But why not Mr Hayden?

A strong appeal

Raju Korti

Whether he used the long handle or the Mongoose Bat, Matthew Lawrence Hayden, better known to the cricketing fraternity as Matt Hayden, pulverised the opposition bowlers and smoted them brutally on the green turf till the day he hung his boots. But the 6 ft 3 genial hunk, always a sport off it, has flew off his handle once again so characteristic of him.
It has rankled Haydos no end that the Australian government in its cricketing wisdom has decided to confer the prestigious Order of Australia on Sachin Tendulkar whose exploits have already become a part of folklore Down Under.
Now Hayden is no alien to the Indian soil and its frenetic fans of the game. Like many others of his country, he keeps flitting in and out of India like a Kangaroo and makes a neat pile of money on endorsements, not to speak of the publicity that comes his way given that he shows up frequently in starred hotels in his dual avtaar as chef.
Hayden rationalises that the award is purely Australian in nature and should be bestowed upon an Australian. On the face of it, it seems a well reasoned and plausible argument, only that it doesn't seem to have occured to his narrow thinking that such an award is and should be an honour to any national and it does more honour to the country that gives it.
If the British with all their colonial mindset can still think it fit in their racist canniness to confer the Order of British Empire (OBE) on Indians, what is so questionable about the Aussie government honouring a foreign national? Afterall, their track record on racism in recent times has been similarly dismal. The honour should be for the work and not for the individual per se. If the Aussies believe that Tendulkar has brought as much cheer to their countrymen as the likes of Hayden with their game and gamesmanship, why should Tendulkar, whom the Don of Cricket simply described as"That Little Fella bats just like me" not be a worthy recipient?
Obviously, nationalism doesn't seem to be weighing on Hayden's mind as much as the "Monkeygate" of the 2007-2008 series in which volatile Harbhajan Singh's earthly Punjabi expletive was misunderstood by Andrew Symonds. As an ugly fallout, Hayden was charged for code of conduct violation by Cricket Australia for calling Bhajji an "obnoxious little weed" and for inviting speedster Ishant Sharma (Ponting's bugbunny) for a boxing bout during an interview aired on Radio Brisbane. Though reprimanded by Cricket Australia, Hayden never admitted his culpability. The Aussie cricketers do not subscribe to any code of conduct. Codes and conduct are only meant for cricketers from the sub-continent. Ask any Aussie and he will wear his pride on his sleeve saying "we play our cricket the hard way." It means the way they find it right.  
Probity, like charity, should begin at home. Hayden must ask himself why he allowed himself to be auctioned for the Indian Premier League in the first place. He could have been as sanctimonious with his views saying let the IPL be played by Indians. It's their game. But the lure of greens and renown makes people change their colours faster than a chameleon. Foreign players know that India is a milched cow and jump at the first opportunity to land on the Indian shores to grab some quick bucks and gala time. Not all shoot their mouths off like Hayden has done.
He should let marsupials enjoy their leaps in the Kangaroo court.
 

Strains gone, stress showing!

Lata and Rafi, the best ever, but....

