Khala Fari is my mother’s youngest sister, Khala being her title and Fari her nick-name. She spent most of pre- marriage days with us. I was little but old enough to savor every moment with her. She was the textbook definition of an iconic youngest sister/aunt. My mother would leave us to her and take foreign trips with my father. My siblings and I loved her sense of humor.
Throughout her adult life, her marriage was a constant subject of conversation amongst my mother, grandmother, other aunts and uncles. Whilst they bickered and argued over finding her a suitable boy, she was determined to marry an Amitabh Bachchan look-alike. My aunt spent most of her adult life in front of the television, consuming Bollywood films. She would also memorise dramatic scenes from these films and replay them at family weddings and events. Hopeless dramas, unrequited love affairs, but all things Amitabh. He was the icon of Bollywood cinema for most of the 1970s-80s. Perhaps, in some parts of India, he is worshipped as a deity. He is the Big B. The Bollywood we see now is only a mere fraction of his glory. My aunt rejected almost every man presented to her, due to her absolute die-hard love for Big B.
One of the films she imposed upon us siblings and all my cousins, which later on became a family favourite, was Amitabh’s Silsla (1981), or Saga. In this tragic film, Amitabh’s character falls in love with an actress, but has to marry his brother’s widow out of compassion. The woman playing his heroine, Rekha ( an icon in her own right), marries a nice doctor. In a classic Bollywood twist, the couple become family friends, but the secret love/affair between Amitabh and Rekha’s character continues. I remember, so fondly, how my aunt would rewatch this film and then wait so eagerly for the moment when the doctor and the brother’s widow discover their spouse’s attachment and intimate relationship at a Holi event. In the song below, the doctor husband is beating the drums whilst the brother’s widow stands and watches the two dance and perform. Amitabh, intoxicated and high due to a marijuana filled drink, is unable to conceal his emotions. His constant overtures towards his mistress and suggestive lyrics eventually give away their relationship.
The movie ends tragically, but my aunt got her happy ending. My uncle, her husband, is a real-life Big B doppelgänger.
There is something beautiful about this song. The white kurta pajama-stained by the stream of colors, as the adulterous couple fails to hide their love from the world.