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Satyam

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Bachchan — Day 26

DAY 26
Posted on: May 13, 2008 - 2:53 am

There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

  1. Moving post here…

  2. Very nice, I was waiting for this all day.

  3. Satyam says:
    May 13th, 2008 at 3:33 am

    This is one of your most moving posts and candidly the sort of thing I enjoy reading most on your blog — the personal, the intimate, the reflective, the nostalgic…

    I get a strong twilight sense from these writings of yours and it would be wonderful to see some of the same come forth in cinema by way of the right character and the proper role.

    I am reminded of a moment in Kabhi Kabhie that I consider to be the canonical one in terms of ‘nostalgia’ in Hindi cinema. The very summa of such representation in Bombay film. This occurs when you are re-introduced to Rishi Kapoor on the construction site by Shashi Kapoor as his (and Rakhee’s son). The father and son then start chatting and as they do their gregarious bits you are staring into space. At that point the entire meaning of the film, of the relationship your character has lost but nonetheless cherishes, is condensed into that brief scene. One can see everything passing through your eyes..

    It’s an extremely delicate moment from you and it’s of the kind that was less possible for you beyond the 70s because you lost ‘vulnerability’ to a great degree in the service of the ‘overman’. Not your fault entirely. Such is the logic of superstardom. Yours was in any case unique. But somewhere I have been the little child who has always insisted on those 70s milestones and has always guarded that legacy as nearly a personal fifedom that most enables the palaces of memory…

    That is the decade where Amitabh Bachchan always ought to be located as the most potent site of ‘meaning’ in Hindi film history. There is nothing more sublime in this cinema’s archives as sublime as the man who walks through dynamited rocks or the one who sits secluded with a telescope or even the one who works charmingly with galvanometers…

    All this and much more from that decade where those memory palaces constantly glimmer…

  4. Interestingly there’s been sudden spike in the numbers these last two posts. Both day 25 and 26 will cross 800 comments very soon. The last time he touched 700 was the day 18 post, the last time he crossed 800 was day 7 (in fact that one did 900).

    If you think I’m a sicko for tracking down this kind of number please feel free to say so. But of course you already should have known I was one!

  5. Satyam,
    One of your best comments above. Entirely agree.

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