Raju Korti

Age may have caught up with national icon Lata Manageshkar, but amnesia certainly hasn't. The singer whose name will remain etched in history books, has gone off key yet again. Off the mike though. And if you thought this was a small consolation, ask the fans of another legendary singer Mohammed Rafi and you'll know how mortified they are at the country's deified songstress for exhuming an issue that everyone had thought had been given a decent burial.
Those who have followed Lata closely will tell you in hushed tones that for all the supremacy and sovereign that she has been as a singer, insecurity has been her constant companion. The fabled Lata Mangeshkar ego is widely perceived to have made short work of whatever competition she has had to put up with including that from her own illustrious sister Asha Bhosale.
It has always baffled me as to why a person of her countenance, stature and craft had to find herself on a slippery ground each time even when a no-competition stared her in the face. Contrast this with the smiling mien of the late Mohammed Rafi who had more contemporaries to contend with than Lata. Rafi edged past them with his metier; never even once overstepping the fault line. He was gentleman to a fault, if I may be allowed the pun. Throughout his four-decade career, Rafi was the proverbial banyan tree under whose umbrage other singers grew. Competition made him excel himself and smile more while it made Lata sulk more and more.
This streak in her surfaced visibly when she took on the mighty Rafi on the issue of royalty. There are many who say this as an afterthought: That Lata stands vindicated today as far as appreciation of an artiste's calling is concerned. But then, we are living in brazenly commercial times where business ethics are best read only in text books. Rafi took a principled posturing on an issue which made horse sense to the composers who conglomerated the glorious music of the fifties and sixties. Recall how a furious Lata walked out of the meeting summoned to debate the issue, realising she had been hopelessly isolated. Rafi made people swoon anywhichways. If not with his lung power, with his smile and modesty.
It was Lata and not Rafi who decided unilaterially that she would not sing with the country's best male singer to which the latter's measured response was "if she isn't interested, why should I be." The fact of the matter is the ego issues simmering between the two had come to a boil and the royalty issue was just an impetus. Things hadn't been hunky dory with them mainly because Lata couldn't reconcile to the fact that any other singer could be hailed as more popular, admired and adored. Even today, 32 years after his death, the discerning believe that Rafi's admirers far exceed those of Lata.
Those were the times that if and when a good solo came Rafi's way, Lata would make sure it came her way too. And without sounding biased, as everyone would agree, the Rafi version sounded miles ahead. For that matter, with a few exceoptions, the male version of the song always outbeat the female version. It only worsened things.   
As a historian of film music, I know where the roots of this dispute were and what rankled Lata so much so as to keep her grudges thus far. She fell flat on her face when it came to garnering support of the music directors and producers on the much touted royalty issue. So confident was she of her clout in the film industry that she couldn't believe when she found, she had only few takers on the issue. When Rafi rationalised that once a singer sang a song and got paid his/her remuneration, he had no right to ask for any payment over and above (read royalty). His reasoning and logic was so fair and just that almost all music directors seconded him. Lata was hoping that with Rafi's support, the royalty issue was as good as clinched and no composer or producer could dare defy them. But Rafi's stand upset her calculations. Besides, she suspected that Rafi was tutored by Naushad. Indeed, in on of her interviews on TV she clearly said that Wo (Rafisaab) bahot seedhe the, unko kisine bhadkaya tha. Even at this juncture, the issue would have been sorted out without much heartburn, but the killer punch came soon after. Composers, wised up to her idiosyncracies and mood swings, started taking other female singers like Suman Kalyanpur, apart from her own sister Asha Bhosale, for duets. Nothing changed for Rafi, but everything for Lata. And let's face facts. Both the sisters, despite their phenomenal talent and the advantage of being on their home ground, were always very insecure and wary of competition. So much so that even the internal rivalry/cold war between them wasn't lost on discerning people. With the dice falling in favour of Rafi, Lata got desperate and as was her wont, intensely jealous and spiteful. In his book, senior journalist Raju Bharatan quoted Rajsingh Dungarpur (with whom Lata was believed to be close) about how obstinate and child-like Lata could be if things didn't turn out the way she wanted them to be.
The royalty issue showed Lata who stood where in terms of public admiration and respect. Though legends of singing, there was no dispute as to who was more loved, respected and adored. It is surprising that someone of the stature of Lata, who should never have harboured any fears of being eclisped by anyone, should take recourse to such vicious campaign against someone as godly as Rafi. But then, both Lata and Asha have always shown this blow-hot-blow-cold attitude. Some day they are effusive in their praise of Rafi and some day as mean.
I feel that it is really immaterial whether Lata has a copy of the purported apology letter written to her by Rafi. My gut feeling is she doesn't. And even if she were to have it, it would only be interpreted as Rafi's humility for which he was known all through his career. Lata's claim should be dismissed as the as the ravings and rantings of a fractured ego. Having said that, there is also a limit to which one can stoop. And such an unkind cut to a person who has died 32 years back, and one who is held in such high esteem, is not done at all. One can only feel sorry for Lata who should be actually basking in her independent iconic status rather than trying to put herself on the same keel as Rafi.
But counselling her is a remedy worse than the disease. Only she can be her own doctor.

