A gentle breeze was passing through the coastal town. The crowd around the temple premises had become thin. They are leaving. The Lord has retired. Am inside the iconic Guruvayoor temple in Kerala.
Inside, the tall ‘Kalivilakku’ (Oil lamp lit before the performing art in temple) is lit, its long wooden stem in stark contrast to its contemporaries, in form and design. Onto the right of the Eastern entrance of the temple, the ‘Valiya Mani’ big bell, comes live, the resonance telling, we have just two more hours to another midnight.
I sit, leaning on to the decades old motley pillar, stretching out my legs relieving it from the day’s odyssey. Few are sitting scattered around. It is ‘Vividha Vadham’ (Killing of Vividhan), one of the eight stories from ‘Krishnageethi’ that the Zamorin crown prince Manaveda wrote in the sixteenth century for Krishnanattam, the dance drama he created.
Krishna’s elder brother Balaraman is spending time with his wives when a ‘Chethukaran’, a toddy tapper brings him a mud
pot with country liqueur. With great benevolence he accepts the offering. We are entertained to his histrionics and at the end of it,
he consumes and dozes off. ‘Vividhan’, with its dark monkey face, symbolically embodiment of evil, comes and his pranks irritate the women (Am watching this on a women’s day. How audacious!). Seeing Balarama dozing, he gets emboldened, takes the mud pot on the sly and consumes the toddy asking around if anyone wants.
I deviate from the story here. His round bulging eyes sees me among the spectators and selectively pointing at me emotes whether I would like to have some? I look around. My better half privy to the information looks at me amused. I keep a sober face. How the hell did this character know I consume a spot or two on weekends?
Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor by Kabir Bedi
Isn’t it a general notion that within the glit and glamour, it's shallow and mostly all pretence? Definitely not an opinion I could hang onto after reading ‘Stories I must tell’ by Kabir Bedi. It for once revealed there could be people with depth and density who have exhibited a temperament for intellectual inquiry. Precisely what I felt when reading the book.
The hardbound three hundred and eleven pages book, published by Westland, opens up revealing a beautiful Indian for what he was and has been, a contemporary from the fringes of pre independent India. He is quite candid when he tell us how from a mediocre beginning he made it under the arc lights. Somewhere he says, one reason why he looked beyond the shores of India was because he wasn’t comfortable with some of the demands of Bollywood. But then we move on and read how he set screens ablaze and stages aflame elsewhere; Life was rocking. But that was not without punctuations of personal tragedies, which by contrast was too intense and damaging.
Quite often I see him transgressing the mundane, extending his thoughts seeking answers to his existential dilemmas as also getting analytic of his successes. He introspects, most often from the contemporary socio political stalemates.
Kabir’s opening in ‘Tughlaq’, even when it was a brave and innovative theatrical experiment equally marked his own unorthodox entry into a career in acting proving his versatility. ‘Stories I must tell’, though the narrative predictably absorbs the glamour considering who it is about, yet is not without well thought out philosophical musings. We see them in all its clarity when he says, 'what we do, or don't do has greater consequences than we imagine. Whatever I did in the past has got me to where I am today'.
Dolly Thakore, author of ‘Regrets none’ is testifying honesty of the narrative when she wrote, ‘In that one year in Delhi, we met the same people who later became ambassadors and ministers, and even a Prime Minister. We went for our All India Radio audition together.’ That takes me to the opening of the book, an interview of a ‘radically different’ music band he pulled off for AIR. Being a programmer myself with over three decades as staff, the experience and elation he must have felt at the time is something I could relate in all its entirety. And when he says how the recording was lost for good because somebody needed a tape very badly, I can’t but feel how obnoxious it must have been and believe me, this was not the first time it happened there. Yet, wasn’t this experience responsible for what we got from him today?’
Through the narrative we come to know of the various assignments which catapulted him to the world stage. From Bollywood to Hollywood. His fame in Italy. His receptivity in various parts of the world. Few are those Indians from the industry who have been able to amass that kind of adulation worldwide. But the tragedies in his life somehow or the other bulges in the narrative for the sheer pain they evoke. The losses had been dear and we can see how the wounds remained. They nevertheless offer insight into some lesser known facts. However, the narrative is not without its lighter moments.
Readability, the book is as affable as the persona it portrays and intermittently offers a glimpse into some interesting moments of his life, the photos speak for themselves. 'Arrivederci', is how he closes, meaning 'till we meet again'. Indeed that's the hope we harbour. The best maybe, is yet to come. And we, can't wait for it.
View all my reviews
Well, in retrospect, the positive side was I felt myself a part of the cast and the story. A guest role would be a more modern perception. How do I identify with it all, a participant and a spectator at the same time? Was there within me an abstract of all that was being unfurled before me? The goodness incarnate consuming toddy could be anyone. Balaraman has it all so formalised but the youthful mind can be fluttering at the very prospect of flirting around. Vividhan’s pranks are a common sight among those going bonkers after an indulgence these days. And yet, the righteousness of it all plays out at the end. Vividhan has to pay with his life.
