Posted on: May 5, 2008 - 10:52 pm
Somewhere in the stunning and wild mountains, hills and wind blown landscapes of Nasik
May 5, 2008 10:26 pm
Pritish Nandy, eminent journalist, commentator and now head of a flourishing production house, devotes an entire story, through his by-line, on the topic of celebrity bashing and takes a sympathetic stand for them.
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A self-consciousness grips me. We are not used to media taking a stand for us and I appreciate the fact that he has, even though it comes, in his own words, 20 years late.
There are few in this profession that I have admired for this courage of theirs. Courage because credibility for media is their mantra for nirvana. Once they loose that they might as well shut shop.
Pritish Nandy bravely admits his judgment of error and remarkably, does not hesitate to put it prominently in the public domain.
‘Finished’, the front-paged headline of the Illustrated Weekly, of which I made a guarded reference to in my rejoinder to Anurag Basu, came at a particularly low phase of my career. Such phases often invite such headlines. It added to the pain of my suffering. It wasn’t just a stab, it was like twisting the blade in the intestines, after the knife had been put into my stomach.
I tried to bear it as bravely as I could and silently swore to myself the possibility of proving him wrong. I placed the magazine on my desk and allowed it to stare at me ominously every day. It remained in that position for years, until one day, in decidedly congenial circumstances, Pritish on a private visit to my desk, noticed it. He expressed surprise, I, quiet restrain. But after he had gone I wrote him a letter about it accompanied with a small gift. He wrote back. Reciprocated my gesture with a gift of one of his art works and asked that his correspondence, be kept personal. I still have that letter with me and yes, it shall never go beyond me, but I will convey this that his forthrightness today, has been very close to the contents of his private letter.
There are two others I have admiration for.
Nari Hira, Publisher and owner of Stardust and several other magazines and MJ Akbar, renowned senior journalist, Editor, owner, author, commentator - in fact the first journalist to have pioneered serious TV debate as a host and anchor.
And this is why –
During the period of the press ban on me, Nari Hira and Stardust, relentlessly came after me issue after issue, with some of the most devastating ‘yellow’ reportage I had ever encountered. Yet, as I lay crippled and injured in Breach Candy Hospital fighting for my life in 1982, after the accident on the sets of ‘Coolie’, he broke ‘tradition’ and came out with the most endearing cover story I had ever read in his paper on me. I was moved by it and when I recovered, paid him a visit to thank him for it. But, I was curious. I was curious to know from him, why, after taking such a hostile stance he had relented. His answer was straight and honest.
“We wanted you to fail, but we never wanted you to die !”, he said, looking me in the eye. It was a moment that has remained with me and one for which I admire him.
MJ, as he is often addressed, has always seemed to the outside world an individual with the perpetual cynical smile on his face. An expression of, ‘I know the truth better than what you may think I know’. And it reflected in his writings. On the eve of the General Election of 1984, after the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi, on coming to learn of my nomination as a candidate from the Congress Party to fight the Lok Sabha election from Allahabad against that great adversary Mr Hemvati ‘never lost an election’ Nandan Bahuguna, he gloriously predicted with great eloquence, that I would get the ‘pasting’ of my life.
When the results came in of my victory, he was the first to write an editorial, admitting how wrong he had been and that he was ‘eating humble pie’.
It is not easy for someone of his eminence and caliber to have done that and that is why I admire him.
One morning more recently, I received a hand written note from him after he had seen my film ‘Dev’. The warmth of that letter forms a prominent framed position on the wall of my office in Mumbai.
Incidentally, Pritish has brought a proposal for a film now, for me to work in. Produced by his Company, directed by his son.
My father’s lines from his poem on the ‘Rush of Life’ resound again, as they have on so many other occasions –
Main kitna hi bhuloon bhatkoon ya bharmaoon,
Hai ek kahi manzil jo mujhe bulati hai,
Kitne hi mere paon paden unche nichen, prati pal woh mere paas chali hi aati hai.
Mujhpar vidhi ka ehsaan bahut si baatoan ka,
Par main kritagya uska ispar sabse jyaada,
Nabh ole barsaye, dharti sholay ugale,
Anwarat samay ki chakki chalti jaati hai.
No matter how many times I may have lost my path,
There is but one destination that calls me,
My feet may have stepped unevenly, up or down, but the destination has always moved towards me, every moment.
I am obliged to nature on many a call,
But I am indebted to her most for this ;
Let the skies pour down in hail, let the earth explode with fire,
The unstoppable cycle of time, always keeps moving !
Time !!
My love and more -
Amitabh Bachchan
June 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
once again hello sir i am big fan i want to meet u i had been injuard in kargil war since 1996.pl reply
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June 1st, 2008 at 7:15 pm
“We wanted you to fail, but we never wanted you to die !”
