The lachak and matak of Hrithik Roshan

When we talk about Duggu’s dance oeuvre, we must talk about ‘Baawre’

“Girls, thoda grace toh lao, grace,” an assistant says to the dancers after the head choreographer chastises the troop. This is a whole minute before the first bars of ‘Baawre’ (Luck By Chance, 2009) kick in and Hrithik Roshan, in Willy Wonka get-up of long purple coat and top hat, starts bobbing his beautiful face to the percussive beat. 

Grace is important. Especially in dance, the most ‘have-it-or-you-don’t’ of the arts and sports. Catch them young enough, and you have a shot at creating a chess wiz. Writers are made from circumstances and mental morass. But the dancer is born, supple of limb, open of heart. The realisation is anecdotal. I love to dance. But my legs, which helped me run rings around brutal defenders in my youth, are stiff as wood on the dance floor. There’s nothing (not football, not writing) that I have more desperately wanted to be a natural at. 

This feeling is heightened when I watch Hrithik doing his thing. In ‘Baawre’, he shimmies, struts, hops and hip-shakes in a way that makes you wonder how this six-footed chunk of perfect muscle, jaw and hair can be so fluid, so lithe. It’s like watching David come to life, summoned down from his platform in the Uffizi to a film set in Goregaon. What if marble could move? 

‘Baawre’ is a song-within-a-film-within-a-film. In Luck By Chance, Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut set in the Hindi film industry, Hrithik is in a juicy cameo as superstar Zafar Khan. Zafar is itching to drop out of the fictional film, but not before he shoots for the carnivalesque ‘Baawre’, which is mounted as the big masala number in the tentpole production titled Dil Ki Aag. 

From the ‘making of’ video on YouTube, we learn that torrential showers had caused the set to become a health hazard (too many naked wires for the lights). But, watching on screen, one can’t tell that the dancers inside the tent struggled to hear the playback over the rain pelting on the canvas. 

The frames of ‘Baawre’ are busy as hell, stuffed with jugglers, trapeze artists, hula-hoopers, everyone playing the artful clown. Rajasthani folk singer Mame Khan and vocal range king Shankar Mahadevan are trading bars in a jugalbandi for the ages. There’s an interlude when Isha Sharvani does her aerial thing inside a ring. To convey the manic energy of a circus, the camera itself is having a mad time, with wobbles, zooms, top shots, close-ups and a whole lot of trolleying. But, fitting for a meta film about Hindi cinema, it all comes across in service of the chief conjurer, who dishes out the mainstream hero’s repertoire of expression and lip-sync to complement his moves. 

Despite all this, ‘Baawre’ is less Hrithik-as-Greek-God than some of his other memorable performances. This is not languorous Hrithik, casually burning up the beaches of Positano in ‘Ghungroo Toot Gaye’ (War, 2019) or the twinkled-toed flamenco exponent of Huelva in ‘Senorita’  (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, 2011). Far away from the Mediterranean, this is the desi Hrithik, at home in the world of ‘dhol-tasha’, ‘doodh batasha’ and ‘Gogia Pasha’. This is the Hrithik of ‘lachak’ and ‘matak’, embedded in a tradition of folksy entertainment where rhyming, untranslatable words are loaded with cultural meaning that performers wear lightly on their bendy selves. 

On ‘albele albele tann hai’ (The bodies are unique), he rotates. On ‘lachkeelay lachkeelay tann hai’ (The bodies are supple), he gyrates. On ‘koi apna dil kaisa na haare’ (How does one not lose their heart?) choreographer Vaibhavi Merchant makes him bring out a desi version of jazz hands. He does all this in a black sleeveless mini-jacket, a sheer front that leaves nothing of his torso to the imagination, and sequined black harem pants that will look ridiculous on 99 percent of Indian and Greek men. Yes Hrithik, how indeed does one not lose their heart. 

‘Effortless’ is a word often used to describe his performances but ‘Baawre’, to me, sweats and steams with honest work. He doesn’t glide across the stage as much as thump it; he doesn’t attract your attention as much as grab it. When he commits to the hook steps after a costume change (top—a bright red sleeveless jacket with gold brocade, bottom—a shimmery dhoti the texture of aluminium foil), he locks his fingers, arches his back and hops on one leg, the vigour conveyed by his bouncing locks. Then, in the next shot, when he shimmies shoulders at the head of a fast-advancing formation, he approaches you, the viewer, with deliberate winks and tilts of the head, before skipping away as the backtracking camera finally halts and pans to Isha and Konkona Sensharma. 

After the brief sequence with Isha and her aerial hoop, he returns in a white version of his black costume. This time, the mini-jacket is sleeved, and highlights his arm definition in a way that is sexier, if that is indeed possible, than the bare look. He then leads Isha, a rigorously trained classical and contemporary dancer, in a duet where he seems to be having more fun. It’s almost as if he is saying: ‘Leave this Bollywood thing to me, Isha, I’ll take it from here.” 

The makers seem to recognise this and hand the frame back to Hrithik. ‘Main tann haara’ (I lost my soul)—the feet spread, the arms go left, fall robotically limp; ‘Main mann haara’ (I lost my mind)—hand touches heart, ‘Main jaan hara’ (I lost my life)—hand clutches hip, ‘Main jag haara’ (I lost the world)—the hand pistons down, ‘Hosh bhi haara, josh bhi haara’ (I lost consciousness, I lost vigour)—the legs kick back in, a little jump, ‘Main ab haara, main sab haara’ (I lost it now, I lost everything)—the hips sway rhythmically, the eyes half-close, as in a trance, the hands travel down the face to the torso. 

Not a beat missed in these seconds. 

And then realisation, deliverance—the break into the energetic hook steps on ‘Baawre, Baawre, Baawre, Baawre.’ I’m going mad, I’m going mad. The refrain of ‘haar’—or loss—in this sequence is not a complaint. Instead, it is a milestone in the journey of the wandering minstrel, the travelling entertainer, the one who must throw caution to the winds and lose it all to win their true and ‘crazy’ state. 

We’re now in the final sequence. Everything is moving again. Aerial and trolley shots of Hrithik and Isha twirling in abandon are intercut with moving images of the circus artists in their act. The tune’s bridge transitions into an outro. There’s a final tapp-tapp-tapp of the tabla. A pair of hands enter the frame to sound the cut on a clapboard. Just like that, it’s over. The spell is broken. We are back in the real world, the world of two left feet, the world of inelegance and mediocrity. 

But life is bearable now, after watching a gorgeous, talented man become ‘baawra’, if only for the camera, even within the film. Life is bearable now, for there exist pockets of music and dance, where you may lose everything to win back your soul, even for a compressed and contrived moment. 

For his bread, Vikram Shah writes corporate/brand content and edits non-fiction (hire him!). For his soul, he writes short stories and cute lil essays, a few of which are on his Substack (subscribe here!).