Eat, Pray, Love

Let's mark Diwali as a Festival of Lights, not a Celebration of Excess

My childhood memories of Diwali revolve around (no, not shopping, crackers or mithai) cleaning. Yes, you read that right: cleaning. As a child I rapidly came to recognize that the first sign that the Festival of Lights was around the corner was that industrial-scale cleaning would commence in the Goswami household.

Entire rooms would be cleared out so that they could be washed and swabbed and swept until the floor was clean enough to eat off. The 'special crockery' that lived in the cupboard all year long, and was never used for fear of breakage, would be brought out ceremonially to be given a good scrubbing before it went right back on the shelves. The silver would be polished, the bronze given a good seeing-to. And all the Gods and Goddesses that presided over the Puja room would be ritually bathed and clad in brand-new clothes.

All of this was, of course, a communal activity, with the entire household pitching in to do their bit. Even the kids who were too young to be of much help would be handed a dusting cloth and sent forth to do their best.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but it was enormous fun. So much so that even now, when the weather starts to change and the air begins to hint at Diwali, my thoughts go back to my childhood home in Calcutta and our annual Diwali clean-out. I flash back to the vision of all the household furniture piled up high in the verandah to be given a little lick and polish, while the rooms were flushed of the dust accumulated in corners over the year. Which perhaps explains why to this day, to me, nothing says Diwali like the smell of soap-suds and bleach.

Growing up, it was made abundantly clear to me that it was only after the house was squeaky clean -- and sparkling enough to pass inspection by Ma Lakshmi -- that the task of celebrating Diwali could begin.

Of course, it was a different Diwali in those days. For one thing, communities were more integrated, and not only did we know the names of all our neighbors, we also thought nothing of dropping in on them unannounced. In fact, we weren't just in and out of each other's houses, anybody who was around at mealtimes would be asked to tuck in as well (and even expected to help clear up!).

Not surprisingly, Diwali also used to be a more communal (in the positive sense) affair. Kids would pool their resources to buy crackers and then get together in the evening to set them off while the entire neighborhood watched. Card games were more laid-back, with low stakes so that nobody could lose a fortune no matter how hard they tried. And it was enough to take a box of mithai to the neighbors to wish them Happy Diwali; you didn't need to put together an extravagant hamper full of luxury chocolates, wine, whiskey or cheese.

But as you may have noticed, things are very different these days. Instead of a home-style festival focused on family, friends and feasting, Diwali has been turned into a celebration of conspicuous consumption.

On Dhanteras it is not enough to buy something useful for the kitchen. No, the ads tell us that it is imperative to splash out on some gold. It is not enough to just buy one new outfit for the Diwali day itself. No, you must invest in a whole new wardrobe so that you never repeat a dress as you make the rounds of the endless 'card parties' that precede Diwali. It is not enough to just light up the house with diyas on the day of Diwali. No, you must get garish lights hung on the facade of your house for weeks on end to properly get into the 'festive spirit'.

Well, even though I have made my peace with the modern, more mercenary Diwali, sending out and receiving hampers with the best of them (keeping up with the Junejas, as I like to call it) there are times when I find myself longing to go back to a simpler time. A time when Diwali was truly a Festival of Lights not a Celebration of Excess. A time when we worshipped the Goddess of wealth instead of just spreading our wealth around.

So this year round, I made a resolution. I would try my best to recreate the spirit of the Diwalis of my childhood and teenage years. Here's a tiny little sampler of how I went about it.

* No to electric lights. Yes to earthen oil-filled diyas with homemade cotton wicks. (If that seems much too fiddly to you, go with beeswax candles.)

* No to heavy-duty hampers that take in everything from macaroons to Darjeeling tea to premium champagne. Yes to eco-friendly gifts like potted plants which will flourish and grow rather than be consumed and forgotten.

* No to splurging on household goods that I don't need (and scarcely have the space for). Yes to taking a collection of goodies and presents to the local orphanage and seeing the kids' eyes light up.

And, on the cheerful note, here's wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali. Stay blessed.

