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.

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