Third Front: Fancy frigging

Raju Korti

In India, you do not have to a be a political pundit to know elections are round the corner. In the season of juke ballot box, there are two regulation issues that spring up like dog's mushrooms and these manifest in the grey columns of newspapers or the talk time (!) on television channels. The Bofors scam and the Third Front, which interest no one except the players involved.
The Third Front is not even a conundrum. Its heavyweights from the Janata Dal (A to Z), Bahujan Samaj Party, Telugu Desam, Communist Party of India, All India Forward Bloc and Samajwadi Party realise at the convenient time that the people, heavily fed on the "pro-rich" economic policies of the Congress and the "communal and fascist" face of the Bharatiya Janata Party, want a "refreshing" change in the riff raff medley composed of the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati.  So we have a Third Front that is "pro-poor, pro-farmer, pro-worker, pro-OBC, pro-Dalit, pro-women (!), pro-minorities and pro-youth." It is as if there can be no other dispensation that is so generously inclined to the cause of a welfare state. But the plain and unwarnished truth is this alliance is unholy and rank opportunistic trying to cobble up a poorly stitched coalition that breaks faster than it forms.
The man who unleashed this monstrous atrocity on the people is none other than "Mr Clean" VP Singh who let loose the Mandal hell on the polity, putting it back by ages. The trick is to use names that are meant to throw dust in the eyes of people. So you cannot be faulted if the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) sounds dangerously similar to United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of Sonia Gandhi.
Lost for an issue? Launch a Third Front. That seems to be the underlying principle (?) of these parties who would not bother to know where is the common ideological ground. If there is any, of course. Poor people! If the main choice is dreadful, the alternative is worse. If the arrangement is born out of an "anti-Congress, anti-BJP", it is best left to imagine where is the ideology in all this.
Now that the elections are not far away, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been supporting the Congress-led government from outside all these years, has abruptly realised that the scam-tainted government led by mum's-the-word Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needs to be ejected. He is of course the same Mulayam who has bailed out the Congress during the trust vote on Indo-US nuclear deal. If he so vociferously supported Pranab Mukherjee as the presidential candidate, it was not out of charity but to wriggle out of the disproportionate cases against him. With the Congress on a shaky wicket, Mulayam's (un)conventional wisdom tells him that Third Front is the need of the hour.
The tragedy here is that both Congress and BJP are not going to win the elections on ther own steam in 2014 and it is going to hurtle the country into another opportunistic, self-seeking, power-hungry phase. Ask yourself which Third Front will it be and you know the throes of uncertainties staring at you.
Just for the record, the first Third Front government in 1989 led by VP Singh -- the National Government -- lasted barely more than a year with outside support from the Left while the second in 1996 with 13 splinter parties lasted around 21 months with outside support from the Congress. Mulayam was the defence minister here. This time round, he is defending himself!
The message in the history is loud and clear. Mulayam and his friends are just sabre-rattling. His home state presently in the hands of his son Akhilesh, Mulayam is now eyeing prime ministerial gaddi in the fond hope that the Third Front will climb to power with outside support from the Congress. And if nothing else, Congress is sure about one thing: If it cannot come to power, it must bend backwards to ensure BJP too doesn't. So never mind if crooks are propped up at the cost of a hapless people.
Given the gullibility and political proclivities of the Indian electorate, even if the UPA comes to power again, it cannot discount the Mulayam and Mayawati factors. It's not about the incumbency or anti-incumbency factor. Its all about you-scratch-my-back-I scratch-your's and you-tickle-mine-I-tickle your's.
The Third Front is at best an unproductive political masturbation of the senile.    
         