The concept of consent

The Donald Trumps in all our lives simply don't get it

Like everyone else on the planet, I have an opinion on the US election. And yes, you're right, if I had a vote, it would go to Hillary Clinton. Because, you know, the other guy is a sexist, misogynist, self-confessed serial groper.

We all knew this stuff about Donald Trump anyway. So why did every woman across the globe have such a visceral response to his words on that infamous Access Hollywood tape? Why did they send a shiver up our collective spine? Why did First Lady Michelle Obama confess that it shook her 'to my core'?

Why did all women take the Donald Trump tape so personally?

Well, because all of us have had a Donald Trump rub up against us -- quite literally -- at one time or another.

The truth is that if you are a woman - no matter what shape, size or colour you may be, or where in the world you grew up - you will have come up against a Donald Trump at some point in your life. Or even several Donald Trumps at different points in your life.

The uncle whose 'cuddles' always made you feel uncomfortable as a child but you couldn't figure out why until you were all grown up. The neighbour who regularly brushed up against you on the common stairwell and didn't even bother to look apologetic. The faceless man who felt you up on a crowded bus, his marauding hands all over your body. The boys who stood at the street corner to shout out loud comments about parts of your body and what they would like to do with them. The work colleague always 'accidentally' touching parts of your anatomy that should remain inviolate. The boss whose eyes undressed you every time you walked into his office.

We have all known these men, these Donald Trumps, who feel entitled to grab a woman, kiss her, molest her, objectify her, treat her like a piece of meat rather than a human being. Because even in the 21st century, the medieval, feudal concept of 'droit du seigneur' -- the right of powerful men to make free with a woman's body without her consent -- is still kicking ass and grabbing female genitalia with complete insouciance.

What that Donald Trump tape did was to bring back to all women every buried memory of being violated, of having their bodily integrity breached, of being treated with disrespect, of being reduced to a sex object, of having sexual assault 'normalized' in social discourse. That was why it felt so personal.

Small wonder then that it inspired such Twitter hashtags as #NotOkay started by Canadian author Kelly Oxford, who shared four stories of her own experiences with sexual assault and encouraged other women to speak up. In less than a week, Oxford tweeted later, 30 million people had read or contributed to the #NotOkay stories while a million women had shared their stories over the course of one night alone.

But for every woman sharing her story, there were probably ten others who remained silent about past assaults on their bodies. And there was another Twitter hashtag that explained why: #WhyWomenDontReport.

Not that any woman needed that explained to her. We know all the myriad reasons women don't report sexual assault all too well: because we are embarrassed, ashamed, afraid of creating waves, terrified of being disbelieved, and mortified at the thought of being known ever after as 'that girl'.

It seems so much easier to just brush it off as just another drawback of being a woman in a man's world, to shrug it away as one of those things that women have to 'deal' with and carry on with our lives. Because if you started complaining about every such event, you probably wouldn't have the time or energy to do much else.

The more important question is why men commit sexual assault. Why do they feel entitled to feast on our body parts? And why do believe that they can get away with it?

Well the short answer is because they can. And they do. Time and time again. And one of the reasons they get away with it again and again is that women are too ashamed, too humiliated, too traumatised to call them out on it.

And because they know that even if we do, we will not be believed but blamed. What were you doing there? What were you wearing? Did you lead him on? How much had you drunk? Why were you alone with him? How come you were out so late at night? Why are you speaking up now? Why didn't you complain at the time? Why didn't you try to fight him off?

Why? Why? Why?

The questions pile up until the accuser ends up feeling like the accused. And she starts to believe that she would have been better off if she'd just shut up and put up.

Well, you know what. It is time to tell her that that's #ItsOkay to speak up. And to listen hard when she does.

Face off

Why the unmasking of Elena Ferrante makes us all so uncomfortable

It was in the February of this year that I last wrote about Elena Ferrante. The English translations of her books were being launched in India, and it seemed as good an opportunity as any to write about one of my favourite authors.

The central theme of that column was how it helped that we didn’t know who Elena Ferrante actually was when we got lost in her fictional world. And how the author’s decision to hide behind pseudonymous anonymity was not just a writer’s caprice or a brilliant publicity stunt set up by her publishing house. Ferrante’s anonymity had a purpose: it allowed her the freedom to write about stuff that we struggle to acknowledge to ourselves, let alone say aloud to the world. And it was this liberty that allowed her voice to soar as high as it did; and to speak to the rest of us.

