10 years of Ayushmann Khurrana: Miles yet to go

The reality show winner-turned-actor completes 10 years in Bollywood. He has become a face of socially-relevant cinema but do his films take the conversation forward?

Until ‘Vicky Donor’ came out in 2012, most of us had seen stories of sperm donation only in American sitcoms. Not only did the Bollywood film become a hit for its choice of topic but also its lead actor Ayushmann Khurrana, who could do the boy-next-door role with ease just as well he could sing ‘Pani Da Rang’.

The actor completed 10 years in Bollywood in April, a decade most credit Ayushmann for headlining a new-age, middle-class hero who has taken taboo topics to the big screen.

But have his films taken the conversation forward? Sadly, no.

A hero in another’s story

The 2015 film ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’ received rave reviews for showing the tenderness of love between an overweight Sandhya (Bhumi Pednekar) and a seemingly shallow Prem (Ayushmann). But the gravity of the topic’s enmeshment of human nature and the affinity for appearance is lost in the film’s hurry to get to the ‘falling in love’ part at the end.

The scene where the protagonists slap each other after the hero is overheard telling his friends “Only I know how I sleep next to her at night. If your wife was like this bull, then you’d know” could have been the moment of culmination — the tragic fall of the male hero and the emergence of the real superhero — his wife, Sandhya.

However, the narrative moves back to its patriarchal insight and the hero has a change of heart. What could have been the story of Sandhya becomes the awakening of Prem. The attempt of a social message is lost in the film’s attempt to propel Ayushmann, a pattern in many of his films. The audience’s disgust at Sandhya’s appearance is redeemed by Prem who carries her through the finishing line of a couple race. The guilt is absolved.

In ‘Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan,’ Ayushmann’s character as a gay partner is devoid of nuance. He is a brash, unafraid Delhi boy (a trait that inevitably forms his acting in many films) who, just for the sake of this film, happens to be homosexual. The dynamics of a gay relationship and the reference to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India seem primitive.

Even ‘Bala’, a film on premature balding, racism and body image issues, uses the female protagonist as a means for Khurrana’s character Bala to realise his flaws. He becomes the hero in what should have been her victory. Even though ‘Bala’ is a different film from Ayushmann’s filmography, it falls prey to a type.

Ayushmann believes he has carved a niche for himself in this genre but when difference becomes a pattern, films too become formulaic. Small-town heroes undergoing social transformation have become the new stereotype so has the use of small towns as a setting to exaggerate the shift away from small-town ‘values’.

His latest ‘Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui’, a love story between a straight man and a trans woman barely manages to scratch the surface of a complex theme. Both characters have been hyper-sexualised for effect, checking all boxes of a ‘normal relationship’ and the ‘woke film’ uses a straight person to play a trans character. Her struggle becomes his awakening and somehow that is the film’s focal point.

Despite the space and potential to subvert notions, the films hark back to the same framework — the male actor becomes the point of transformation of society.

Making a difference

Are Ayushmann’s films unconventional? They are definitely offbeat but formulaic. The actor once said in an interview: “If everybody aspires to be a conventional, commercial hero, who will become the Amol Palekar and Farooq Sheikh of this generation?”

Conflating his filmography with Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s style of slice of cinema or the middle-class heroes played by Amol Palekar and Farooq Sheikh would be a grave mistake.

Mukherjee’s characters moulded into films like water. None stood out as ‘the hero’. Even the script remained in control, however, tangled. The comic relief in Mukherjee’s films was not to absolve audiences of the jarring subject in focus but to celebrate the absurdity of life. The attempt was not to create an out-of-ordinary circumstance but to extract the sublime from the ordinary.

It would be unfair to say that Ayushmann Khurrana’s contribution to the industry has been nominal. With ‘Andhadhun’ and ‘Article 15’, he has shown his range as a diverse performer but as a celebrity, his stance on social injustices is little known. With ten years down, it seems he still has a bigger journey to make.