, the audience would have dubbed it as a mockery of those living below the poverty line, while sympathising with the rich.