Well, today it is my unhappy duty to inform you that the veil of anonymity that Ferrante wrote behind has been rudely ripped apart by an ‘investigative journalist’ called Claudio Gatti, who discovered her true identity or, more accurately, invaded her fiercely-guarded privacy by rummaging through her financial and property records. And that he ‘outed’ the author in no less authoritative a journal than the New York Review of Books.

Well, be that as it may, I am not going to play Gatti’s game. I am not going to refer to the author of the Neopolitan Quartet of novels as anything other than her chosen nom de plume, Elena Ferrante. That is how she wishes to be known to the world. And it is not for us to decide otherwise.

Nor is it necessary to know the ‘real’ woman to appreciate what an enormously talented writer she is. That kind of autobiographical detail actually detracts rather than adds to an author’s mystique. The relationship between a writer and a reader is essentially one of imagination and a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. Sordid reality plays no part in this social contract. If anything, it takes away from the reading experience rather than add to it.

So I, for one, am not going to enquire too closely into who Elena Ferrante ‘really’ is. I don’t want to know where she grew up. I don’t care about her romantic life. I am not interested in whether she is married, divorced or single. It doesn’t bother me if she identifies as straight, gay or bisexual. And I certainly don’t need to know whether her political beliefs verge to the hard right, the liberal centre, or the extreme left.

This is not a decision I make lightly. No, it is a decision born of bitter experience. Over the years, I have lost count of the number of authors whose books stopped speaking to me when I found out too much about their personal lives or even political beliefs.

It all began when I made the decision to study English literature in college. Once I had signed up, it was not enough to just read texts – poetry, prose or drama – and appreciate them for what they were. No, we also had to learn about the author’s, their lives, their beliefs, and all that had influenced them in the course of their literary careers.

Well, given that I was the bookish, nerdish type, I entered into the enterprise with all the enthusiasm at my command. I had no idea how badly this would go.

It began with T.S. Eliot, a poet I had always admired, some of whose passages constantly played in my mind like the lines of a much-loved song (“I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”). So you can imagine my despair when my research into the person led me, somewhat inevitably, to the discovery that he had been something of an anti-Semite.

I thought I would be okay with Philip Larkin, the writer of such immortal lines as “Sexual intercourse began in Nineteen Sixty-Three (which was rather late for me). Between the end of the “Chatterly” ban And the Beatles’ first LP”. And yes, it all seemed to be going rather well until the 1992 publication of The Selected Letters of Philip Larkin.

That’s when the essential banality of Larkin’s existence was laid bare, with its judicious mix of racism, classism, sexism and misogyny. Sample quote: “The lower-class bastards can no more stop going on strike now than a laboratory rat with an electrode in its brain can stop jumping on a switch to give itself an orgasm.” Ah, quite.

Since then, I have steered clear of getting too up close and personal with writers I admire. But I thought I was on safe ground when I picked up a biography of one of my girlhood favourites, Georgette Heyer. This was a woman who had made her reputation with Regency Romances that I had read so often that I knew the punchlines and plotlines of each by heart. And what do you know? She turned out to be a fan of Enoch Powell (yes, he of the “rivers of blood” fame)!

So, thanks very much, but I am not taking any chances with Elena Ferrante. All I need to know about Ferrante, the author, lies within the covers of the many books she has written. Everything else belongs to the private person behind that name; and that person is entitled to her privacy, keeping it safe from the rapaciously prying eyes of the world.

  

Splitting image

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt provide us with the perfect example of how not to conduct a divorce

Remember the time when Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin issued a joint statement on Paltrow's website, Goop, to say that they were 'consciously uncoupling'? Oh, how we laughed!

'Conscious uncoupling'? Seriously? Which asinine psychiatrist came up with this particular bit of psychobabble? And what on earth did it mean?

Well, in the 'uncouple's' own words it meant that though "in many ways we are closer than we have ever been" they had come to the conclusion that "while we love each other very much we will remain separate". And so while they would still co-parent their two children and remain a family, they had decided to end their romantic (and sexual) relationship. 