Deshmukh who was a true Vilasrao!

Raju Korti

In my three-decade career as a journalist, I have met two Maharashtra-based politicians who could be given the benefit of doubt of being considered as handsome. One was Rajarambapu Patil, the sugar baron from Walwe tehsil of Sangli district and the other; twice chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.

Patil, was of course, cast in the typical western Maharashtra mould. Looking at him, it occurred to me that with his height and face, one could look debonair even clad in a simple cotton dhoti.

At one of his election meetings – ironically soon after the one held by then chief minister Vasant Dada Patil, his rival in the same cooperative sector – I told the ever-smiling Rajarambapu that he could also diversify as a film hero. Never confronted with a compliment like that, Bapu, going into his sixties, was flummoxed for several minutes before it sunk in. He actually blushed and just shook his head, but I could see he was genuinely thrilled. Putting an affectionate arm around me, he made me sit next to him and shared one of the best rustic meals I have ever been treated to. In those days I keenly followed the cooperative lobby in Maharashtra thanks to Vasant Dada Patil who acquainted me with the intricacies of the movement. So pleased was Bapu with me that he insisted I be his guest for two days. Like his appearance, he jealously guarded his reputation as a magnanimous host and by the time I took his leave, I was in the awe of the man. Not just for his good looks but for his dignified demeanour. This was sometime in 1981.

Around this time, Vilasrao had just made his maiden entry into the legislative assembly having had his political grinding, first as Zilla Parishad member, then as Sarpanch of his hometown Babhulgaon and as a youth Congress leader. However, it wasn’t until 2003 and 2004 when he ascended the chief ministerial gaddi that I had an audience with him. I happened to tag a fellow journalist who had an interview appointment with him Although a mere piece of furniture in that meeting, it was me who broke the ice. Vilasrao himself gave the opening. He had fished out a comb from his kurta and was styling his already elegant flick of the hair. Later, I learnt that Vilasrao was fond of “combing operations” as I called it.

“You could double up as a Marathi film hero”, I told him, not sure how he would react to a crack like that. His facial muscles broke into a sheepish but pleased smile. I guess he wanted to say something to that but stopped just in time probably seized of the office he held. It is another story that this obligation to history was fulfilled by his son Riteish. Vilasrao must have had it in him. When handling the Culture portfolio, he hobnobbed with stage, theatre and art, a fascination he carried far enough to fall into the wilderness of an insignificant portfolio of the union cabinet when he took producer Ram Gopal Verma and actor-son Ritesih to the November 2008 terror attack sites. 

As an individual, Vilasrao was flamboyant, but his traits were typically Congress. He could never summon the courage to take on Delhi like his detractor Sharad Pawar did. Like many of his senior leaders he allowed things to go adrift, giving the impression of being patently adventitious. He knew when to be astute, when to lie low and when to be expedient. Occasionally, he would display political acumen like when he paid back Sushilkumar Shinde in the same coin to become the CM. He displayed this characteristic by playing a political ping pong with his senior comrades Ashok Chavan and Sushil Kumar Shinde in the Adarsh scam.

His party bosses knew his strong affiliation with the grassroots was his biggest asset and couldn’t afford to antagonize him beyond a point. Those who knew him closely, were familiar with the Stephen Leacock-ish humour to his side. I have seen few people with a smile that could have different connotations as Vilasrao did.

This is no comparison between Bapu and Vilasrao. Both came from different backgrounds and nursed different values -- political and otherwise. There was one common chord though. Both did justice to their names. You may read between the lines.

