AB, Sans the CL

But please don’t judge this book by its cover. This huge tome is a gilt-edged love letter from Jaya Bachchan to her husband on his 60th birthday. Written in the late summer of their lives; it is now calm, much passion spent. And underneath the gloss—the photographs would make our women’s glossies look like Cinderella’s sisters on a bad hair day—the book is unrelentingly frank. A settling of accounts, an acceptance of reality and an affirmation of mature love. Here’s Jaya on her husband: "Romance in a marriage does not last for long but love lasts forever. From a lover he had become a husband and then a friend."

Yet again: "He has been loving always but there are moments when you need your companion by your side and he was not always there." (She is referring to when she was going into labour for their first child, Shweta, and he turned up late: angry, she had asked him to "Go away, I don’t need you now.")

The author of the book is the inimitable Khalid Mohamed—film critic-turned-editor-turned-film director. His assessment of Bachchan’s craft and career, as also his long, free-flowing interview with him, are insightful—though there are too many of the quirky Khalidisms and lapses into French phrases. Bachchan, however, has opened up as much as he can. Actually as much as he wants to: the actor seldom drops his mask. And if he does, it’s only because he has another one underneath.

The interview has many interesting nuggets, especially those about the actor’s childhood and early days. Apparently, Bachchan’s first hero, his "superman" as he puts it, was a fireman friend of his father who always "parked his engine outside the window". His fascination for acting began while he was in kindergarten: "I’d kid around constantly in the wonderland I had created for myself in my foolish head." Life was not easy growing up in Allahabad, a childhood in which getting a pair of new shoes upset the family’s limited budget and a four anna ticket to see movies (his first film was Flying Deuces) was not a given.

Particularly revealing is Bachchan’s articulate recounting of his early disappointments; these may no longer rankle, but they have not been forgotten. Whether it was wanting to excel in sports, getting into St Stephen’s, wanting to join the armed forces or the civil services or later being rejected for roles, disappointments were the order of the early days. Interestingly, Tarachand Barjatiya thought he could not make it as an actor because he looked like a poet. Mrinal Sen was equally unprophetic when he praised his voice (immediately, Bachchan did the voice-over in Sen’s first film, Bhuvan Shome), but felt he would never be an actor.

The book is not a biography. But it is certainly Amitabh’s life and work laid out in pictures (many of them candid, in one he’s even striking a Napoleonic pose with his hand on his stomach), interviews, letters, cartoons of him, poems he wrote while in hospital, portraits of him by artists, including M.F. Husain, and the testimonies of his wife, children and son-in-law. His children’s anecdotes are endearing, refreshingly frank.

Bachchan emerges as a particularly loving father, loving to the point of paranoia about their health and happiness, calling them even today to make sure that the AC draught is not on them directly. In hospital after he was gravely injured following his accident on the sets of Coolie, he told his startled children that the "wires and tubes" were merely "kite strings". Economical but generous with his advice to his son: "Look, acting schools are fine but remember Shakespeare and Stanislavsky don’t work here. Polish up your Hindi diction and learn acting on the job itself."

Shweta is quite frank when she describes the lows in her father’s life: "Bofors and ABCL were his lowest points.... He went into a shell.... No one had access to him. We would wait for Amar Singhji to come from Delhi so that he would open up and talk. It was only with him that papa would open up. He never shares his disappointments."

Despite the over-the-top gloss, this book is a must-read for those interested in peering through some of the enigma Bachchan has wrapped himself in. If only for the frankness from the guiding spirit of the book, his wife. "Our lives keep running on parallel tracks. He is so close, yet so far...he wants to be and not to be Amitabh Bachchan." To be the man or the icon, in other words.