At the time  Paltrow did not know the originator of the phrase, American psychotherapist, Katherine Woodward Thomas, who would go on write a book with the same topic (Conscious Uncoupling; 5 Steps To Living Happily Even After), telling the world about her "proven process for lovingly completing a relationship that will leave you feeling whole and healed and at peace". According to Thomas, a divorce doesn't need to be a painful, bitter experience. Instead, we should treat it as an opportunity to turn our pain into "a catalyst for making a breakthrough in the way you show up in your life … and in your next relationship".

Nevertheless, Paltrow and Martin incorporated these lessons into their pre and post-divorce dealings. And as a result, they -- and their children -- have come through on the other side relatively unscathed. They still holiday as a family, they introduce each other to their new partners, hell, they even go together to award nights (Paltrow used one such occasion to praise Martin as the best dad ever). 

So, guess who's laughing now?

I was reminded of this as the car crash that is the Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt breakup unfolded in front of a fascinated world. It was as if the two of them had taken cognizance of the principles of 'conscious uncoupling' and decided to behave in the exact opposite way.

First off, there was no joint statement. In fact, it wasn't even a joint decision. Jolie blindsided Pitt by filing an hour before the court was about to close (and after the glossies had closed their pages). Pitt had known that his marriage was in trouble, but was completely unaware that he was in for the chop so soon.

Jolie said in her statement that she had taken this painful decision for "the health of the family". Pitt countered by asking for privacy because this was a tough time for their kids, who were his first priority.

So far, so intriguing. 

Then came the leaks. Camp Jolie maintained that Pitt had a problem with alcohol, marijuana and anger issues. He had been abusive to his eldest son, Maddox, on a flight from France to America. He could not be trusted with the kids so Jolie was asking for sole physical custody. 

Camp Pitt insisted that Brad had just 'yelled' at his son. And he was cooperating with the authorities on the charges of child abuse, confident that he would be cleared. Once that happened, he would fight for joint custody. 

Meanwhile Jolie moved out of the marital home with all six kids into rented digs (which, it turned out, she had arranged long before the plane incident) and cut off all contact with Brad, blocking all his phone numbers and denying him access to their children. Amidst all this, there were suggestions tossed into the media that Pitt had cheated on Jolie with co-star Marion Cotillard (denied by all parties) and that Angeline herself was being 'consoled' by Johnny Depp. 

And before you could say 'pre-nup', the Jolie-Pitt divorce had turned into the stuff of tabloid dreams, a public spectacle that left the whole world gawping and gasping.

Needless to say, break-ups of lesser beings like us would not unduly trouble the world like this one did. But nonetheless, we can learn some lessons from the Jolie-Pitt divorce from hell:

* Keep private stuff private: When you are angry and hurt, you want to lash out at your partner. You want to tell the whole world how terrible he/she was and how miserable you were in the marriage. Well, take a deep breath and don't. If you can't do that, then keep your moaning within a circle of trust. The entire universe doesn't need to know your business.

* Don't use the children as pawns: No matter how much you loathe your spouse, don't let that hate percolate down to the kids. They need both parents in their life; they need to be able to love both their mother and father. Be sensitive to their needs. And never ever allow them to believe (as Maddox probably does) that the divorce is somehow their fault. They are probably blaming themselves anyway. Don't make it worse.

* Don't cut off all lines of communication: If you can't bear to talk directly, then communicate via a go-between whom both of you trust. Because just as you got into this marriage together, you have to negotiate the choppy waters of divorce together as well. And a modicum of civility will ensure that you come out whole on the other side.

* Take a leaf out of Paltrow and Martin's book and give 'conscious uncoupling' a chance. It's really not as daft as it sounds.

Neighbourhood watch

Not only are we not the same people, Pakistan and India seem to inhabit parallel universes these days

As a child (and grandchild) of refugees from what is now Pakistan, I was weaned on tales of the halcyon days of our  pre-Partition life. Needless to say, all these stories had a certain fairy-tale element to them, recounted as they were through the prism of nostalgia. 