The "Avtaar" of Rajesh Khanna

Raju Korti

Long before the 35-inch screen grappled to cope with his larger-than-life image and Jatin Khanna had shed his superficial skin to become Rajesh Khanna, I believed I knew the man well. But he never appealed to my limited aesthetic senses like he did to countless others as the quintessential romantic. Little did I imagine that there was much more to this man, who I recall in my college days, generated the kind of mass hysteria hitherto unseen in the annals of Indian cinema.
Having heard any number of stories about his airy flamboyance, casual and couldn't-care demeanour and rather intimidating presence, he was the unlikeliest of celebrities I would have chosen to bump into -- for professional or unprofessional reasons.
In fact, I took a sadistic delight in snubbing my friends who were his unabashed fans and worshipped him for whatever he did in the name of acting. At the height of one such moment -- when Khanna married the startlingly beautiful Dimple, who was almost half his age then -- I had wisecracked with an impudent and uncharitable headline "Pretty Dimple weds Popular Pimple", inviting more of frowns than chuckles from the other members of the newsroom.
Years later, I caught a glimpse of him at the Sun N Sand Hotel in Juhu, when he was still in his prime and attracting collective gasps from everyone within the vicinity. His disposition clearly betrayed an "I am the King of all that I survey" attitude with that characteristic nod of the head and eyes flickering somewhere between a blink and a wink.
It was only after he decided to contest the parliamentary elections that I decided to explore the man, who could have been a living example of all euphemisms. They called him reticent and reserved, but he could have been a snob, they called him blunt, but he could have been audacious and insolent. You could interpret Kaka Rajesh Khanna the way you looked at him.
I got to the point straight away. "You have had your grinding on Stage. Why did you allow yourself to become a slave of mannerisms and style?", I asked him. It was then I realised Kaka was quick on the uptake and that he saw through me fater than I could see through him. "Saaf kyon nahi kehte ke mere chamche mujhe ye sab seekhate hain", he replied with the same calculated calm of "I hate tears Pushpa". And then he let the words flow with the same tranquil : "I am Rajesh Khanna, the first and only superstar. Whatever I do defines acting."
To his credit, among the film personalities elected to Parliament, Kaka did much more than those of his ilk, but even in his new found avtaar, he remained self-styled and never ever lost the sight of the fact that he was and would be one of his kind. Through the small documentary of his life that he narrated to me with the precision a seasoned editor would be proud of, he laughed away all his travels and travails. It was difficult to believe that here was a man who had tasted heady success, held an unchallenged sway for two decades and wasn't able to come to grips with it. And if millions of his fans wanted him to be seen the way they wanted, who was even mighty Rajesh Khanna to refuse?
With Kaka, everything had to be brutally blunt. No hush hush affairs for him. He could obscure the line between real and reel simply because he was Rajesh Khanna on and off the screen. Now, even as I write this tribute-cum-obituary, I candidly admit my notions about him were pre-conceived. In hindsight, I felt rather than I saw in his eloquent eyes the sensitivity of an artiste and a generous human being.
I remember he told me the story of how he had cajoled the late Rajendra Kumar into selling his "Aashirwad" bungalow off Carter Road in Bandra when the latter had advised him against it, saying the place wasn't lucky. "I went ahead and bought the place. It is in this huge bungalow that my isolated heart has thudded for so many years."
Of course, Kaka hit the bottle hard in those years of self-imposed exile when everyone else distanced from him. But he didn't stoop to conquer. No ribbon cuts, no inaugurations and no rent-dancing at weddings. Not even desperation advertisements for survival even when the taxman came repeatedly knocking. And look at the supreme irony and stark message of the one and only advertisement that he did. Calculated to promote a fan, it instead stirred back to life, the memories of a hero, who made it clear to all Babumoshais that no none could snatch his fans away from him.
It could only be Rajesh Khanna's privilege to articulate:
Zindagi ko bahot pyaar hamne diya
Maut se bhi mohobbat nibhaayenge ham.

Many Measures, No Confidence!

Customary shake, usual bake!

