When I recite my Father and after, the elation of its after, does not have comparison. Worldly wiseness, truths unspoken of, romanticism hitherto without experience, fulfillment on life looked differently but mostly correctly, an exuberance of modesty, the acknowledgement of reflected glory, the wonder and amazement of value to him, the body mine, the voice mine but soul his - did my Father truly believe that I was the incarnation of his own Father. A year after the passing away of Pratap Narain my grandfather, my Father dreamt of him one night. He felt his absence in his life, expressed it and was told by his Father to wake up for, he was coming back to him. Startled, my Father broke his dream and got up to find my Mother missing from the bed. She had gone to the wash room and had collapsed there through her labor pains. It was 11th October 1942, the day I was born !! In his auto biography there is vivid description of the incident and the belief in me being that reincarnation.

I would meet my grandfather almost everyday as I visited my Father’s study. For it was there that he was present adorning the frame that he was bracketed in, on the shelf above the fireplace in the room. While my Father wrote his biography, there were moments of great pain that he went through, reliving the struggle and poverty, death and disease of loved ones. There were intense and intimate details of his early years, some approved some not. I believe during the description of one of those moments, that photograph of his Father fell to the floor, on its own, without any provocation. The glass broke and my Father picked it up and placed the photograph back on the shelf, but never changed the broken glass. It was, he wrote later, an indication, almost celestial of his Father’s disapproval of an association of my Father’s, which he had strongly disliked. And there it remained on his shelf, in his study, as a constant reminder of the time when he had caused distress to his elder.

My grandfather was a simple man, but one that exhibited great integrity. During the independence struggle for the country from British colonial rule and the violence that sometimes erupted, despite Gandhi ji, an incident took place on the street where my Father and his family lived. A British officer had been slain and in retaliation the entire street had been cordoned off and every inhabitant of the street arrested and put in jail, with the rider, that confess who did it, or else all arrested shall hang. My grandfather was one of the innocent arrested and when no one came forward with a confession he volunteered to admit to the authorities that he had done it, so that the rest of the other innocent lives could be saved. Of course eventually the person who had done it was never caught or perhaps caught and these innocents were set free. But that was the caliber of his nature and character.

Those that have had opportunity to read my Father’s autobiography have been overwhelmed by its honesty and its style. They profess that his prose is better than his poetry and once started have found it difficult to put down. It is in four volumes titled - “Kya Bhulun kya yaad Karun”, a line from his poem - ‘what to forget and what to remember’, “Needh ka nirmaan”, another line from his poems - ‘building the nest’, “Pravaas ki Diary” a collection of the diary he kept when in Cambridge for his doctorate in English Literature and ” Dashadwaar se Sopaan tak”, from Dashadwar to Sopaan - Dashadwar meaning ten doors or openings, to Sopaan, the name of our house that I built for him in Delhi. Dashadwar has had mythic reference too and is the reference to his room and study in Allahabad at 17, Clive Road where he worked from. That room had ten openings - 4 doors, 3 windows, and 3 skylights. It is amazing how he noticed all this and related it to the mythological and religious connotations it had. And it is amazing how things of the past, and this is almost 60 years ago, remain remembered, for, I just counted the openings through my own memory of them this very minute.

His large working desk laden with books and papers. His pencils and other writing material neatly placed. The top of the table having a glass covering and below which, I still remember him putting, reminders of the monthly payments he had to make for his Insurance Policy. The table faced one of the main doors that opened out into the large verandah of the house where we played and sat and celebrated and watched the first showers of the monsoon after the grueling summer months of Uttar Pradesh. Those delightful days of limited means. Days which we relished because of the bucket full of the ‘chusni’ mangoes that we ate in dozens, not being able to afford the more quality ‘alphonso’ and the ‘langada’ mango, because of their exorbitant price. The ‘chusni’, which means one that could be sucked, was a small little fellow that you could finish in one big suck inside the mouth, leaving the seed or ‘guthli’ behind to throw away. A glass of milk thereafter and that was it. Our meal.

That study of his, from where he would seldom move away, laden with shelves of books and books and books. Magazines of important material, in particular, issues from the Theosophical Society in abundance - perhaps his keen interest of the occult, which eventually he studied when writing his thesis on WB Yeats and Occultism. That space in front of the desk, where we would often be made to stand and get reprimanded on a bad math result, or get punished for stealing one of his very delectable pencils without informing him. That space in front of his desk where he had sat and conducted personally the entire recitation of the Ramayan non stop, for over 24 hours in an Akhand Path, a penance a promise he undertook for the welfare of the family, or a member of it. I saw him do it twice and one of them was for me and I have tried in vain to someday redo the same for him, for his soul. Someday I will. Its a promise I must make to myself. That room ….

I have visited Allahabad on occasion, particularly so, when I fought my election to Parliament from there and have often driven passed 17, Clive Road, stopped by its side and reminisced those wonder days. We were in a quater of the house as tenants, there being four other. Today it belongs to one owner and he has maintained the lawns and the garden of flowers, one that were a passion with my Mother, in pristine condition. I have often made offers to him to buy the house now for the sake of posterity, but failed. The owner is an admirer too of my Father and says it is a privilege for him to be in possession of a house that housed Dr Bachchan and does not have any intentions of selling it. I have left it at that if not for anything else, at least for the reverence he holds for my Father. And I am comforted in that, the place is well maintained and kept, even if it does not belong to us.

There has been so much said today ! I should have restrained myself ! I had never expected that I would ever put all this down in writing and I wonder if I have made mistake. But I read again and again at the above and say to myself, but that is what it was, the truth. There is never any harm in sharing truth ! Is there ??

My love .. and my devotion to this extended family, one that I slowly but surely confide in ..

Amitabh Bachchan