Groping for energy and a semblance of sanity, as I drive down to work, fills me with a sense of desired and unobstructed commitment to my work. Many though recommend and strongly advise that I desist from such bravado and not indulge in pushing limits at this age ! Others wonder how I am able to cope with it. Some even suggest I retire and relax and not be foolishly pursuing something that ideally should be left to the younger generation.

I am in agreement with all the points so generously brought upon me and I am equally humbled that so many give due consideration towards my countenance. My desire, or let me say my penchant for scheduled work is not about proving anything to anybody. Nor is it a defiance towards nature. My work schedule is modelled after what approvals my surroundings dictate. My surroundings are devoid of any great act of ‘ if I do this I shall be this’ or ‘by doing this I can better that’. Such suppositions never enter my thoughts. Or to be putting it more plainly such suppositions suffer from a certain degree of fear before they intend to encounter me. Fear not of reprimand or rejection, but that it is highly improbable that they would ever be allowed to be entertained. That is me. Pure and simple. Someone comes to me with a proposal. If my body and mind show acceptance towards it, there is immediate approval - the body for its physicality and the mind for its creative challenge.

However not always does the equation sit pretty on my shoulders. In most instances its quite the opposite. The body for the creative challenge, the mind for the physicality !! And I do not have to explain what the ultimate disastrous results, this lethal combination can and have produced !!

My dearest ones, my caring and loving FmXt’s, I am moved to great emotion on the concern you show and express about my circumstances, but you must know that nothing can better a man at his sincere best efforts towards his work.

” Thou shall earn thy living in struggle and stress and labor ” was apparently the sane admonition that Adam received from God, after he had bitten the forbidden fruit of desire. And ” thou shall bear children in pain ” was what Eve had to bear. Or words to that effect !

Irrespective of who said it, where and why, I do believe that the truth of this mythical admonition prevails and has prevailed for millennia. And if it has not undergone any change since, it is most unlikely that it shall undergo any change now.

My work will be laced with struggle and sweat and tears. This is a given. A given for all humanity. I am no different from them. And so shall I remain.

The National Park, a little beyond the region of the Film City is a protected area. It is green and wild and secluded. It was here that I worked for some early hours. The suns rays piercing the thick forest area almost gave a celestial feel to the early morning. And the deserted by lanes and tracks in the wooded realm, seemed out of place almost in this cemented jungle that prospered just a few yards away. I was engaging with Zen Mobiles, the phone company I endorse and with soft white feathers and a bench in the park and music systems that the sophisticated mini hand phones boast of in todays highly competitive market. Making a marketing tool for a product is such a fine and intricate job. Many celebrated minds and hands get involved so one can, within those 30 precious seconds, make a prospective buyer get up from his reclining chair in the comfort of his bedroom, walk out to the nearest mall and spend some serious money to buy it.

Every little move, or line spoken, or clothes worn, or lens used, has to succumb to the intense scrutiny of an entire panel of collected brain power, huddled around a monitor on set, deep in discussion and debate, whether a nondescript little feather that blows away in a shot, should have taken a plunge to the left of screen or not !!

Fortunately for me this morning, there was unanimous agreement in the path of the many feathers that I blew and we wound up rather rapidly, much to the consternation of a whole bunch of wild monkeys that had swung onto the location, wondering why these odd looking, jean clad humans had dared to trepass their protected territory !

My next stop soon after was inside a studio some distance. A place I had never seen before and one that housed a few floors, small but sacred in nature, for, they catered to mass produced daily Tv serials that the country’s 500 channels, ogre like, were consuming. And what a delight to have met up there with some of the veterans and some new entrants, who gushed with enthusiasm at having met me - a practice I must humbly admit does not often occur. With the passage of time and age, creativity and those that contribute to it in film, at times erases faster than the time taken to remove the make up on your face. Mine perhaps has taken a little longer to wipe away, but let us not forget that it shall one day be removed and cleaned beyond recognition. No doubts about that !!

More selling of Zen later, a reprieve and back home to the waiting ladies of the house - Abhishek being on his way now to New Zealand for the Abbas - Mastan film ‘Players’ the official rights bought remake of the much enjoyed ‘The Italian Job’.

And I …. shall be finding my way tomorrow to the land of Bhopal, the city of my wife, and now for whom I be the ‘jamai’ - the son-in-law !!

“Aarakshan” by Prakash Jha starts for me day after and I do look forward to starting work on this non stop schedule film which has been announced to release in August of this year 2011.

I struggle still with my head and my body. My body through the toil of jet lag, my head with the insinuations leveled at me, which drown every other questionable query towards its origin !!

Fear not my dear, and anguish not the cause and reason .. live in the belief that when the inside is clean, it shall always reflect that, which it contains …

Amitabh Bachchan