Raju Korti

Looked from any angle, Pakistan is a nation with the proverbial two sides of a coin. The Head is set face to face with India and the Tail invariably or variably – depending on political expediencies and the mood of its hardliner Army – facing the United States of America. That, of course, is peripheral to the issue in discussion.
The immediate trigger for this blog is yet another foreign secretary-level talks have gone through diplomatic charades and consigned  to the inconclusive and senseless dustbin of the turbulent history of the two nations constantly at each others’ throats. The diplomatic tenacity between the two countries has meandered through a series of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) that have done precious little to reduce fear of attack by both (or more) parties in a situation of tension with or without physical conflict.
History tells us that CBMs emerged from attempts by the Cold War superpowers and their military alliances -- the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact -- to avoid nuclear war by accident or miscalculation. In the Indo-Pak context, the CBMs haven’t had much of a connotation.
Among the scores of exchanges India has had with Pakistan, the closest one to have fructified was the Agra Summit in 2001 where, eventually, both the sides had veered round to the fact that Kashmir was the core dispute. But as it turned out, the wily Musharraf, who almost talked himself into an Indo-Pak extradition treaty during the course of the summit, left in huff and puff after Advani queered the pitch by throwing in the Dawood Ibrahim issue. I recall having seen on TV Musharraf turn red before coming out with “Advaniji yeh bahot chhota tactic ho gaya”.
Musharraf, who was yet to arrogate to himself the status of a CEO then, made a very pertinent suggestion on how the issue could be approached by eliminating irritants and zeroing in on the options that could be taken forward. It made a lot of political sense but India’s PR was a disaster and what could have otherwise ended as a watershed development in the chequered history between the two countries, reverted to status quo.
It is against this backdrop that the latest nuclear confidence-building measures have to be viewed as a stabilising force for enhanced security, and safety of nuclear facilities. The Track II process might be touted as “some success”, but in the endgame, its validity remains questioned.
An impressive range of CBMs – both military and non military – in the two decades have been overtaken by a Kargil in 1999, the massive mobilization of troops in 2002, and not to speak of the relentless terror unleashed from the Pakistani soil.
The air, road and railway linkages, the hotlines between the two countries have more or less come a cropper. The hotlines have been hardly used when required most and when matters came to the boil, it was saber rattling all the way what with the two countries staring at the horrific prospect of a nuclear war. The border crossings and trade has been almost next to nothing. There has been a specious argument in favour of a disproportionate emphasis on military CBMs with non-military CBMs not getting due appreciation.
Many CBMs originally crafted to address the stabilization between the two countries post the nuclear tests of 1998 remain only in the realms of “acceptance in principle”. The fact is they will remain so unless dominant issues mentioned in the composite dialogue are resolved. Obviously, it is a case of cart being pit before the horse. While CBMs do have the potential to create trust between two nations, trust is also called for in the very inception stage. One feeds off the other, and in the current scenario, when political will in both states appears to be waxing and waning intermittently, CBMs which are difficult to establish but easy to disrupt, have not been fully effective. There is a lack of verifiability in many CBMs which leads both countries to fall victims to mistrust, suspicion and misinformation on a variety of issues.
CBMs have been particularly ineffective, if not absent, during the times of conflict because despite declarations to that effect, neither country has moved beyond the point of “conflict avoidance”. Recall that the ceasefire effected in 2003 was violated by Pakistan in 2008. Worse still, government on both sides often deploy CBMs as a political tool to win over their respective constituencies which can be very damaging in the longer run.
Post-Abbottabad, it is not only anti-American sentiments that run deep in Pakistan: India, to many Pakistanis, is still perceived to be a greater threat to Pakistan than Al Qaeda or the Taliban, clouding the atmosphere for the civilian government's talks with India.
The CBMs have so far been a case of a cart being put before the horse. No way can the talks gallop until the core issue is addressed. And all said and done, it never will be.     

