mid-day's 42nd anniversary: Kabir vani in print

Kabir Bedi 75After several false starts with his memoir the actor began writing anew in March 2020 By the second lockdown in April 2021 Stories I Must Tell was out in storesWhile everyone in a certain sense is a writer the act of doing it consistently for work involves merely two things the late Khushwant Singh told a young Kabir Bedi once a put your phone away b commit to a block of timeOver the past decade Bedi 75 had been meaning to write his memoir with several false starts mdash discarding fully written chapters to the idea itself mainly because he was struggling with a narrative structure mdash ldquocouldnrsquot do a boring linear formrdquoIt was only once the pandemicinduced lockdown began in March 2020 that he could firstly follow the veteran Singhrsquos writing rules That is waking up with a cup of tea before the crack of dawn and remaining planted to his seat until 10 am mdash lightly working on the manuscript during the day and keeping evenings freeBedirsquos wife Parveen Dusanj ensured he was left alone to his marathon ldquoMany demands on a celebrityrsquos life were reduced anywayrdquo Bedi was ready with his first draft in six months flat And the book Stories I Must Tell was out in stores by the second lockdown itself April 2021 Publication usually takes longerKabir Bedi with wife Parveen Dusanj PicsAtul KambleBeing confined indoors bereft of social and professional engagements might anyway inspire introspection on life mdash in Bedirsquos case threequarters of a century gone by ldquoa life of both extreme success and adversityrdquo What helped him from wandering into multiple directions is the discovery of how he wanted to tell this story By compressing them into a series of anecdotal short storieschapters mdash that play out almost like screenplay with setting dialogue and conflict The resultant racy book starts off with Bedi interviewing John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison and Ringo Starr at the peak of Beatlemania when he chanced upon them as a reporter for All India Radio in Delhi But AIR didnrsquot give the interview any play so he moved to Bombay to try his luck in advertisingWhat follows is a cast of compelling characters in no particular order mdash from Mahatma Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi Gina Lollobrigida Fellini to Omar Sharif Countless other stalwarts fictional included Sandokan James Bond All associated with Bedi by a degree of separation Most of all Bombayrsquos lsquoJuhu Gangrsquo in the swinging rsquo60s mdash one of whom actor Parveen Babi became his longtime partnerBedirsquos writing desk faces the palm trees from the same Juhu building Beach House where he lived before moving to pursue an acting career abroad Hollywood thereafter London in the rsquo80s ldquoI always knew Irsquod come back to India some dayrdquo The book in a sense is also his lifecoming full circleWhat did he find most joyous about writing it ldquoReliving his freedom fighter parentsrsquo lives for the bookrdquo Bedi is paternally the direct descendant of Guru Nanak founder of Sikhism His father Baba Bedi was a communist who became a newage guru in Italy His British born Gandhian mother Freda Bedi rose to becomethe worldrsquos highest ranked Buddhist nunIt helped Bedi says that there are three books on Freda by Andrew Whitehead Vicki Mackenzie and Norma Levine Likewise his first wife danseuse Protima Bedi had written her autobiography mdash ldquoalthough from her PoV my story is as I saw itrdquo Itrsquos the chapter on the death by suicide of his son Siddharth ldquothat involved reopening wounds that had turned into scarsrdquoPerhaps cathartic too Also given darkness simultaneously setting into the world outside The book is subtitled The Emotional Life of an Actor Bedi texts back later ldquoThe Khushwant Singh routine I set for myself as a writer during the pandemic really helped me to cope with itrdquo