The last shot for the film PAA concluded today late evening at a park around picturesque Cambridge. The drive through the British countryside as always, one of the most beautiful experiences ever and the curiosity among school kids who gathered around to witness this prosthetic face, enchanting and warmhearted. A group of young teen agers out on a picnic in a secluded corner, walked up and offered us a piece of their cake that they were celebrating. Such an endearing gesture. Felt so attached and comfortable in their midst as we kept requesting them to move away from the field of the shot. The joy of working in such an environ simply multiplies, when you witness such deep understanding and respect shown to us in a foreign land by the locals. Thank you. And when I walked up to various groups in the park to thank them for their co operation they were so full of friendliness and affection. They wanted to touch me and my silicone head, they asked after the story, took photographs and auto graphs, not knowing a word about who they were meeting. And they were generally so disciplined, it was a most moving experience.

It is a shame that many regular and committed EF have been completely unable to understand yesterday’s post. There is consternation on the part of some on its implications, and rebuke and cynicism by some, on its assumed misguided insinuations. Perhaps my writing is faulty, or the way I have expressed myself has fallen short of an explanation. I feel a ’slumdog millionaire’ syndrome has been provoked yet again, where the essence of debate and analysis was misinterpreted as firm comment and opinion by me.

May I request the indulgence yet again of those that have seen otherwise, to revisit the content. Where is there even the remotest suggestion of a statement ? It is in my reckoning, merely a barrage of questions put forth, giving various sides to a vision, a thinking, without ever ever demanding anything else.

My query concentrates on a simple observation. If knowledge in education is universal, why do the Oxbridge and Ivy and Switzerland, seek and get exclusivity. It never questions why individuals, me included, go there or utilize them. No, not at all. It is common human nature. The same shirt when made available in a so called exclusive store, is bought by those with the resource, purely because at times it is priced at a higher level than one available at a common mall. The material is the same, but its point of exclusive retail makes its purchase perhaps of a better quality, or worse pushes one into a bracket different economically from the other. The shirt is acquired because it does the job of covering the body of the human. Its enhanced price is not going to cover the human body better. Just because you study in Harvard does not imply that Ohms Law shall be different or that Newton’s Theory of relativity shall change. No. They will remain the same. What I am asking, please note the word asking, is why do different environs exist to teach the same theory. That is all.

I and many others like me question this. Others and many others like them disagree. That is the purpose of free debate. There is never an indication of concluded argument. On the contrary there is an effort to invite opinion. To allow us to invigorate ourselves with just judgement, to color it with impressionable thought. Never ever to force illogical estimation of the quality or worth of debate, down someone’s throat. Particularly when they suffer illness in bedridden discomfort !!

And then to put this deliberation in the realm of ‘getting personal’ is indeed regrettable. The very reason of Abhishek and Switzerland is the example of the debate. The sending is not the point. It is the existence which I put up for questioning. Questioning, do note. Not once confirming the legitimacy of the deed.

You may then well ask, and rightly so, that, if there is doubtful legitimacy, then why the patronage. But this is exactly what I am arguing. When things exist you get attracted to it, just like the same material shirt, in exclusive surroundings. If the exclusivity is removed we would all be buying the same shirt. Karl Marx would have loved me to death to hear me talk like this, but that is not the point. The point is liberty and freedom being the hallmark of human right. This is democracy’s greatest endorsement. What we debate today is whether it causes good or evil. That is all.

As an aside however, since you do question Abhishek and Switzerland, I do consider it my prerogative to respond to it.

Celebrity invites a great many connotations. A celebrated status can be considered for pardon because they are celebrated and public. A celebrated status can be deliberately hounded also without reason. Within these two very contrasting parameters it becomes an exercise of great balance on how with utmost dexterity the involved exist. Or succumb.

A celebrity child can become the purveyor of great largesse. Or conversely, the instigator of immense hatred and ridicule. I cannot draw a yardstick for other parents, but for Jaya and me our desire has always been and still is, to deny and deride this gift to us and permit it to become a natural inheritance for our children. We have always desired a normal common existence for ourselves and insisted that it be no different for our children too. But desiring something is not enough. It needs to be implied as well. When ever that has failed, we have always opted for a withdrawal, rather than continuing a process, content in the thought that the child must need to face this oppression in the belief that it is a part of his or her discipline. We may be wrong in thinking so. Fair enough. If you are a celebrity progeny you’ve got to take it buddy. Tough luck !! But there are perforce limits. And these limits will have to be within the diktats of the parent.

Abhishek and Shweta could have been getting undue academic acknowledgement, or undeserving demerit, because of who they were. In our sense of fairness this was disturbing us. Putting them therefore in an environment where our celebrity and therefore their’s, was unknown, seemed the rightful step to take. And so we did.

Jaya and I have been both strong and understanding parents and it would have been sufficient for me to have concluded this rather long essay on our ethics in this matter, here and now. But I must reluctantly disclose an incident that went a long way in taking the decision that we did.

In 1982, when I lay critically ill fighting for my life at the Breach Candy Hospital, both Abhishek and Shweta were 6 and 8 years old respectively. How does a mother explain to her children of this age, what their father is going through and why he is not home with them ? What does a father lying almost comatose in the ICU tell his children what is wrong with him, when they come to visit him in the ICU. I shall tell you. The mother, despite the fact that she is uncertain whether her husband will live or not, keeps reassuring her children with the broadest smile and perhaps her most difficult performance, that all is well and happy. And the father, in all his pain and suffering, puts up the bravest face in Hospital to answer, when asked by his 6 year old son why so many bottles were sticking above his head to his stomach, that they were all kites that he was flying !! It is the most tragic tale that I would never wish for any parent to face with their children. But for us worse was to follow.

Because of the daily health bulletins that adorned the front pages of the media and because of the attention through out the nation that my condition was drawing, a class mate of Abhishek one fine morning turned around to him in school and announced - ” Your father’s going to die.. no ?”

What psychological trauma this must have inflicted Abhishek is difficult to decipher. But from a boisterous happy child he clammed up into a silent introverted 6 year old. A child that continuously ranked in the top three of his class fell drastically, almost to the bottom.

I shall not deny that our eventual decision to move him away, stemmed greatly from this incident.

Amitabh Bachchan