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    Bobby
    Bobby
    Bobby
    Ebook146 pages1 hour

    Bobby

    By K. A. Abbas

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    About this ebook


    In 1973, a film shattered box office records all over India. It introduced two young stars who became instant heart-throbs, and ushered in a new genre of Hindi films, the teeny-bopper romance. It also bailed out the legendary RK Films after the disaster that was Raj Kapoor's magnum opus, Mera Naam Joker. The film was Bobby. Even forty years later, Bobby remains the benchmark for teenage romances, widely imitated, but seldom matched in its freshness, spirit and enduring appeal. At the time of the film's release, its writer K.A. Abbas, in an act years ahead of its time, also published the novelized version of the film to great commercial success. Bobby: The Complete Story is that book. Including K.A. Abbas's original preface and a perceptive new foreword by Suresh Kohli, its re-release marks forty glorious years of the film's release, its star Rishi Kapoor's sixtieth birthday and Abbas's centenary. As engaging a read as the film was entertaining, it is also an insight into the creative process through which a story transforms into a film.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9789350295540
    Bobby
    Author

    K. A. Abbas

    Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (1914-87) was a prolific political commentator, short-story writer, novelist, scriptwriter and a film-maker who preferred to call himself a communicator. He published seventy-three books in English, Urdu and Hindi, including an engaging autobiography, I Am Not an Island, and two semiautobiographical novels, Inquilab and The World Is My Village, detailing contemporary Indian history. His works have been translated into several Indian and foreign languages including Russian, German, Arabic, Italian and French. Abbas received several state and national honours, including the Padma Shri in 1969, and was involved in the making of sixty Hindi films. Suresh Kohli (born in 1947) is a poet, writer, translator, editor, literary critic and fi lm historian with more than thirty-five published works including five volumes of poetry and a novel. He is also a short and documentary film-maker, with over a hundred films to his credit that have been screened, apart from India, in Australia, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Nepal. He lives in Delhi and is currently working on a long abandoned novel and a collection of short stories.

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      Book preview

      Bobby - K. A. Abbas

      PROLOGUE

      THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MOTHER’S MILK

      THE baby was beautiful and happy… but only on a poster advertising a baby food.

      The baby in real life was crying in the cradle.

      While the young mother was busy with her cosmetics in front of the dressing table mirror and the father, dressed already, was talking over the phone, the child continued to cry in the cradle.

      The father, disturbed in his telephone talk, shouted. ‘For heaven’s sake, look after that brat of yours… crying all the time. Can’t sleep at night… can’t do any work!’

      ‘Neema has promised to send me a governess…’

      ‘You mean an ayah?’

      ‘No, a regular governess.’

      ‘Governesses are for grown-up children, not for babies… Governesses generally look after the child’s education and upbringing.’

      ‘I have read somewhere that a child’s education must begin at birth…’

      ‘And how well you have educated your child!’ sarcastically observed the husband.

      She would have retorted with an equally cutting remark, but at that very moment the servant brought in a middle-aged, kindly-looking Christian woman, and said:

      ‘Neema Memsaheb has sent her!’ He gave her a letter.

      ‘Are you a governess, Mrs Braganza?’

      ‘Yes, Mrs Nath. But I was not always a governess. We used to have a business of our own. Since my husband’s death…’

      She noticed the crying child and, not caring to end her sentence, instinctively went upto him.

      ‘Hello, Baba. Kyon rota hai?’ She said it so softly, with so much love in her voice, that the child stopped crying as soon as she took him in her arms.

      Mrs Nath, the young mother, beautiful and well-groomed, watched it with great relief, then said: ‘Will you be a governess for this child?’

      ‘But he is too small yet. I generally look after children of school-going age. Maybe after some years…’

      ‘No,’ she said, ‘I want you to start right now. I will pay you whatever you want.’

