A filmy ‘avatar’


Deccan Herald, September 12, 1993

By Shekharpoorna


The ‘acknowledgements’ appendix of Charles Higham's biography of Marlon Brando runs into more than two pages. The index runs into fourteen pages. Higham lists more than 100 interviewees. In addition, he says 300 books were read, 35,000 documents examined and countless newspaper clippings scanned for this work.


In similar fashion, the last 133 pages of John Toland's brilliant biography of Adolph Hitler contains a list of people interviewed, documents and reports examined, detailed notes and an index. But the book under review lists just two names under ‘acknowledgements’. The 189-page book has an index of less than six pages.


Biographers ought to be, by definition, rigorous in their scholarship, committed to authentic details and objective in the assessment of their subject. Judged from these standards, Mahesh Bhatt's biography of U.G. Krishnamurti is, to put it mildly, disappointing.


Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti is philosopher J. Krishnamurti's contemporary. Two decades ago, JK's charisma was at its peak. Journalists would eagerly lap up everything he said and everything said about him. UG was JK's friend, and the two had a love-hate relationship.


At one point, UG rebelled and spoke vehemently against JK. The media turned to UG and described him as a thinker and an enigma. As his fame spread, admirers sprang up in many cities. In his innumerable newspaper interviews, he spoke of his unusual experience (somewhat like what is called the kundalini experience) as a ‘calamity’. He claimed he had reached the ‘natural state’ thanks to this experience.


Now film maker Mahesh Bhatt has written U.G. Krishnamurti – A Life. The writer-director says little about UG that is not already known from stray articles and interviews. This unoriginal part takes up 129 of the 189 pages. The rest of the book contains an interview with UG, in which his thoughts are sought to be presented in question-answer form.


Mahesh Bhatt is among UG's disciples. One has nothing against his writing a biography of UG, but one does expect him to set aside his devotion when putting pen to paper. One also expects him to collect enough details about UG's life before venturing to write a book of this kind.


The legends surrounding UG make him out to be some supernatural being. Devotees ranging from Annie Besant to Pupul Jayakar spoke of JK as an avatara purusha, and UG's devotees too speak in the same tone. A strange aura has been growing around UG. Mahesh Bhatt doesn't reject any of this, nor does he view it with any suspicion. If anything, he only succeeds in mystifying UG further.


The diction he uses shows the extent of his devotion towards UG:


‘This boy is born to a destiny immeasurably high,’ predicted UG's mother just before her death. (But tell us, Mahesh, what is her name?)


‘The grandparents and their friends were convinced that this child … was a yogabrashta, one who has come within inches of enlightenment in his past life.’


‘As I sat down to write what can be termed in film jargon the climax of UG's life, the earth beneath our feet shook. It was another earthquake. 5.1 on the Richter, reported the news reader on television.’


‘This man lives like Bharata in the epic Ramayana’ (Mahesh Bhatt enthusiastically quotes these words of the Nadu astrologer Nagaraj).


The episode involving a growling, angry black panther in a private zoo in Rome provides even greater proof of the writer's unquestioning acceptance of UG's divineness:


‘Quiet, sit down.’ The animal obeyed. ‘Daniel and his wife seemed surprised at first. But since UG repeatedly managed to make the panther quiet every time he grew agitated, they were spellbound.’


Quite in character with the rest of the book, Mahesh Bhatt says this incident has remained a mystery to him till now! But alas, the film maker's devotion to UG holds no mystery for people who have watched the two appropriate media attention together, both in print and in the video magazines.

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