It was the worst of times for screen legend Amitabh Bachchan when Thakur Bhanu Pratap knocked at the door of Bachchan residence with a bowl of ‘zeher vali kheer’ and gave him, and us, the gift of ‘meethi bhaat’ Sooryavansham. When 90s kids were still making up their mind about Bachchan and regularly saw him as the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati, they knew that there was much more to the actor and not because he had a legendary past as the ‘angry young man’ in the movies, but because this was the actor who had a permanent residence on Sony Max. Sooryavansham, a film that would have otherwise gotten lost in the endless filmography of Amitabh Bachchan, is possibly one of the most-watched films of his long and storied career, all thanks to the booming satellite television in the late 1990s.

Before the introduction of streaming services and unlimited data, life was limited to a few television channels where one was at the mercy of the channel’s broadcast schedule. You couldn’t just play any movie you wanted to watch at a convenient time. You had to tune into a particular channel at a fixed time and sit through really long ad breaks to watch a film. It sounds like an almost impossible task today but at the turn of the century, this was the norm and it somehow became the perfect time to watch Sooryavansham. Studies have shown that YouTube channels like Cocomelon amass millions of views because kids like to watch the same thing over and over again. If someone were to scientifically examine the pop culture status of Sooryavansham, they would certainly say the same for adults as well. Sooryavansham was one of those films that seemed like it was always playing on television. The world could be falling apart, but Sooryavansham was the reliable entertainment provider that never failed to disappoint. 25 years after its release, one cannot rationalise the appeal of Sooryavansham for it is no cinematic marvel but you also can’t deny that it continued to deliver on the promise of entertainment week after week.

Amitabh Bachchan was going through one of the worst career transitions a superstar had ever seen when he did a slate of films, each worse than the other. Lal Baadshah, Mrityudata and Sooryavansham were all a part of the same category but Sooryavansham lucked out when it fell in the lap of some Sony executive who, perhaps, had a very strange sense of humour. They saw the meme potential in this film even before memes were a thing, and continued to play it over and over again, like a Cocomelon video, until the audience was hooked, and cheering for the success of Heera’s bus service business. Over the years, people have tried to decode the popularity of the film and come up with some strange theories. Redittors have come up with something as bizarre as Rekha voicing the character of Bachchan’s wife in the film to Mukesh Rishi being the secret casting ingredient of so-bad-it’s-good movies, but of course, no one could find any logical reason behind this film’s success. It wasn’t some lost gem that ‘did not find its audience’ or was ‘way ahead of its times’, it was what it was and it was easy to consume.

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When meme-culture was in its early days in India, Sooryavansham became instant fodder and when satellite television started to become passe, Sooryavansham once again found its audience on YouTube. If the concept of residuals existed in India, like it does in Hollywood (where actors and technicians are paid a small fee every time their show or film is played on television), Bachchan probably wouldn’t have gone through a bankruptcy because the residuals of this film would have cleared his debts in no time.

The idea of watching television has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. In many urban centres, YouTube and other paid streaming services are starting to occupy the place that was once reserved by the likes of Zee and Sony and even in that time, Sooryavansham has preserved its audience. In 2020, when people were restricted in their homes because of the lockdown, a YouTube channel that uploaded the film gained over 500 million views. Over the last four years since then, the movie has been made available on many other YouTube channels as well and all of them collectively have over 100 million views.

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Amitabh Bachchan has been around since the 1960s and in every decade of his career, he has seen some highs and lows but the 1990s were a rough time for the actor. His business was failing, and his career as an actor was on the decline. And it was at this time that he found Sooryavansham. While it did nothing for his career at that moment, it has given him the gift of a much-loved flop, which to be honest, is an extremely rare feat.

Sooryavansham isn’t the kind of film that you can watch and appreciate now, especially if you have never seen it before. It is a reminder of a lazy Sunday when one channel is playing Hum Aapke Hain Koun, and another channel is playing some new film that requires you to invest over three hours of your life in one stretch. Sooryavansham allowed you to take nap when you want, because you already knew what was going to happen, and gave you the permission to talk over it because there wasn’t any part of this film that you didn’t know about. Sooryavansham might not be one of the best films of Bachchan’s career, but it is certainly one of the most loved films of his life.