Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan's much-celebrated Hindi autobiography
Today happens to be the 114th birth anniversary of the great poet and writer Harivansh Rai Bachchan. I met him once nearly 40 years ago; 39 to be precise. It was not by design but by a wonderful happenstance.
It was in the forecourt of his superstar son Amitabh’s bungalow ‘Pratiksha’ in Juhu. The year was 1982. He was nearly 75 and I 21. I mention our ages because it is relevant to a point I am about to make.
Already a giant of Hindi literature and poetry for decades by the time I met him, Dr. Bachchan was pacing somewhat anxiously in the compound when I reached that 1982 morning. For a young journalist then working for the Free Press Journal access to people of consequence was not as rigidly controlled in those days as it is now. In fact, Gopal Shetty, the excellent news photographer for the paper, and I were the only media presence.
I have written about the primary purpose of our being there several times before. It was in the immediate aftermath of a near fatal injury that the actor suffered during the shooting of the movie ‘Coolie’ directed by Manmohan Desai. A faux film punch by Bachchan’s fellow actor Puneet Issar actually landed square in the superstar’s stomach because of a bit of a misstep. That punch must have ruptured things inside Bachchan’s stomach.
The news of Bachchan’s life-threatening injury and hospitalization cast a nationwide gloomy spell. There were prayers offered in shrines across the country for his speedy recovery and people followed the progress of his surgery at the Breach Candy Hospital and subsequent convalescence at his home with unflagging interest. In those pre-Internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, mobile telephone days newspapers were the only source of information. That I worked for one in Bombay, the Free Press Journal, and lived not too far from him put me in the middle of the story.
Among the millions who found their own ways to join in the sort of a national get-well Amitabh Bachchan movement was a resident of the city of Vadodara in Gujarat. His name escapes me but he is the one to the actor’s immediate left in the photo above with a garland around his neck. He ran close to 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) backwards in the hope that it would turn the clock back to a time before the accident when the actor was in perfect health. The core idea of the Vadodara runner was not that different from Christopher ‘Superman’ Reeve orbiting around the earth in the opposite direction to slow the planet down. Or to put it in a techie’s jargon, think of it as your PC’s restore point, a point just before it crashed.
Actor Amitabh Bachchan (Center) at his bungalow ‘Pratiksha’ in Bombay in 1982 recuperating from what was believed to be a near fatal injury during a movie shooting. The boyish person to Bachchan’s right, holding a pad and smiling is Mayank Chhaya. I was talking to Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan to my right but he is not in the frame. (Pic: Gopal Shetty)
While waiting for the runner to reach, I chatted up Dr. Bachchan. He could tell that I was a very young man but betrayed none of the condescension that is often typical of senior, learned Indian men of great standing. He was remarkably attentive and indulgent even in those trying circumstances. I remember the conversation was mostly about his son’s health and the nation’s response to it. He seemed overwhelmed by what was unfolding. Soon after that the runner reached the bungalow and was ushered in. He was introduced to Dr. Bachchan as we all waited for the actor, in frail health, to come out and meet the runner. That’s when Dr. Bachchan turned to me and said something to the effect that it was acts of faith such as the one displayed by the runner that had saved his son’s life. I could see tears welling up in the poet’s eyes.
As Gopal took some photographs of the superstar with the runner, whose name escapes me now, I kept talking to Dr. Bachchan whose formidable reputation as a poet I was generally aware of. Since that was not the occasion to talk poetry, I asked him how he viewed his son’s insane fame and the way it warped reality around him. Yes, those were my exact words: “insane fame” and “warped reality around him.” He looked at me closely and said, “Big words for a young man. Fame is ephemeral,” he said, smiled, patted on my shoulder and went back inside the bungalow.
I had not written about the last bit of exchange before because I wanted to keep it for my memoir. I am choosing to use them here because everything is ephemeral after all.
