tete a tete with Kabir Bedi

A man of many incarnations...
Having enthralled the world by reinventing himself repeatedly, Kabir Bedi prepares for his newest role

Kabir Bedi has a measured, unhurried gait as he strolls through London’s Hyde Park; his languidness shaped, perhaps, by a lifetime of extraordinary experiences, travels and fame. His little troupe then happen upon Speaker’s Corner and he stops, contemplating for a moment before getting up on to a platform and making an impassioned plea. His magnificent baritone voice carries across the park, people gather, rapt as Bedi decries the atrocities taking place in Tibet and Burma while the world attends to wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico. The crowd mill around, drawn to this magnetic personality, who seems utterly at ease; no surprise given he’s entertained millions around the world for the past four decades. A fact lost on many in the crowd.

A few days later we meet at the stark, modernist Cumberland Hotel for an extended chat, a few days before the premier of his new movie ‘Kites’. The sparse surrounds inside the Cumberland seem at odds with the old world charm and grace that Bedi exudes. The first thing that’s apparent is his stature; he is built like the famed Murcielago yet has an air about him that is so light it seems to lift you up with its effusiveness. And then the measured baritone comes through, “Don’t worry”, he tells the waiter, “I’ll take care of the bill”. And the ladies swoon and the men begin grinding their teeth to dust. Unlike countless mega stars surrounded by entourages and stropping at everything from a napkin out of place to the weather, Bedi is exceedingly polite, warm and eager to chat.

It’s been a busy month for a man long recognized as perhaps the busiest South Asian actor in the world. He has just visited Scotland, accompanying the Dalai Lama to a conference and is back in London – a city he calls the most perfect in the world “Emotionally Delhi is my city. Bombay is where I have to be for work. Rome is one of those great cities of the world because it gave me so much and opened so many doors for me. But London is the best in the world in terms of architecture and culture and cuisine and variety and people and there’s a feeling about London which is spread out; it’s not confined to one particular part of the city.”

In London he is promoting ‘Kites’, in which Bedi puts in a devilish turn as a rich casino owner trying to scupper a burgeoning romance between the improbable character played by Hrithik Roshan and his lover played by Barbara Mori. Kabir Bedi is the one of the few highlights of yet another ambitious yet average film – in spite of the $30m production budget and big names – and reaffirms Bedi’s status as perhaps the most underappreciated but most prolific Indian actor of the past several decades.

A vast array of influences…

Born on 16th January 1946 in pre-Partition Lahore, Bedi grew up in an invigorating environment with a colourful array of influences. His father Baba Pyare Lal Bedi – a direct descendent of the Sikh spiritual leader Guru Nanak – was an Oxford graduate, author and passionate Marxist who was forced, as a student, to flee Germany as Hitler swept to power. Kabir’s mother Freda was from a quintessentially British family from Derbyshire and who had met Lal Bedi at Oxford. After marriage, Pyare Lal and Freda moved to India in the 1930’s, when Freda became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and was arrested several times along with her children for agitating against the British. Later in life she converted to Buddhism, dedicating herself to social welfare activities. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Freda was entrusted by Prime Minister Nehru with ensuring the welfare of Tibetan refugees fleeing to Dharamsala following the Dalai Lama. His parent’s pursuits meant the Kabir household was forever frequented by activists, artists, writers, poets, thinkers, revolutionaries and spiritualists of every hue.

After attending the Christian Sherwood College in Nainital, Kabir Bedi travelled to Delhi to study History at St Stephen’s College, a satellite of the University of Delhi. ``Delhi is my emotional home as I was introduced to theatre in Delhi. I love the stage and the process of acting in theatre. Unfortunately however I realized early on that theatre doesn’t pay the bills.”