My grandmother, who had grown up in the North Western Frontier Province, never tired of recounting the many military victories the men of her village had been part of, the reminiscing growing bloodier with each retelling. And my grandfather, without fail, would point out with a sneer that while these men may have been brave they were also rather stupid. 

Why? Because when the British granted them one wish after one such spectacular victory, guess what they asked for? 

No, they didn't think it was important to get drinking water to the village where women still had to trudge to the river to get supplies for their families. Oh no, that would have made too much sense. So instead they asked that a cannon be installed at the entrance of the village because then everyone would know what brave warriors they were!

My mother's memories revolved around large bungalows with sprawling gardens where she and her five siblings would run wild. They took particular pride in infiltrating the houses next door and stealing mangoes off their neighbours' trees without ever getting caught (a theme that resonates even now in the India-Pakistan story). And what do you know? The mangoes were always sweeter on the other side. 

Of them all, only my father managed to salvage something of his pre-Partition life. He stayed in touch with the best friend of his college days in Lahore. And every year, we kids would look forward to Masood Uncle's annual visit to Calcutta. He timed his visit around Eid so that his wife could spend time with her family in the city and his kids could get to know their Indian cousins. 

Given these circumstances, it was only natural that I would grow up thinking of Pakistanis as people who were just like us. To me, they were not The Other. They were just like Masood Uncle who came to visit us laden with gifts and uncomplainingly ate the vegetarian food served by my grandmother's kitchen (which remained an onion and garlic free zone till she died). They spoke the same language (Punjabi) that we spoke at home. They wore the same kind of clothes. Hell, they even looked like us, if just a little bit fairer and prettier. 

After the Masoods departed, I would often daydream about the time when I would go to Pakistan. When I would get to walk down the street that bore my family name. When I would explore the rooms of the house we had left behind. When I would get to revisit all those haunts that my parents talked about incessantly: Shalimar Bagh and Lahore Fort (from where Maharaja Ranjit Singh ruled Punjab) to name just two. When I would be able to get in touch with my roots. 

Well, as it turned out, I did get to go to Pakistan once I had grown up, as part of the media party accompanying Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee on his historic bus journey across the Wagah border to Lahore in 1999. But sadly, this was not the Pakistan of my dreams, the Pakistan in which I believed I would fit right in, the Pakistan that would have seemed a home away from home.

Instead, from the get go, I felt like an outsider. Yes, everyone did speak Punjabi. But it was littered with so many high-flown Urdu words that they may just as well have been speaking a foreign language. And when my colleagues were introduced to some of the Pakistani media corps, they were completely befuddled by their names, trying them out gingerly as if expecting them to explode in their mouths. You see, one of them explained to me, they had never heard these 'Hindu names' before (my name they had no problem with, because it was also a Muslim name). In fact, none of them had even met a Hindu before, so we were like an exotic species which provoked both curiosity and wariness in equal measure. 

This was not the Pakistan of Masood Uncle, who had had emotional and familial ties to India. This was a new Pakistan that had no fond memories of the pre-Partition days. This was a Pakistan that identified with the Islamic Middle-East rather than with 'Hindu' India. This was a Pakistan that regarded Indians (read Hindus) as The Other. This was the Pakistan that had been brought up to regard us as the enemy.

Clearly, we were no longer the same people. And frankly, looking back, I had been foolish to imagine that we would still be. 

But over the last couple of weeks, as the Uri attack has dominated the news cycle, and various Pakistani talking heads have popped up on prime time Indian news TV, I have come to realize that, far from being the same people, we actually occupy parallel universes. And while we live in a world in which Pakistan is a failed state which uses terror as an instrument of state policy, in their world-view India is an aggressive neighbour, who bullies and terrorizes its own people and then blames Pakistan for it.

No matter how much we try, it is hard to see how we can reconcile these two positions. And so we are doomed to conducting an eternal dialogue of the deaf, talking at, rather than to, each other.

The Superwoman complex

It’s time to make sure that a new generation of women doesn’t fall prey to it

Having it all. It has become such a cliché, hasn’t it? Growing up, that was the phrase that was thrown at us all the time by our female teachers and mentors. They may not have had it all, held back as they were by the constraints of a highly patriarchal, traditional society. But my generation could change all that. We could grow up to fully rounded lives, with flourishing careers, well brought up kids, happy families, and perfect homes.

