Bachchan’s unedited Outlook piece

thanks to Bliss..
LINK

On a lazy summer afternoon as I walked past the Montmartre towards the majestic Basilica of the Sacred hearts, commonly known as the Sacre-Coeur, situated on a hill, the highest point in the heavenly city of Paris, France, I suddenly heard the strains of a Hindi film song emanating from a human voice. I wondered first if this was some delusion that I was undergoing, for I was on a sabbatical after several years of continuous work, and such environs are most conducive to the cause, but I was wrong. It was indeed someone not too distant from where I was standing, not of my color, creed or nationality, with an expectant smile on his face, willing, I was certain, for some recognizable response.
After a few moments of staring at one another, we both moved across to each other, in a most film like manner, and with just a hint of appropriate embarrassment I asked him the obvious.
He was not French, only spoke it and spoke no English. He was a shade more colored than I was and through some rather odd and unique gesticulations finally was able to convey to me that he was from North Africa and loved Indian movies. The song was from Sholay and even with his North-African-French-Hindiised accent it was unmistakably the famous, “ yeh dosti, hum nahin todenge “!
It was the early 90’s and almost 20 years have gone by since that incident. I must admit I was not too surprised by it. For long years had we been hearing of ‘ Awaara ‘ and the Raj Kapoor mania in the Soviet Union and the adoration with great flamboyance of Shammi Kapoor in Beirut.
But these were destinations that were closer home – North and Mid Eastern geographically. Further West, apart from the dedicated and starved for Hindi film entertainment NRI, there was little knowledge or acknowledgement of our cinema.

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