      ‘No, Mrs Nath. I am sorry. I am not an ayah!’ And she put down the child. ‘Sorry, Mrs Nath.’ And Mrs Braganza moved to go out.

      But something stopped her.

      It was the crying of the child.

      She turned back at the door. She came back to the child. As she extended her arms, the child stopped crying.

      ‘Good!’ said Mrs Nath, ‘We are going now. You start from today.’

      ‘Mrs Nath!’ Mrs Braganza called out, and the young lady turned round at the door.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘You haven’t told me the name of the child.’

      "We call him Raja! Anything else you want to ask?’

      ‘Yes. Have you breast-fed him?’

      The young woman, with a pronounced bust, was taken aback, and revolted: T am not a cow! There is plenty of Glaxo in the house… and there is the feeding bottle! That’s a good enough substitute.’

      She pointed to the feeding bottle, fitted with a nipple. Then she left with her husband.

      Mrs Braganza took up the bottle, looked wistfully, pityingly at the artificial rubber nipple, then said with a sigh: ‘There is no substitute for the mother’s love… and for the mother’s breast, Mrs Nath.’

      ONE

      SPONGE CAKE FOR RAJA

      FOUR years passed. The flat of the Naths showed signs of new prosperity. Mr Nath’s advertising business was obviously prospering.

      Mrs Nath was again at her dressing table, putting on make-up which competently hid the marks of dissipation and age.

      She came out into the hall—all dressed up and made-up.

      But there was nowhere to go.

      All was empty and quiet in the hall of the flat.

      The telephone rang and she ran to answer it.

      ‘Hello, darling—I am all ready for the picture-just waiting for you—’

      From the other side her husband’s voice came over the wire. ‘Sorry, darling—I won’t be able to come home till late at night—A client of mine is giving a party—’

      ‘But, darling,’ she protested, ‘I have got the tickets—they will be wasted—’

      ‘Oh, then,’ said Nath, ‘take someone else with you—’ and he rang off.

      Mrs Nath was left all alone in the house.

      The loneliness seemed to be oppressive and obsessive.

      Walking past the corridor, she thought of her child and went into the nursery.

      There she saw her son having his dinner—lovingly served to him by Mrs Braganza, a few grey ones visible in her orderly hair.

      He was now four-and-a-half years old.

      ‘Raja—I am going to give you a surprise for the sweet.’

      "What’s it, Aunty?’ The boy asked.

      ‘You just wait and see, I made it with my own hands.’

      She put a covered dish before him. When she uncovered it, there was a sponge cake in it.

      ‘Oh, Aunty, sponge cake!’ Raja delightedly cried out, and got up to embrace her.

      Over Aunty’s shoulder he saw the mother standing in the doorway. The happy smile faded out from his face.

      ‘Hello, Mummy,’ he said without any enthusiasm.

      ‘Hello, Raja,’ said the woman who was supposed to be his mother, without any maternal emotion.

      ‘Now, Raja, eat your cake—and I will put you to bed.’ Then she turned to Mrs Nath. ‘Can I have the evening off, Mrs Nath? I have to go to church to light up some candles. It is the second birthday of my granddaughter!’

      ‘All right—put Raja to bed, and then you can go-’

      ‘I thought, maybe, you won’t mind being with him till he goes off to sleep—’

      ‘All right. I will see what I can do. I myself have to go somewhere.’ Then she went out of the room, to the telephone, and dialled a number. ‘Hello, Neema.’

      ‘Hello,’ drawled a woman’s voice over the wire. ‘Yes, Neema, can you come with me to a picture? I have already got the tickets!’

      ‘Isn’t Mr Nath going with you?’

      ‘No, he is tied up in a business conference.’

      ‘Then I’ll certainly come. I will meet you at the apartment in fifteen minutes?’

      ‘Okay. I will be waiting for you, Neema darling.’ And as she rang off, she saw Mrs Braganza emerging from the nursery, dressed to go out. ‘He is waiting for you!’ she

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