The ‘Valiya Mani’ strikes once. I trudge back listening to an excited chatter on the divinity of it all by the better half. A short while later, as a deep slumber consume me, two large swollen eyes keep haunting. Vividhan, it appears, has no intention of going to sleep.
Has the world been always like this all the time?
Thursday, March 10, 2022
Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor by Kabir BediIsn’t it a general notion that within the glit and glamour, it's shallow and mostly all pretence? Definitely not an opinion I could hang onto after reading ‘Stories I must tell’ by Kabir Bedi. It for once revealed there could be people with depth and density who have exhibited a temperament for intellectual inquiry. Precisely what I felt when reading the book.
The hardbound three hundred and eleven pages book, published by Westland, opens up revealing a beautiful Indian for what he was and has been, a contemporary from the fringes of pre independent India. He is quite candid when he tell us how from a mediocre beginning he made it under the arc lights. Somewhere he says, one reason why he looked beyond the shores of India was because he wasn’t comfortable with some of the demands of Bollywood. But then we move on and read how he set screens ablaze and stages aflame elsewhere; Life was rocking. But that was not without punctuations of personal tragedies, which by contrast was too intense and damaging.
Quite often I see him transgressing the mundane, extending his thoughts seeking answers to his existential dilemmas as also getting analytic of his successes. He introspects, most often from the contemporary socio political stalemates.
Kabir’s opening in ‘Tughlaq’, even when it was a brave and innovative theatrical experiment equally marked his own unorthodox entry into a career in acting proving his versatility. ‘Stories I must tell’, though the narrative predictably absorbs the glamour considering who it is about, yet is not without well thought out philosophical musings. We see them in all its clarity when he says, 'what we do, or don't do has greater consequences than we imagine. Whatever I did in the past has got me to where I am today'.
Dolly Thakore, author of ‘Regrets none’ is testifying honesty of the narrative when she wrote, ‘In that one year in Delhi, we met the same people who later became ambassadors and ministers, and even a Prime Minister. We went for our All India Radio audition together.’ That takes me to the opening of the book, an interview of a ‘radically different’ music band he pulled off for AIR. Being a programmer myself with over three decades as staff, the experience and elation he must have felt at the time is something I could relate in all its entirety. And when he says how the recording was lost for good because somebody needed a tape very badly, I can’t but feel how obnoxious it must have been and believe me, this was not the first time it happened there. Yet, wasn’t this experience responsible for what we got from him today?’
Through the narrative we come to know of the various assignments which catapulted him to the world stage. From Bollywood to Hollywood. His fame in Italy. His receptivity in various parts of the world. Few are those Indians from the industry who have been able to amass that kind of adulation worldwide. But the tragedies in his life somehow or the other bulges in the narrative for the sheer pain they evoke. The losses had been dear and we can see how the wounds remained. They nevertheless offer insight into some lesser known facts. However, the narrative is not without its lighter moments.
Readability, the book is as affable as the persona it portrays and intermittently offers a glimpse into some interesting moments of his life, the photos speak for themselves. 'Arrivederci', is how he closes, meaning 'till we meet again'. Indeed that's the hope we harbour. The best maybe, is yet to come. And we, can't wait for it.
View all my reviews
Monday, January 31, 2022
It’s budget time once again. Time 11:26 AM IST. The Union Finance Minister is on air right now. Is India listening? Memoirs of another unknown Indian, he had dropped his impressions of another budget day; the presentation, the pub-caster’s broadcast and public reaction. ‘When Waves Fell Silent’, had all of it and more.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Yet another Republic Day…How good holds our ‘spirit of brotherhood’? How tolerant have we become? Violence and non-violence, hate and love…the scale tilts. I am saddened as a contemporary generation loath any compromise of their parochial interests. Does survival and sustenance happen at the cost of sharing?
Saturday, January 22, 2022
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Last night the notification just popped up. It was a pleasure going through the review of my work by bookGeeks. More because it had successfully come so close to what I had tried to say about #retirement ,public service #broadcast in the country and on the emotional travails of a transition. For a more detailed review do visit
https://lnkd.in/gqWffMbr
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
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A gentle breeze was passing through the coastal town. The crowd around the temple premises had become thin. They are leaving. The Lord has...
-
It’s budget time once again. Time 11:26 AM IST. The Union Finance Minister is on air right now. Is India listening? Memoirs of another unkno...
-
Last night the notification just popped up. It was a pleasure going through the review of my work by bookGeeks. More because it had successf...
-
Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor by Kabir Bedi Isn’t it a general notion that within the glit and glamour, it's sh...
