Obituary: The Loin King

India Today
November 2, 1998

OBITUARY: AJIT
The Loin King

By Ashok Malik and Priya Ramani

Ajit Most actors would give their right arm to acquire the sort of fame and iconic status Ajit did in his lifetime. The man himself considered it his misfortune. Cine-buffs thought he was funny; he thought he was dead serious. Audiences laughed at what they considered a spoof of a typical Hollywood gangster film from the 1930s; Ajit insisted he was only restoring old fashioned values to villainy. "Villain mein bhi kuchh mardangi honi chahiye (the villain too should be macho)," he once said.

No wonder Hamid Ali Khan -- as he was named soon after being born into the family of the Nizam of Hyderabad's chauffeur -- detested the epidemic of Ajit jokes which descended upon the country in the 1980s. To the rest of India "Use Hamlet poison de do, to be se not to be ho jayega" was a riot; to Ajit it trivialised his art.

The "gangsta' gags", if one may be permitted a neologism, began as so many cultural currents do on college campuses. Jaaved Jaaferi, now a VJ superstar but then no more than an aspiring actor, was an early imitator. Soon after joining college in 1980, he realised he had chanced upon a goldmine: "I used to have this mimicry act. And Ajit jokes were the most popular." Jaaferi wrote his own lines. Among his early coinages was: sidekick walks into loo and sees Ajit standing on the pot. He asks, "Boss what are you doing?" Comes the dry reply, "Getting high on pot."

The Ajit PJ truly arrived when it was appropriated by the advertising industry. It happened with the Parle-G biscuit campaign around 1984. Jaaferi was lending his voice to it and, as usual, aping the menace maestro in between work ("Maal laye ho?") when somebody had a brainwave. Next Jaaferi wrote the script for the Maggi endorsements: "Baas, pass the saas." Before you knew it, Ajit had become the most loveable bad guy since creation -- for a generation with zero recollection of his screen appearances.

After all, a semi-retired Ajit had by now returned to Hyderabad, the city he ran away from after selling his college books in the 1940s. He was chasing a dream, of becoming the czar of celluloid. He began as a hero, starring opposite Madhubala (Bekasoor, Tirandaaz) and Geeta Bali (Baradari, in which Talat Mahmood's melodious Tasveer banata hoon, tasveer nahin banti was featured on him).

A strapping Pathan, Ajit carved a niche for himself as a stunt hero. In 1956 came two of his best known films -- 26 January (co-starring Nalini Jayant and indicating, among other things, the day before Ajit's birthday) and Naya Daur, where he played Dilip Kumar's bosom buddy but rival in love. By Tower House (1962; Ai mere dile nadaan, tu gum se na ghabrana) Ajit's first innings in cinema was more or less over. He had had a middling career, among the highlights of which was the sobriquet of "Clark Gable of India" -- earned more for facial resemblance than box-office similitude.

He found his true calling a few years later. Lucifer wasn't conceived in a day though. The Ajit persona was truly shaped by Zanjeer (1973). He played Teja, the chilling don who speaks oh so softly, whose horse-shaped bracelet gives Amitabh Bachchan nightmares, who kills the hero's parents on one Diwali only to meet his nemesis on another, two decades later.

As Javed Akhtar, part of the Salim-Javed duo which scripted Zanjeer, recalls, "It gave him a whole new image. He was suave, soft-spoken, matter of fact, a villain of very few words." Javed's favourite scene in the film has Ajit dining at a restaurant with his "Mona darling" (Bindu) when Amitabh, just released from jail after being framed by Ajit, walks in. What follows is animosity at its most civilised. Amitabh: "Teja main wapas aa gaya." Ajit, absolutely unperturbed: "Kaho to main phir andar bhijwata hoon."

In an earlier age, K.N. Singh (Awara) only had to twitch an eyebrow to have old ladies reaching for smelling salts. Pran had to gnash his teeth, crack the whip (Ram aur Shyam). Ajit didn't have to move a muscle. It was just his look, the imperious call to "Raabert", the boast that "Sara shahar mujhe loin ke naam se janta hai" (Kalicharan) -- "loin" being lion mispronounced Punjabi style. Ajit was not your upfront, brawny goon. He was a scheming, Moriarty-type character, identified by arcane clues. In Yaadon ki Baraat he was the man with the mismatched shoes -- size 8 on one foot, size 9 on the other. He was the gentleman killer. He would have been a misfit in an era when villains are outlandish fellows with names as weird as Chhappan Tikli (Sir), Koya Koya Attachi (Inquilaab) and Bujung (Tridev).

Occasionally, Ajit played the rustic daku (Shankar Shambu, Pratigyaa). As Dharmendra's brother in Pathar aur Payal and a police inspector in Bandhe Haath, he even tried to be goody two shoes. It didn't work; nobody noticed.

In the early '90s Ajit had a last fling with greasepaint (Jigar, Aa Gale Lag Jaa, Aatish). An unusual tribute was Andaz Apna Apna (1995), in which Zahid, one of Ajit's little boys, did a take-off on his father. The "loin" was in his winter. Now he'll entertain them in heaven.

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