White man's burden

Anyone who remembers mainstream Hindi movies of a certain vintage knows about the garish sets that served as villains’ dens. In these hotbeds of vice, rogues and molls wore colourful futuristic outfits that made Return of the Jedi seem like a stark kitchen-sink drama in comparison. They connived, clinked Scotch glasses and rakshasa-laughed; the set decor included spiky walls, silhouettes of dancing girls, and hungry sharks circling in tanks.

The Australian-born actor Bob Christo, who died last week, was a vital sideshow in this eye-popping world — the classic looming henchman. Looking at this hefty man, it seemed impossible that he could be beaten or thwarted, but he always was. “My chief memory of Christo,” a friend tells me on email, “is snippets of him getting beaten up by much smaller, brown men.” That’s his career in a nutshell.

Checking Christo’s filmography on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) reminded me of the assembly-line 1980s movies that my generation still has such fond memories of. The very titles of some of his films read like answers to questions asked in the titles of earlier, unrelated films (Insaaf Kaun Karega, 1984; Insaaf Main Karoonga, 1985). In many of them, Christo played a character designated merely as “Bob” — though he was occasionally promoted to “Inspector Bob”, “Terrorist Bob” and even “Commander Bob”. He was also “Henchman (Baldy)” in Satte ka Bol Baala, “British Man” (Sarfarosh), “Second Rapist to be Shot Dead” (Humshakal), “Boat organiser” (Gupt) and, quite impressively, “Mr Goodmark, Gold Smuggler” (Toofan).

By comparison, his “Mr Wolcott” in Mr India seems dignified. though my only memory of Christo in that film is of him getting clunked over the head by a Hanuman statue wielded by the invisible hero. There was probably something subtextual going on here, what with an evil gora being taught a lesson by an Indian God — but to balance things out Christo played someone named “Ram” in the Kamal Hassan-Amitabh Bachchan starrer Geraftaar!

However, my favourite Christo role was in B Subhash’s cult classic Disco Dancer, where he played the “International Hit-Man”, named so because he has bumped off seven people — including a world-famous singer — in London. Now he has been hired to dispose of the guitar-wielding hero Jimmy (Mithun Chakraborty) and he commences this mission by landing a punch that knocks the hero flat. Given their respective sizes, that should have been the end of that — but of course Jimmy rallies and thrashes the big man to within an inch of his life. Result: International Hit-Man is reduced to sneaky saazish. As he plots to electrocute the disco dancer with a 5,000-volt electric current, he delivers the deadpan line “Phir hamaara dushman ud jaayega” (“Then our enemy will be blown away”) and makes a funny little popping sound with his mouth. It’s an incongruous gesture coming from such a large man.

But of course the plot is foiled, and there is a final fight where Jimmy comes out trumps, with Christo reduced to a quivering mass of pulp beneath the brown hero’s white shoes. In other words, a happy ending. As I write this column, the Indian cricket team is about to win their World Cup quarter-final against a big, brawny set of fair-skinned athletes of Christo’s nationality. Watching the match and the chest-thumping reactions of the Indian spectators gives me a better understanding of the role that someone like Bob Christo must have played in wish-fulfilment for our moviegoers all those years ago.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer