Amitabh Bachchan's Official Blog

DAY 1575

Jalsa , Mumbai Aug 10/11 , 2012 Fri/Sat 12 : 41 AM

When one is witness to good creativity, an emotion overtakes us that really is quite inexplainable. Just as a motivating song would give us a hair raising experience, it really is a physical phenomena to something that least adheres to us physically. I mean what we see is the physicality of someone else, but the reaction is of nature similar to us, who have had nothing to do with the aspect we talk of. That is quite remarkable. Perhaps it puts us into a mode where it completely absorbs us, to the extent of moving us physically. The power of such creativity must be immense, else it would never extend itself to such levels.

You are an audience to an orchestral piece from one that is a recognized legendary iconic master. You witness its interpretation in let us say, the form of a ballet. The music and the orchestra are physically played by accomplished musicians. The ballet is physically performed by incredible talent, yet it is you that watches this as an audience that has a physical reaction - a sigh of appreciation, a word of great acknowledgement, a nod or body movement signifying the beauty of what you behold in front of you !

Which is why the right and absolute tone is one that instantly connects you to the Almighty as it were, for, the purity of its performance could only be replaced by a force that would have to be at par with divinity - provided divinity is accepted as that ultimate force, since there are many that do not.

Be not in defiance of all that is moving in spirit and feel. Accept it for it has been developed through the genius of talent and dedication. Another had the power of conception and ingenuity, so that it could reflect in those that form the ‘other’.

If thou shall sit at the feet of that creative him that sleeps, you would stand to be noticed for imbibing greater, than him that sits at his head, simply because when he awakes his eyes will see you first than him that is behind. Bend then in subservient form to those that elder from you in whatever mode. Seek as it were the hand of blessing from the touch of feet that have trodden the path of life and learnt and knowledged themselves.

On the auspicious occasion of ‘Janamashtami’ - the day of the birth of Lord Krishna, the above narration shall strike chord within those that may have read the tale of him and Arjun.

In Maharashtra, they celebrate the day by performing the deed of ‘dahi handi’. An earthen pot filled with butter milk is tied high up in the sky and human pyramids climb up to traditionally break the pot and recover the gift enclosed inside it. Have a look. this one is in Thane where I was supposed to visit yesterday -

Mathura, that city of divinity and Krishna’s presence still reverberates with him. Many years past I had visited it with my parents when I was in University. The temples, the places of worship, Brindavan the garden of his play all exist there in its purity and heavenly ambience. The walled garden then was an astonishing experience. Young Krishna, that has been the image of godliness, crawling and his penchant for ‘maakhan’ - butter and milk and ‘dahi’, curds, in an earthen pot, have through time immemorial been symbolic of ‘nand gopala’. Inside the Brindavan garden, the trees are all bent down in reverence almost to the deity. Seasonally they shed their leaves dry up and fall for fresh ones to appear. But one tree has but a large leaf that never dries and remains as smooth as silk, even though all around wither. The tale goes that that is the leaf where the Lord Krishna after having feasted himself with all the butter and dahi, wiped his hands, and it has since remained, greased as it were - smooth and soft perpetually ! A corner of this garden carries a swing where Krishna plays with his ‘gopi’s’, his female friends. The swing is still seen there and each morning they find flowers strewn all about it - a left over of the previous night’s ‘raas leela’ …

The main idol of the Lord at a temple near by, is never exposed to the devotees for long - the temple ‘pujaari’s’ pulling the curtain behind which the idol rests in quick movements .. they say the eyes of the idol are so powerful that they have the capability of putting those that come to worship him, in a trance … one that is so forceful, that the devotee is reduced to sublimating in front of the Lord permanently ! The area in and around the city is strewn with destructed monuments and its ruins. Hostile invasions destroyed these edifices and much of the artistic stone work lies about without attendance - or did so when I was there many many years ago. The situation could have improved by now.

Driving away from the city, on a isolated roadside my Father found some pieces of stone work abandoned without care. We had picked up a few pieces and brought them home. They adorn Jalsa even now. Why my Father chose those two pieces remained a mystery for long. Until he told us. There is a figure of a lion on one, and on the other a fractured portion of the female form in sitting position. ’ The Lion and the Virgin’ - a reference to symbols used by that well known great Irish poet WB Yeats,in one of his works on whom he had done his doctorate in Cambridge in 1954. His dissertation being - ‘WB Yeats and Occultism’.

When he returned from England after completing his doctorate shorn of all his meagre means that he existed with in Cambridge, I asked him, then just turning 12 yrs old, what he had brought for me from England, and he handed me 7 drafts of his doctorate running into thousands of pages, written in his own hand, in pencil.

” My gift to you is this, my labor that I put in during the past two years “, were his compelling passionate words, which I still remember.

And what of my compelling passion … nothing at all, except to have the capacity to remember and to narrate the experience of his greatness ..

Good night .. and with love ..

Amitabh Bachchan