The Bad Man of Bollywood

Penguin

Pages: 280

Rs 399

When I met Bob Christo in February,he ran through his backstory like a ’70s song rushing past years in minutes. “The rest,you read in my book,” he concluded,welling up at how his family was “scattered around the world” and how he did not earn “in crores” like his colleagues in Bollywood did. In Flashback: My Life and Times in Bollywood and Beyond,published weeks after his death,this fraught sensitivity is hidden under the impressive autobiographical armour of a former Bollywood brute and a confirmed Casanova. In a life best described as a cross between a low-budget thriller and a Western,there are exotic locales and flashy cars,affairs with nubile strangers,guns and gore,even a search for his martial arts guru apparently wanted by the Chinese for knowing who killed Bruce Lee. It’s all there,swathed in the spirit of unbridled adventure that howled at his heels all his life.

The book opens with our wandering protagonist Robert John Christo arriving in Hong Kong after a stint with the South Vietnamese army. Walking the ramp and restoring beat-up Jaguars for a quick buck,Christo divides his time between his sexy-as-hell Polynesian girlfriend Kisa and his latest Manila find Maria,whom he would abandon in the midst of her pregnancy for a doomed quest to — no,seriously — retrieve a CIA spy ship that he is sure has sunk near Libya. Call it wilful naivete or a compellingly garbled way of life,but when Christo zooms in and out of reality like a NASCAR racer making pit stops,you are left staring at the tyre-marks on the tracks.

He wasn’t always this impetuous. In his less glamorous days in Sydney as a civil engineer,he bought and refurbished old houses,setting aside a tidy sum that,as fate would have it,was short-changed by the Depression. It was the beginning of a dark age that snatched away his wife Helga in a freak accident,festering a restlessness that would last a lifetime. Entrusting his friends with his three children and hauling himself back on his feet,Christo flexed his many talents — he was a Goju-kai black belt who did 500 pushups a day,a crooner who loved Nat King Cole and Filipino bands,a stuntman and windsurfer — to build a set for Hollywood blockbuster Apocalypse Now,run an escort service in Cape Town and deliver lobsters illegally to five-star hotels. There is enough circumstantial verisimilitude in Christo’s tales,even the outlandish ones. Once,upon roughing up the South African football team in a bar brawl along with an able friend,he won the attention of the wealthy Paul Getty II. After an interview,Getty handed him a suspicious assignment: he had to accompany a Range Rover carrying $20 million in cash,and would be paid $20,000 for the job. “Looking back,the whole incident seems so surreal; this is but one of many examples in my life that shows how fact can be stranger than fiction,” he writes.

Most of all,Christo comes across as a public relations phenomenon,effortlessly learning local tongues and mingling with the right people in each country to enjoy gratuitous courtesies. And when he comes to India,ostensibly to meet Parveen Babi,whose picture he happened to come across in Time magazine,who should he run into but a scriptwriter-friend who has just sold a script to Sanjay Khan? Introductions are made,and Christo bags a part in Abdullah (1980),and another in Khan’s life as his close aide. Thereafter,it is one indiscriminate Bollywood orgy: role after villainous role,high-society dinners and overseas trips,daring stunts and star-studded muhurats. Christo fits right into the Bollywood pantheon,finding favour with Zeenat Aman by giving her massages,with Raj Kapoor — who calls him “Bobcock” — by shooting a deer for dinner,with Adi Godrej and Amitabh Bachchan by teaching their children watersports.

Playing a baddie and having the hero make “mincemeat out of my character” do nothing to spoil Christo’s wit and good humour. In one of his irreverent inside stories,he ventures an explanation for how Shatrughan Sinha came to be called Shotgun Sinha. One evening,when Sinha,Khan,Prem Chopra,Subhash Ghai and other aces of filmdom met for drinks,an argument erupted. Sinha rubbed Khan the wrong way,and later that night someone fired gunshots at Khan’s bungalow. In the aftermath of the squabble,Ghai spent a day in lock-up and Sinha came to be known as “Shotgun”,Christo writes. There are other gossipy asides — on Zeenat trying to hook up with married businessman,Nusli Wadia; Danny Denzongpa’s “close relationship” with Parveen Babi; and how in a fight sequence with Jeetendra,the actor tired easily and joked about being “tortured” by Christo.

In the story of his life,his family,his wives and his many children are a copious footnote. His relationship with his second wife Nargis,whom he met strolling down Juhu beach and had a son with,soured with age,and Christo moved to Bangalore to head the yoga and fitness division of Sanjay Khan’s hotel and spa The Golden Palms. “I needed a change; actually I required some kind of change every twenty-five years of my life,” he writes. The next change would come much sooner. After spinal surgery in 2004,Christo was no longer the intrepid cowboy of his youth. There was a hitch to his walk and he was contemplating opening an international school in Bangalore.

“Before you know it,I’ll have another book coming out; I have so many memories,” he told me when we met. One book is enough — to know Bob Christo for what he was: too outsize a man to fit into the shoes of an engineer,a villain,or a husband.