I feel like I've known Dilip Kumar all my life. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if his name figured in the first few words I ever spoke. The reason is - my parents. They were fans, big time. And I mean, Big Time. My father had seen Mughal-E-Azam seventeen times; and that's just on the big screen, I haven't asked him yet for a count on the video. My mother is still so besotted that she gauges every new hero's potential not by mundane pointers such as acting ability and popularity but by how closely he imitates/resembles/talks like the deadly D (Shahrukh, you score well my boy).Despite all efforts made to lure me into the fan club (movies I was allowed to see as a child included Ram Aur Shyam, Sagina, Andaz - not the Hema Malini-Rajesh Khanna on the motorbike one but the black and white Nargis-Dilip Kumar on the piano one) I can't say I found it hard to resist.I didn't like the way he looked or his famed histrionics or maybe I was just being difficult. I don't know. My acquaintance -if one could call it that - with the thespian came in quite another way. Some years ago I happened to find myself living next door to the great actor.`Next door' is a relative term for in the four years that we were neighbours I saw him probably twice (a circumstance that didn't stop my mother from preening each time she came to visit). But what I did see were the people that collected outside his bungalow every day. Men, women and children in ragged clothes, with hungry eyes. Sometimes I saw them lined up to be fed.I don't know what else he gave them but it must have been good because every day they left and new ones arrived. On one occasion his car was coming out of the narrow lane while ours was going in. The road was obstructed by the crowd that had collected around his window. A crowd not of fans but more of the same destitutes that sought his help every day. We waited patiently till we could proceed. As we passed his car, he rolled down his window to raise a hand in apology. That courteous gesturecombined with his patience and obvious generosity towards his poor supplicants evoked in me at least, a respect that few public figures merit.To see pictures of naked hooligans dancing at his gate and to hear his integrity doubted as it has been these last few days, fills me with a pain that I find hard to describe.Wild ways of criminalsA few days ago the police arrested a woman said to be affiliated to one of the city's major criminal gangs. Women being rare in the underworld, the news and picture got a sizable amount of column space in the daily papers.What caught my attention, however, was the garbled story accompanying the arrest. The woman apparently was planning an attack on a middle class colony; the idea being that she would `charm' whoever stood in the way while her gang proceeded to loot the residents. Can you imagine anything more scary than being raided in your own home? Is this the new criminal modus operandi or was this a one-off? It is possible of course that the report gotthe facts wrong. Either way shouldn't we be told more about it?Tracking the richNow that tracking the rich has achieved the status of reportage I think it is legitimate to question how assorted gossip columnists, social diarists etc. got it so wrong. I mean didn't we just read reams of stuff (with glossy pictures) about Jaideep Garware's great acumen, his wonderful marriage and his enviable lifestyle? Are these guys just bad at their job or is sad a bad word in party paradise?(Amrita Shah is a former editor of Elle magazine)
