Bhartiya Gyanpeeth is a prestigious institution started by a business family to honor and respect and give value to literature and the arts in the country, especially in the field of writing and writers. Its annual function comes up tomorrow in Delhi and they have called me to be the Chief Guest, to give away the years Award to the famed Urdu poet Akhlaq Mohammad Khan ‘Shahryar’. An honor for me and a privilege. It is important for us all to be linked and be in close proximity to the classics. Arts music and literature of the purest kind have a world and value that can never be substituted or erased. Its purity shall always be acknowledged and revered because there really is no other of its worth. We may never be able to appreciate the completeness and the finery of its purity, but also we may never be able to be too far away from it. The finer arts shall always have a place in society. Their rhythm and thought is the closest one can get to the divine. Even the most cultured atheist shall acknowledged this. I hope ! You never can tell with those that have strong differing views .. they have their reasons, and they have sound ground for it, and so must be respected.

Spending time with the kids was a delight today. Abhishek recovering from his injury and Aishwarya. It was a delight to reveal to them the beauty of language and script and its rhythm and graph. The little that I have understood and gained from my association with my parents, needed to be passed on to the next generation. My Father as many know translated the Bhagwat Gita from its original sanskrit form into the language and graph of the Ramayan. It is a first of its kind and perhaps never been done before or after. The beauty of language in these two particular epics is the formation of the words in keeping with a given format of rhythm. Poetry without the presence of rhythm and rhyme is as disturbing or insipid as tasteless food. The Hindi Devnagri script is unique in a manner where what is written is spoken too, pronounced too. Once one knows the language it is not a difficult task to be able to speak it correctly. Hindi is one such language where perhaps the ease is greater, unlike say for example French or even English in many ways.

For actors and those in the profession of speech and performance it is essential to know the language first I have said many times. The performance and the acting shall come automatically once the language is spoken correctly, for, each language has the elements of a performance in it. There is a particular design and style in the manner in which a language is spoken. Learning a few words and its pronunciation is not enough. You have to know its basic style of being spoken. This is the practice that authenticates your knowledge of it. The tone has to be right first before the words start to fall.

This is what I believe ! I may have been utterly wrong in this .. but I think not …

More on what goes on in Delhi then later … for now …

Amitabh Bachchan