Stories I must tell; the emotional life of an actor by Kabir Bedi

Stories I must tell; the emotional life of an actor by Kabir Bedi

Audiobook

Non fiction

Genre- auto biography

Spoilers None which is not available in the magazines and Wikipedia!

Rating 5/5 for the language and sequence, 3/5 for the truth, 2/5 for some parts which blur the line between reality and imagination! Over all 3/5 because just like a Chetan Bhagat novel, once your expectations are so low then the only was to go is up! Though this one is better than CB’s last torture!

Listening time over 9 hours!

Simple language mixed with so poetry here and there and some prose to give it a literary weight! Sometimes it works while many times I used to feel Kabir Just get to the point!

Kudos to have bared it in the open! The affairs and the sleeping around and the stories About his love life and wives!

The best part and section of the book which has been dealt with the best emotional treatment is the tragic story of his son Siddharth which could not have been easy. Simply to read this section you can read (or listen as the case maybe!) the whole book!

In a more or less chronological approach Kabir starts with his early childhood where his parents were apparently poor! His close friends were at some point Rajiv And Sanjay Gandhi and he used to do horse riding with them! He also went to prestigious schools and finally got a job first in DD then in AIR! As AIR reporter he got the scoop of his life when he could interview the Beetles! Of course it was done with great effort but AIR kept it low profile and lost the tape! So good bye delhi! The description of Beetles interview is gold mine for fan like Kabir and me though! How he managed it is a big scoop though!

So he left delhi because he was fed up of the Bureaucracy in both DD and AIR and the rest of the book and his story is just about how he met, married or lived together and finally left the many women in his life! How he managed to have a connection with every one of them and how he fell in love with many of them and how after some time they drifted away!
Also being fed up with the bureaucracy is everyone’s life story but not many have much choice…

To bare it all in the open takes guts and I am sure Kabir has reached a point in his life where he simply does not care what you think! That’s good because anyone who reads about his affairs and marriage and divorces may not have much thought left! Or for that matter any brain! It is like ok, now his current wife is this person and after some time it is another!

His heartfelt tribute to his mother who herself has at least three biographies written on her and her freedom fight and her Buddhist nature is filled with true pride. His description on how his father aka Baba Bedi is the direct descendant of Guru Nanak and how even he after the being a freedom fighter and an advisor to the Abdulla of Kashmir finally became an actual Baba after undergoing a spiritual transformation just like his mother! After that he developed healing powers and divine intuition which Kabir explains with many examples though being a Modern Medicine practitioner is a little difficult for me to swallow! But that’s their story and Kabir’s narrative so what you or me feel does not make any difference as I mentioned before!

He gives a passing mention about his first love in delhi who shall remain nameless and then he goes on to explain all his relations which are quite a lot! My personal opinion is that the nameless person was his first and may be the only true love and all others are just rebounds!

So first he meets Protima and elevates her to a big diva, he does the same to Parveen Babi also by the way! The after a roller coaster marriage and love the diva has a sudden fall from grace! It is a purely single point of view opinion so difficult to have a neutral opinion! Imagine that when he married Protima he was having an affair with a married lady and he apparently did not want to lose that special bond! Then when he had the affair with Parveen he was married to Protima (though he says it was an open marriage on the verge of collapse which he saved twice!)!

In between he speaks about this magnum opus called Sandukan which is a big TV series in Italy and Italy is one place and country where he is very popular and has saved him many times over! I had never heard of this before so it was new to me and interesting! In fact he was so famous in Italy that no one knew Parveen!

He also mentions many Bollywood and Hollywood people who have done many things and are very famous and popular! It is a big list which you must read the book to know!
He tells about his life in Italy then America and then UK and of course India.
After Parveen gets unstable and moves of his life he has a marriage with Nikki Bedi (she was married at the time! Yes, its bizarre!) which also gets under stress when her popular show gets cancelled (everyone in India will know that incident!). Me thinks that when money is good and you are happy then marriage is cool but when stressed then everything falls apart! Just like everyone else! Finally proving that for all the big height and great look and diction and ancestry; even Kabir is a mere mortal just like you and me!

Before Nikki there was one more wife who is an American and they have a son Adam also; apart from this Protima had two kids Pooja and Sidharth.

If you love reading movie magazines and seeing soap operas then this is gold for you! Go for it! There is so much juice very similar to a gossip magazine like Mayapuri though Kabir tries to be honest!

In one of the chapter he talks about his belief system and gives a monologue on different religions so I have a feeling that he may very soon become a saint! Of course that is after his latest marriage to someone 30 odd years younger to him and that is of course his business so please don’t judge!

He talks about many movies and series and that was a good walk down the memory lane!

Rest assured the book is a juicy page turner and you just can’t stop till you finish it! Read it for fun! Read it even otherwise! It light, its well written, its narrated in his amazing voice and when you compare with your own life; you may end up feeling good! Or bad! None of my emotional business!!