Of famous fathers.... and their unpopular sons

Unless a man’s preparing to die, he lives to get drunk. With power, success, fame, ideology, words, circumstance and as a last resort religion.

So what happens to a boy who realizes early on in his life that try as he might, he’ll probably never reach the same dizzy heights of headiness, as his dad? That his dad has had the kind of life – with its triumphs and tumults – that the combined lives of other men, spanning across generations couldn’t possibly experience. Must be a pretty shattering realization, that. Deluding at first and confusing later, with exhaustion building over time.  With your surname threatening, drowning your identity, if you’ve succeeded in patching together an identity in the first place.

Must not be easy, trying to resist basking in the glow of the fawning acclaim that ricochet’s of your dad, on to you. Not in the least easy because one is genuinely proud of one’s dad’s achievements (and as a son feels entitled to some of it) yet not easy either because it’s always brought to his notice that the fame is not his for the claiming. The story goes that the great Don Bradman’s son, sick of answering questions about his dad to spellbound fans, decided to break ties with his dad, live an estranged existence and adopted the surname Bradson to escape the constant stream of queries. Later he chose to mend fences when the Don entered his twilight years and took back his original name, John Bradman. Bob Dylan’s son Jakob Dylan (also a musician) too has had very publicized falling out with his dad, despite his sincere attempts at originality. Closer home, Gandhiji’s son became an alcoholic and converted to Islam just to escape the tyranny of his surname.  

In our country where dynasty is alive in every section of society, probably more pronounced among the super-successful, it is more difficult. We snicker at Abhishek Bachchan when his films flop or predict that Sachin’s son will be a failure if he takes up cricket. We provide them with a comparative context that is unfair to even the most precocious.

It must be easy for a young man to yield to the seductions of the dazzling arch lights, drooling fans and front page news. His career choice is predestined, before he’s born. Page 3 celebs rightfully earn our contempt, without having to go through the anxieties of having a very famous father. But for those with famous genes the scope of committing a mistake is leanest and meanest.

But how must he feel waking up every day? His revenge must surely be his mediocrity and his efforts at staying ordinary. Perhaps that’s his greatest satisfaction, his act of rebellion against a baying junta. I might sound dangerously sexist here but one advantage of being in a patriarchal society is that as a society, we don’t expect excellence from our daughters (to our own peril). It’s always the son jisne “apne baap ki naak kata di.”