Oh yes, we could achieve all this – and more. We just needed to fix our sights on our life goals, keep a razor-sharp focus, be prepared to work harder that we had ever thought possible and we would be rewarded by the Golden Grail called ‘Having it all.”

Since we didn’t know any better, we fell for that spiel. So, we played by all the rules. We worked hard. We aimed high. We did our best at the workplace. We tried to run model homes. We dutifully helicoptered around our kids. We stayed in shape. We went on ‘date nights’ with our spouses. We looked after elderly parents and grandparents.

And we tried – oh God, how we tried! – to tell ourselves that we did ‘have it all’.

It was only after our bodies began wilting under the combined pressures of sleepless nights, early mornings, long days at work, punishing fitness regimes, endless hours at the stove, and the relentless demands of childcare that we realized that we had, in fact, been conned.

We didn’t really ‘have it all’. What we had was the dubious privilege of ‘doing it all’.

But even after that realization dawned, were we willing to give up on the ‘having it all’ dream?

Not a chance. The conditioning of a lifetime is hard to overcome. So, we pushed through the bone-breaking exhaustion. We struggled to overcome our guilt about not paying enough attention to our jobs/children/spouses. We doubled down on trying to create a ‘work-life balance’. And, in the process, we created the cult of the Superwoman.

I am sure you’ve heard of this mythic creature. She excels at everything she puts her mind to. She is the quintessential Career Woman. She is the archetypal Earth Mother. She is the sexy smoldering girlfriend. She is the devoted wife (who can also do sexy and smoldering on demand). She is the perfect daughter/daughter-in-law. She runs an impeccable home. She can run in stilettoes. And she can do all this while looking like a million bucks (which, of course, she has earned herself).

We may have come a long way from when legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown popularised the phrase ‘having it all” in 1982 with her bestselling book, Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money…Even If You Are Starting With Nothing. But the phrase still exerts an insidious hold on our minds. And it is exacting an unacceptable toll on both our bodies and our minds.

I was reminded of this yet again last week when I met an old friend for coffee. No, she couldn’t take time off for lunch, even though we had so much to talk about. She could only manage a hurried coffee before she disappeared right back into the swirling vortex that was her life.

Sample this: a typical day in her life. She wakes up at 5.30 to fix breakfast for the family and send the kids off to school with their tiffin. There’s barely enough time for a quick shower before she sets off for work. She works in a large corporation where eyebrows are raised if you come even 5 minutes late – but you are treated as a laggard if you clock out at 6. She gets back home around 8 pm, dead tired, with barely enough energy to eat dinner, let alone make it. And she does this six days a week.

In this, she is far from atypical. Most women of her generation are doing the same insane juggling act, with more balls in the air than they can possibly keep in play. And the saddest part of this scenario is that they believe – despite all evidence to the contrary – that this is the only way to get the most out of life.

Well, if you ask me, we have allowed ourselves to run ragged (in high heels, natch) for far too long. And we have paid the price for it in flagging energy levels, constant guilt, and the feeling that somehow we are still failing.

But while it is too late to save us, it may be time to cut the next generation of women a little slack. Yes, yes, I know that they’re supposed to Lean In and all that (thanks Sheryl Sandberg!). But sometimes it makes sense to lie back as well, and take stock of your life.

Perhaps it is only when we grant ourselves a little down time that we get to understand that there is only one way in which you can really ‘have it all’ – by not having it all at the same time.

So, let’s not burden our daughters with the weight of expectations that we carried on our shoulders. Allow them to make their own rules. Let them choose between family and career if they want to. Give them time off after babies to enjoy motherhood; but provide them enough opportunities to get back on the career track after a break. Encourage them to choose husbands who support them at home and work. And don’t let them feel guilty for putting themselves first on occasion.

Let’s change the meaning of ‘having it all’ for their generation. And let’s quietly kill off Superwoman while we’re at it.

