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An evening to remember

Sharmila Taliculam

Amitabh Bachchan. Click for bigger pic!

"Do you have a spare pass?" a well-dressed woman asks you. She sounds like she's pleading. You haven't, you say, and continue towards the gate of the National Gallery of Modern Art. More people step forward and importune you similarly. That's what Amitabh Bachchan does to people.

At the gate, there's enough security to give the prime minister a complex. You and your bags are searched at regular intervals and you wonder if the ferrets can snoop out that special hairpin you lost months ago. They don't.

"All this for one man?" Your colleague smiles superiorly and replies, "Of course. After all, he is an important man, a star..

With wife Jaya and son Abhishek. Click for bigger pic!

That he is. A man who rules with his urbane baritone, Amitabh Bachchan has this aura of power that, even in days when his frame looked gawky and gauche, pulled him through. And he was coming to the Dome Gallery to recite some poems by his father Harivanshrai Bachchan.

And rest assured, few in the audience were as interested in the poems as in the man who would read them. And no question, you too would like to hear that voice at close quarter, unhindered by tape and speaker tube. For the moment, only the tape is dispensed with.

There is a huge crowd for the show though there's 15 minutes still left for the recitation to begin at 6.30 pm. The invitees had come early to get the best possible seats. Photographers and cameramen trundle their bulky equipment around. And the security men who quietly reserved some seats for themselves right up in front. They are so protective of these that two policemen constantly tell exhort the inflow of scented, coiffed humanity, "Not this chair, please go back".

Click for bigger pic!

Slowly, people settle and the whispering and waiting begins. He comes in at 6.40, smiling his usual slow, apologetic smile. Clad in his standard kurta and churidar, with a shawl around him, he's flanked by wife Jaya Bachchan in a white lucknowi salwar kurta and his son Abhishek, his traditional outfit jarring a bit with the ponytail.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the deep baritone echoes through the dome and a hush descends.

Harivanshrai, 91, is frail and sick and so couldn't attend this event. And Amitabh says he was surprised he was asked to do the honours in Bombay. He wasn't certain if the people of Bombay knew of his father, and so he went on to provide a resume.

He smiles often as he talks of his father's years before each poem was written. Harivanshrai Bachchan's years as a child, his education at Cambridge University, his years as a freedom fighter, as a journalist... And, finally, Amitabh begins the reading.

Click for bigger pic!

And the fact that many of the words were beyond your ken did not worry you as much as it might have. For once his mesmeric voice had percolated slowly down through the crowd, Amitabh would wait a moment and translate them for those who might not have understood, getting completely involved despite his own ill-health.

The recitation lasts almost two hours. In between, Amitabh also talks about his father's autobiography and reads out stanzas that finally went into the famed Madhushala, a book of 135 couplets written from an alcoholic's viewpoint.

And finally, as the audience caught on to the meaning of each verse, they began chuckling, even laughing, while others cried Wah wah!, the traditional salutation to what is perceived as a fine Urdu shayri.

Your colleague leans over and asks, "Who says he isn't in form today"?

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Then his deep baritone drops into seriousness as he reads about the urban man rushing through life, the freedom fighter whose path all fire, even of the man who goes to a dancing hall and is pained to see a statue of Buddha placed there. His voice takes on the emotion latent in each poem, rising in anger and joy, dropping as the lines become more despondent. He is even acting the poems.

One man in the audience more adventurous than the rest asks the star to render in his voice a particular verse from Madhushala. The actor obliges. One woman even goes up on stage to recount how, when she went to Egypt, she was asked if she was from the land of Amitabh Bachchan.

And when the evening was over, the crowed surged around him and Jaya for autographs. He did it again. His persona took over and everything else was overshadowed. You watch him and think that this is probably one of his best performances. He is an actor all right. The best there is.

Photographs by Jewella C Miranda