APOLOGIES !! APOLOGIES  !! AND HUGE AMOUNT OF REGRETS AND SORRY’S !!

My act last night on the blog was just sooooo embarassing ! My desire and my penchant to not connect every single day of my life with my dear and loved Ef, provokes and pushes me each day to write .. but last night Diwali finished very late .. indeed it was still on when I sneaked up to write to you and simple passed out due to lack of sleep ! What reads on the blog is just some incoherent and completely irreverent and irrelevant nonsense. This what I write now is to compensate and replace the error .. do forgive me !!

I will not change the mistake though ! I shall not erase the Blog of last night ! May it remain as a reminder of my folly. I am human after all and prone to many such.

Diwali is always an open house. People come without any formal invitation, it is a custom that we explore for all our festivals. Festivities are for the coming together of like minded friends and well wishers, and last night we came to know how gracious our friends and guests are. Many came, many for the first time and I would like to believe that they spent time with us in the spirit of camaraderie and celebration for a festival that encourages brotherhood, friendship, prosperity and well being for all.

Jaya, as always the initiator of such events, decorated the place in her most artistic and inimitable style. The house looked wonderful. As it did at the time of the ‘godh bharai’ for Aishwarya ! Traditional decorations are a weakness for me. I simply love the ‘mogra’ flowers, the ‘bela’ and the lamps and lights in the live diyas, unlike the artificial ones often used these days. At a function recently the traditional lamp lighting ceremony before the start did not have the oil and wick diyas. They were replicas of them wired to an electric current !! Looked odd, but there you are ! However .. later, the management told us that any live flames are banned now in auditoriums, especially in the one where we were, as a fire hazard – the venue having been gutted as a result of a fire not too long ago. Understandable and correct too !!

So another Diwali goes by. Another New year as per the Hindu calendar begins. The prayers and the religious pious remembrance towards the book of accounts, the matters that deal with money, the safe the registers that deal with invoices and all matters concerning finance are all brought out in front of the Goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and Her blessings sought for prosperity ! Much like during the day of Dussehra when evil is destroyed by the killing of Ravana by Ram, all the weaponry, the guns and swords that are personal acquisitions are brought out in prayer and blessed by the deities. These are all old and time tested and most traditional rituals through the ages and centuries of our existence, and we happily maintain them.

” One must never be too far away from tradition ”

And as the days pass by we come closer to the ending of another season of KBC. A few more episodes, another eight I believe and then its over ! There is a sense of leaving ‘home’ almost as one approaches the end. It has been one of the most enlightening and emotional seasons of my association with this format of television. The contestants their lives and their stories have been such an eye opener to not just me but to all that have witnessed their outpourings as they battle with their intelligence and wits to overcome the odds that they have faced for generations. And to see them exult and celebrate their unbelievable earnings within hours, gives to us a great sense of fulfillment for them. They have come from backgrounds that would never have given them opportunity to earn in a hundred years what they achieve, and to learn and know that this moment of theirs shall change their very existence perhaps forever, through generations, is truly such a satisfying experience. It has been their accumen and skill that has been responsible for their change in their fate as it were. The opportunity given was ours, but the skill was theirs. Given opportunity even the most deprived can prove to the world that they are in no way lesser or weak. They possess all that is required to do better in life and they prove it time and again at the Hot Seat of KBC !! My salutations and respects to them all …

It is another day of rest today. To recover, to dwell in all that the past year brought with it and to prepare for the next. Life has this uncanny wheel of time that never stops and never allows us to get off it. And so we shall ride it with pride and effort and perseverance and all its odds, for, that is what we have been brought in to this world for. We are all special and all different and all without doubt, someone with qualities that others do not possess. It is our duty therefore to be content with it and to nurture it with all the effort within us to further its cause. The cause of bringing to all around us, happiness and peace and well being ..

A most prosperous New Year to all and may you be ever blessed by the forces that guide us ..

My love … and once again in ending, my apologies for last nights’ blog ..

Amitabh Bachchan