..actually touching..
and yet again, dr. bachchan is THE best!
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May 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Review- Kabhi alvida na kehna
Has anyone been afflicted with that obsolete disease and still speaks Urdu?
‘Mohabbat ka zamana guzar gaya, chote-mote ishq se hi kaam chala lo’ (or something to that effect) is Sharukh Khan’s advice to Rani Mukherjee as she sits sniffling (on what I thought was a park bench but which turns out to be her fatherinlaw’s WHopper of a front yard), in the grip of pre-marriage blues. As the film spooled on and I watched leading nitwits Maya (Rani) and Dev (Shahrukh) convince themselves of their eternal, irresistible love for each other (always with that quaintly archaic word ‘mohabbat’), all I could think of was that Karan Johar should have heeded his hero’s advice and not attempted to make an epic of extramarital love in KANK, and that a choti-moti, postmodern tale parodying love and narrated in pastiche would have actually worked much better, not only with the wafer-thin plot/story he had in hand but also with the sensibilities of our times. That golden era of inteha mohabbat and its accompanying bullshit (sorry folks!) is alldone and overwith – finito, khallas – and I wish filmmakers would wake up from their extended mughal-e-azam hangover and show some chusti-furti in getting in sync with the times.
Another one bites the dust
I am not done with the bad news yet. Shahrukh Khan is fast becoming the Rajesh Khanna of his generation of stars. A slave to his increasingly irritating mannerisms, the star needs to reinvent himself as an actor. The other contenders for the kingly throne, Saif and Aamir, have shown far more intelligence in their choice of scripts and films. Shahrukh meanwhile is content to milk his starpower.
…and the rest (of the pack)
1. Other performances? Well, Sexy Sam – Amitabh Bachchan’s unlikely avatar in the film -loses no time in stripping the choti-moti ishq philosophy down to its bare, raunchy bones after the mohabbat of his life - his wife - dies, busily hitting on Baywatchtype firang babes in skirts (or less) and having the time of his life (ahem… kinky sex) in silky-satiny robes. Of course Karan Johar is without restraint in portraying this character and his many romps, as though he couldn’t believe his luck when the actor said ‘yes’ to this role, and decided to live out all his juvenile sicko fantasies of making the Big B descend to PervLand. However, despite all the stuff he is made to do and say, the actor proves why he is still the BEST of the pack.
2. Junior B is tailor made for Rishi, the child-man who only desires those choti-moti khushis which a Manhattan lifestyle affords the yuppie crowd, i.e. work hard, party hard, drink the occasional beer, flirt harmlessly, all while hopping around in designer clothes (and looking like a bootiful bunny in them). His character has all my sympathies. He did need a Saira Mohan more than a whiney, partypooper like Rani.
3. The Zinta girl is strangely muted in the film. A directorial restraint on showing off her dimples may have affected natural verve….came off as very plastic… despite getting to show her gig (twice!) on the dancefloor.
4. NYC and its burroughs (an important character in the film)… skyline, piers, ferries, east river vignettes, all done to death….NY seasons as metaphor (summer = happy, winter = sad, fall = transitioning)…. So what’s new?
Ekdum end mein…
KANK, in the final analysis, is a maha-mehnga and maha-lamba excuse for its lead players to traipse (and in one case, limp) around their happening town in happening designer wear. Manish Malhotra is credited for designing the clothes of the lead players but I am certain this is one of those phony cases of designing where the designer is hired simply to ‘source’ clothes from other (Western) designers. I am certain that Gucci, Pucci, Prada - Shrada, Fendi-Shendi, Versace-Wursoochi et al., are behind those clothes, bags, shoes, sunglasses, kachcha-baniyans (yes, even those) which KJ thinks will suitably bedazzle all of us non-designer folks. Sorry buddy, I liked Rakhi and Amitabh’s cheap fur-trimmed coats in Kabhi Kabhie (height of 70s fashion) better than all the haute couture and prêt-à-porter (to throw some fashion lingo around, though don’t ask me to pronounce either) on numaish here. Why? Simple, you see, Kabhie Kabhie had a story to connect with.
Salah-mashwara
A word of advice for KJ. Please stick to your candy-coloured and bubblegum flavoured brand of filmmaking . Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (corny title, Dada Kondke may have liked to filch it for one of his sleazeball flicks), and that mega-monstrously proportioned, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum, or even that exercise in idiocy – Koffee with Karan – where you enlightened us about WhoIsSheAmritaArora’s earth-shattering reasons for flitting from one boyfriend to another (I guess even caffeine can fail some people), are really what you, with your kitschy sensibility, are most suited to handle. KANK, your vapid exercise in ‘mature’ filmmaking, I’m afraid, was a very bad idea
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