Shooting star

The story of Rekha continues to fascinate us; but the woman herself remains a mystery

I first encountered the glamorous world of Hindi cinema when I was around eight years old. It happened thus. We had set off on a picnic with family and friends to the Botanical Gardens in Howrah. As we headed for our usual spot under the overarching banyan tree, we saw a flurry of excitement just off to the right. There was a small crowd gathered, held behind a roped-off area by a posse of policemen.

How could we possibly resist? We veered off from our normal route to check out what was happening. "Shooting cholche," explained one excited man, while everybody around shouted "Omeet da, Omeet da!"

The 'Omeet da' in question was none other than Amitabh Bachchan. There he sat on the top of a tiny hillock, a white towel arranged around his neck, checking out his reflection in the mirror held up by one of his assistants.

But my eyes swept past him to zero in on another figure: a statuesque sari-clad lady standing in the shade of a tree, her eyes fixed -- like the rest of us -- on Amitabh Bachchan. Even as a child, I could sense the intensity of that gaze, even though I couldn't really make sense of it. Who was that woman, I asked my sister. That was the heroine of the movie. Her name was Rekha.

I hadn't yet been exposed to the pleasures of Stardust or Cine Blitz, so I had no idea about the rumors swirling around the lead actors of Do Anjaane (the shooting of this movie was apparently when their affair started). But as we persuaded them to pose for a picture with us, and the two of them stood together in the middle of our little huddle, it was Rekha I couldn't take my eyes off.

She was simply the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on in my short, uneventful life. Her hair pulled tightly back from her face, her heavily-kohled eyes sparkling like two jewels, her bow-shaped lips a perfect study in red, she was a vision for the ages. But why, I wondered from my vantage point of somewhere around her knees, were her hands five shades darker than her face?

We soon wandered off to have our little picnic, but the image of Rekha stayed with me. The next time I raided my mother's make-up bag, I used her red lipstick to curve a bow-string around my mouth as well. Needless to say, that did not make me look like Rekha.

But our paths were to cross nearly two decades later. By then I was a journalist, working with Sunday magazine, and Rekha was one of the brightest stars of her generation. So, you can imagine the consternation when she married an unknown Delhi businessman called Mukesh Aggarwal, who then committed suicide seven months later, hanging himself from a fan using Rekha's dupatta.

As stories go, this couldn't get any bigger. And I was put on it to provide the Delhi input.

My first interview was with Mukesh's therapist and friend, Akash Bajaj, who lived in a tony colony in Delhi. It took some persuading to get her to talk but she finally relented. As I was ushered into her dimly-lit drawing room and laid eyes on her beautiful but drawn face, grief etched deep into every perfect feature, I realized in a flash that while Rekha may well have been the wife, I was now face-to-face face with the virtual widow.

Bajaj's pain was impossible to fathom; her dignity almost unbearable to watch. And as she spoke, her voice straining under her sorrow and bewilderment ("All I want to ask is why?") the idea of Rekha that I had carried in my head began to take an altogether uglier shape.

Of course, everyone knew even then that Mukesh Aggarwal had been a chronic depressive. And that it was nobody's fault that he had decided to end his life. But in moments of anger and anguish, it is only natural to lash out at somebody. And Mukesh's family and friends lashed out at Rekha, the woman who had 'bewitched' him and then cruelly abandoned him to his fate.

It was after that episode that Rekha turned into the recluse she is today. Walled up behind the gates of her bungalow, her only link to the world appears to be her long-time secretary, Farzana, who, bizarrely, always dresses like Amitabh Bachchan (circa 1980s) whenever she escorts the actress to public events. Even the new biography of Rekha published by Juggernaut is based on interviews with people who know her. Rekha herself remained incommunicado during the entire process.

Speaking for myself, I only saw Rekha in the flesh once after that childhood encounter. We were both leaving an awards function in Mumbai, waiting for our cars to arrive. Not wanting to stare goggle-eyed like everyone else on the porch, I just risked a sidelong glance. Her kohl-rimmed eyes still shone like jewels but her skin was stretched tight as a drum, so much so that those bow-shaped red lips could no longer relax naturally into a smile. Rekha was now the caricature of the woman she had once been, with her rictus grin, her immobile forehead, and paper-thin skin.

Only one thing hadn't changed. Her hands were still five shades darker than her face.