Merry Christmas - Bachchans compared

Respected Brother,
Sadar Charan Sparsh,
I am here after some gap, my residence phone wasn’t working for two days now despite repeated booking of the complain, so no commnets on the eve or actual Christmas. Never mind, one knows the feelings and respect get communicated through the unknown line of communication in thought of someone you love dearly. I wish now in person, in black and white the very best to you for christams and the approaching new year. Yesterday, I got to see the superstar’s superlives on Zoom, I never got to see or knwo of Rohit Roy chat show which was mentioned in DNA sometime back. It was refreshingly good to get a reacpitualtion on your life this way.
I was busy with Dashdwar se sopan tak and now we are in the midst of the time and trials of your early Bombay life and the chaos and concern of your parents in moving over to Mumbai, of leaving behind what they had tresured in the 14 years of their existence at 13 Willingdon Crescent, of his love for his books and the management skills of Teji Bachchan, your mother to single handedly take care of various household things some of which was moved to Rajans in Banda ( not Bandra, where you had purchased a garage for some of the voluminous stuff!) That he still has to be on the move from Bombay to Delhi to Bombay was indicated by the author that it was not the last time that he had to switch places.

He has also described your first stint with movies with the Saat Hindustani, Reshma aur Shera, Anand and a long string of failures some despite the fact that Jaya ji was the co-star referring to Bansi Birju and Ek Nazar, the success of Namakharaam and later the Zanjeer when you decided to get into nuptial world with jaya ji, the event of marriage was the place where I last left the autobiography last night. Not able to fathom the words of shri Tarun Bhaduri who had been congratulated by Dr. Bachchan on his daughters marriage to you, he had said that his family had doomed! maybe he and family might have been the financial sufferer or so they might have had on mind! human mind is most curious to not to know how best to react to events of time in defined and desired manner. I think I personally had loved the thought of you marrying Jaya, we probably came to know of it only when we returned to Delhi from Port Blair.

There were times when I had shown and expressed my solidarity with you in no uncertain terms, especially at the service selection board of NDA interview at Bangalore in the summer of 1977, I had defended you by offering an argument to the Naval Captain that whenever a man reaches the top such false stories of association of his name to others are bound to happen, one can not take such allegations seriously.

There was also a lighter side of the interview. The dialogue had started with my reference to Dr. Bachchan’s poetry, I remember having said that Dr. Bachchan was a great favourite. The captain then asked what about his son Amitabh Bachchan and in a slip of a tongue situation, I uttered he too is my big fan! I swear he had busted into laughter and I knew it was going to be a big mistake. Never mind, it is difficult to undo even a slip of the tongue, one must be very careful before speaking! I did clear my SSB and was also declared medically fit. Only my position in the merit list did not land me to Khadakvasla and I have no regrets for not being there and nor do I regret my having passed my Civil Services exam and yet did not attempt the main exam in 1981, the year I came to Mumbai to join BARC to be trained as a nuclear scientist. I think most of all this is a repeat of what I had said of these events on my website. There is no harm in recounting and recapitulating such events more than once in life. I can now say that I still love you the most among the film fraternity yet the intensity could never be the same a it was between 1973 to 1981, the times that I spent in Delhi. More of it some other day.

I wish to reiterate here that I do have some plans to work on Dr. Bachchan, if time permits and the mental faculties support. I personally feel that translation of poetry is the most difficult and though the abridged translation of the autobiography by Rupert Snell exists ( I have not had an opprtunity to read!) I feel it is possible for me to do some translation of his autobiography for the benefit of larger section of the world who do not understand Hindi. I will approach you as and when I have some committed strength to attempt the translation, if someone has not already approached for the same! I know my literary english or Hindi may not be of that range and reach that I could undertake such an ominous task yet there is no harm in spelling out my desire to someone I consider my own brother!

Here for the benefit of the readers I may be allowed to add here that once Sumitranandan Pant seeing the palm of Child Amitabh had suggested to Dr. Bachchan that he is going to be thousand times more popular than himself! Not entirely true in the magnitude but symbolically I have no hesitation in accepting the fact that yes indeed you are far more popular than Dr. Bachchan. That I respect his achievements and find that he was far too creative in his own field than has been understood and accepted by us!

I think the post has been unduly long and I must take immediate leave of you and the others!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND BEST WISHES FOR A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!
Abhaya Sharma, India, Decmber 26 2008 10:30 Hrs IST