How Did His Train To Success Derail?  Was He Responsible?? Or???

Ali Peter John

Amitabh Bachchan has been on the top of the world for almost fifty years and is still at the top and busy till the end of 2020 and beyond ...

Salman Khan has completed 40 years and he is still busier than most other stars...

Aamir Khan has also completed more than 45 years and is as active as ever, not only as an actor/ producer but now also as a social worker.

Shahrukh Khan is the youngest of this rare clan of the Khans and he is still very much on a pedestal, even though his last three films have not done well.

Even actors like Akshay Kumar who was considered a B grade or a stunt man hero is not only growing stronger by every film he does and today under the Modi Raj , he is the ultimate patriotic hero and star, just like Manoj Kumar was in the sixties, seventies and eighties.

Stars like Suniel Shetty and Saif Ali Khan are also busy signing films according to their age and are still in demand...

But, Govinda was at one time considered the best of them all and even the most saleable of them all. He was even compared to the incomparable Amitabh Bachchan and the Khans and Kumar used to envy the place in which he was. But after he had reached the pinnacle of success, something seemed to have happened to him and his attitude towards work, his co stars and above all his abject disrespect for time slowly but surely pulled him down from where he was ruling and today he stands alone, with no one , no media , no political party and the industry which made him a star on his terms is not willing to give him one more chance which he is looking for desperately.

I am not an expert, I am not a psychologist,I am not a man who would run down another man at a time when he has bit rock bottom, but at the risk of even sounding a little repetitive,I can only tell you of several stories which I strongly feel have resulted in his being where he is one time gloriously successful star who is today spending most of his time at home and attending musical shows and award functions which he used to strictly avoid when he was Govinda,to whose tunes every big and small film maker and even all the big and small stars had to bend and bow before.

I firmly believe that it was his disrespect for Samay (time) that were responsible for his fall.

What would you say about a morning when Amitabh Bachchan, Rajnikanth,Danny Denzongpa an Kimi Katkar are waiting for him to come and shoot because it is the combine shot and the man who lives just half a kilometre away from Ruia Park where the shooting was being held couldn't or deliberately didn't want to reach inspite of several calls and personal messages going out to him, while Amitabh and Rajnikanth sit quietly in their chairs and Amitabh doesn't even move once and keeps saying," Hum Chichi bhaiya ke intezar mein baithe hain". Rajnikanth who was still to get used to the ways of Mumbai,kept asking why stars were given so much importance that they could do whatever they wanted without caring what happened to their co stars and their ultimate product. All the other stars are stoic in their attitude to this unexpected crisis and Govinda arrives just twenty minutes before the lunch break and without apologising to anyone goes into his vanity van and asks his men to see that he is not disturbed as he is busy taking his siesta. What was he doing the whole morning ?

It was the shooting of the same film ( Hum) at the faraway Mukesh mills and the entire unit used to reach before 9 A.M. but there used to be no sign of dancing star till afternoon and everyone took his behaviour as a way of life, which affected all of them but almost " Killed the director , Mukul S Anand and the producer Ramesh Sharma,who was the beat friend of Amitabh". Mukul was so shocked that he even died after a few months at a very young age and Ramesh Sharma the producer vowed never to make a film with Chi chi bhaiya but all this made no difference to him and he kept playing the same game with all his producers and their entire units.

The classic case however was when he was shooting for a song for a film called "Pardesi Babu" which was produced bu Kulbhushan Gupta, who was the first man to take a young boy who came travelling without a ticket from faraway Virar to meet producers, seriously. Gupta was the man who got him the kind of publicity no major publicity agency could have got him. He had even "sold " his rags to riches story to India's leading monthly, India Today and he was photographed by the world renowned photographer Raghu Rai and interviewed by Madhu Jain who was then considered one of the leading Journalists specialising in films. Gupta had made him a star before he could become a star.

The boy from Virar never started his day without touching the feet of Kulbhushan Gupta and another big producer Ram Lal Mehta, who infact was the first producer to sign him for a big film called " Love 86".

Govinda who was a master at playing games with his words kept telling Gupta that he wanted to see him as a big producer and Kulbhushan Gupta made the mistake of taking him seriously and started Pardesi Babu with him.

The Govinda brand of harassment continued throughout the making of Pardesi Babu but the worst came when a song was being picturerised in the basement of a five star hotel in Bangalore. Govinda occupied a pent house suite of the hotel. He could have reported for the shooting at 9A.M sharp or at least an hour late, but the good man that he was he came down only when the unit was about to pack up around 8:30 in the night. Kulbhushan lost his temper and fired him before a crowd of hundreds of dancers and junior artists. An upset Govinda went up to his suite and sent for Kulbhushan and said something very foolish like " Kul ji , maanta hoon ki Maine galti ki, Lekin aapko meri aadat maaloom hai phir aapne meri itne logon ke saamne Kyun phaade ?" Kulbhushan was in a mood to scrap the film, but there were many other pressures on him and he had to complete the film somehow. But even when he did, the film flopped and that was the beginning of his slide down.

There were similar complaints from every producer who walked with him. His day never used to begin before noon. There used to be a large crowd of producers waiting for his "darshan" while he was busy performing his puja for more than two hours. The sill of his door at "Jal Darshan" in Juhu was like a temple with hundreds of pairs of footwear lying all around and the darahaks waiting for just one glimpse of their bhagwaan which only some could get.

He is mad ways kept driving people mad. He became very superstitious and could suspect anyone in the crowd to be a killer who could be hired by someone and leave the shooting.

He once kept a buffalo in his apartment because he wanted fresh milk and had a big tussle with society and according to his friends he decided to move in a bungalow only to keep his buffalo happy.

Incidentally his fall was complete when he started living in his new bungalow, he got into politics and won the elections beating a very formidable politician who had to renounce politics after being defeated by him.

He was a M.P of Congress Party for six years but he hardly visited his constituency and people were more than just angry and the next time it was the election time, he did not dare to ask a claim to ticket to fight the election and backed out at the last minute and has never been heard of in films or in politics ever since.

This man had all the qualities and much more to keep being a super star, but he couldn't change his spots and the last time he was seen in a film, the film did not even run for a day. He has absolutely no work now. There is just one film, Banda Yeh Seedha Saradha hai made under the banner of B.R Films which is still suppose to be under litigation.

According to one story, Salman Khan tried his best to give his career a new boost when he recommended him for a role in his film, Partner , but chi chi bhaiya is said to have insulted Salman too. All the stars,from Amitabh to Shahrukh Khan have gone on record to say what a great actor he is today's young actors like Varun Dhawan are even trying to imitate or be inspired by him but ....

I have heard of this Greek term "Hamartia" ( fatal flaw) in a great actor sometimes which destroys him. Is Govinda a victim of Hamartia ?

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Tags: Bollywood, Bollywood News, Bollywood Updates, Television, Telly News, Govinda