Two rounds of bout with Dara Singh

Raju Korti

For a generation that is hooked on the likes of Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Shah Rukh Khan as the ultimate emblems of masculinity, Dara Singh may probably just be the mythological character of Hanuman that he essayed in his later years in long-drawn sagas like Ramayan and Mahabharat. But ask those who were privileged to see this hunk in his prime and they will assert that the man who juggled the role of a wrestler and a celluloid action hero with so much aplomb, was a hunk in true sense of the word.

In the sixties, Dara Singh held out a constituency of his own. His six feet two frame had the kind of rippling muscles that would make look Salman's pale as fragile arteries in comparison. But there was much more to the born wrestler that he was. Under those steely shoulders, he had a heart softer than butter. The face may have looked like it was carved out of hard granite and the rolled up sleeves capable enough to make sobriquets like "Rustom-E-Hind" and "Hind Kesri" sit pretty on them. On the one side there were hoards of baby-faced chocolate heroes and at the other there was Dara Singh. He was truly a class and breed apart.

I had always thought of him as a B and C grade hero in the Wham-Bang-Thanks-Mam genre films where he would make short work of his on-screen rivals with the same ease that he did in the wrestling bouts. In the fleeting minutes between the action, he would turn a hopeless romantic and find time to fool around with Mumtaz and Nishi, his accredited heroines. Remember, those were the times when Mumtaz was just a glam doll used to fill up reels left over after Dara Singh's encounters with his villains. Mumtaz was persevering and lucky enough a decade later to fall into the arms of the country's first superstar Rajesh Khanna while Dara Singh had lapsed into friendly mythological roles of Hanuman in soaps and films. It seemed there was no one better than him in the country of billions to play the role.

But my two meetings with Dara Singh exposed me to a totally different persona of the man. I found him to be a complete anti-thesis of the rugged, raw, virile mass of flesh that I had seen fill the screen. Dressed in the conventional Punjabi attire and seated alongside his illustrious brother-actor-wrestler Randhawa, the first thing that struck me was his incandescent smile and warm disposition. His massive 130 kg body construct was every inch affectionate and affable. And though he hugged hard enough for me to feel that he had fractured some of my ribs, I couldn't mistake the warmth he exuded. It was a gesture that reminded me of a beautiful Rafi solo from his 1963 film (aptly titled) "Faulad".
"Dil hai hamara phool se naazuk, bazoo hai faulad
Toofano mein palnewaale, rehte hai Azaad"

It took a huge matka (pot) of Malai Lassi -- which he gulped down in one swig -- and some nostalgic memories that no one probably ever shared with him, to get him to rewind. His chest, already big enough to embrace two of my kind, swelled with further pride while narrating how he remained unconquered in all the 500-plus wrestling bouts that he fought. Some of them with traditional rival King Kong had become legendary and stuff folklore are made of. Yet, ironically, one of the films that he was the hero in was titled "King Kong".

Dara Singh never tired of reeling out how he maintained his physique, his grueling exercise schedules and his extraordinary and gluttonous intake. Without having to reel out those incredible details, I can tell you, most of us don't have the tummy for eating that kind of food for weeks. But then, he was Dara Singh, no less.

Dara Singh told me he was born to fight. "At an age when toddlers try to take baby steps, I was breaking things around me with my brute strength. So I was channelized into conventional pehlwaani where I could display my strength in all its rippling glory." That was the beginning of a distinguished and blemish-less career  that spanned over five decades. He was born to conquer. Rather the word "defeat" didn't exist in his lexicon.

Dara Singh never had to act or emote with his eyes and stuff like that. He let his bulging biceps do all the talking. Who would want a macho to play a tear-jerker? In that long sitting, Dara Singh gave a spell-bonding account of most bouts -- both with his rivals in the real and the ones on the screen. It had all the trappings of an international bestseller.

When the time came for me to take his permission, he raised his genially giant frame from the chair to embrace me once again, But this time I was prepared. I just extended my hand to shake with his. For the next few weeks, I was applying pain balm to soothe my aching palm. On hindsight I should have folded hands with a "Namaste".