When you think of Amitabh Bachchan today, what is the first thing you see? It is the parcel. And the packaging. A Harlequin jacket. A Pied Piper’s hat. A long ostrich feather trailing the headgear. Zircon, zari, zardozi. All accoutrements. All embellishments. The actor who has been our steadfast screen companion for four prolific decades has been buried under this ever-burgeoning mound.

For several of those years, his light shone the brightest, spilling out from the characters he brought to crackling life with a gesture, a throwaway phrase, a line — all of those things became part of movie lore, of audience speak. Of late, though, he has been toplining films in severely overwrought-but-underwhelming parts. Where has the real, essential Amitabh gone?

The answer is startlingly simple. He’s got lost in costumery, puffery, jiggery-pokery. Recall the roles he’s played most recently. In his latest exposition, Aladin, his genie is shiny and genial. In Bhootnath, his ghost is grimy and bad-tempered. Some time back, he even played the Almighty in God Tussi Great Ho, without an ounce of irony. All these films were rejected outright.

When Amitabh fakes it, the film tanks. When he’s flesh and blood — he’s been a “haad maas ka insaan” in two of the biggest weepies recently, Baghbaan and Baabul, with the first demanding more mopping — the box office floweth over. He happily toys with his wife’s choli (Hema’s comely choli being eminently toy-able), is thrown out of the house by his greedy offspring, and gets rescued by his golden-hearted adopted son. We like.

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