Determined nonetheless to make his way as an actor, Bedi travelled to Bombay to learn film-making, spending 5 years producing and directing commercials for Lintas and Ogilvy and Mather among others. He also found work performing in the city’s teeming thriving theatre industry. In 1971, at the age of 25, he made his first impact with the play ‘Tughlaq’, playing a madcap, visionary pre-Mughal king. The drama was a huge hit in Bombay and led to producers falling over themselves to cast the young star in their productions. That same year also saw Bedi play a minor role in ‘Hulchul’ before embarking on a 5-year period in which he made no less than 12 movies whilst also performing on stage.

The Malayan Tiger

But while the offers came thick and fast, the budding actor was unable to define himself. Then in 1976 came his big break, when an Italian production company came to Bombay looking for an actor to cast in Sandokan, a TV series charting the life of a fictional 19th century pirate. “I was very young and probably impressionable and when I look back now I can appreciate that I signed up a lot of bad films during that initial phase in Bollywood. Another problem was while I could speak Punjabi, my Hindi was terrible. So when Sandokan came along I jumped at the opportunity. It seemed like an interesting story and an epic love story. It was definitely one of those fortunate accidents of history.”

While the series only spanned 6 episodes, Bedi’s turn as the strapping, smouldering Malayan brigand fighting Dutch and British rule in the Far East won him acclaim and a following that was at times fanatical and continues religiously to this day. Whilst the show was not widely shown in the English speaking world, primarily due the fact Sandokan spent his days kicking British colonial posteriors, in continental Europe, Africa, South America and the Far East, the series became a phenomenon. Repeats are shown to this day and in Italy, Bedi’s fame endures, with the actor regularly featuring in chat shows hosted invariably by women with endlessly long legs.

Paving the Way…

Sandokan opened numerous doors in the West for the tall and handsome actor with the green eyes, turning him into one of the world’s first itinerant performers. There followed roles in such notable productions as The Thief of Baghdad and the villain Gobinda in the Roger Moore bond romp “Octupussy”. Bedi also found work with unprecedented regularity – unprecedented at least for an Indian actor – during a period in the 1980’s and 1990’s when he amassed an unmatched body of work, appearing in General Hospital, Dynasty, Highlander, Magnum P.I., and The Bold and the Beautiful among others. In between he also returned to Bollywood working in everything from the twisted Khoon Bhari Maang to the soppy The Maharaja’s Daughter. Perhaps most significantly, Bedi opened the door for Indian actors to enter the Hollywood conscience, paving the way for the likes of Naveen Andrews, Kal Penn and Sendhil Ramamurthy. “I think Anil Kapoor’s recent role in 24 was significant”, Bedi says. “Things have changed over the past decades for Indian actors. There are more possibilities today. It sure took a lot of lobbying from the time I was there; to tell producers that you cannot write roles for Indians and then give them to lily-white Americans. They wouldn’t dare do that to black actors. That’s what I fought against for years. In spite of the regular work, I was left constantly asking, ‘why is it when I audition for a role the room is filled with white actors and brown actors. But the minute you audition for a black role there are only black actors in the room?’”

The extraordinarily diverse body of work is also testament to Bedi’s creative appetite and versatility as an actor – whether it is switching from Hindi to English to Italian (which he speaks fluently), or whether he’s playing a Moroccan prince in the Bold and the Beautiful or an Eastern bloc spy in Magnum PI. That versatility also made him into a successful travelling actor. “In spite of finding regular work, I could never find a role that would define me because so little was written for Indian actors. I realized that there’ll be work for as long as you stay here but there won’t be any truly significant roles written for you. That’s why I left Hollywood and made my way back to Europe.”

His success as Sandokan stood Bedi in good stead however, with Italian producers casting him in such hit TV shows as “Vivere” and “Un medico in Famiglia”. In London Bedi also returned to his first love as an actor, appearing in London’s West End in the epic production of “The Far Pavilions”. The jump to Bombay was also made easier with Bedi cast in such major productions as “Main Hoo Naa” and “Bewafaa”.

Incredible Experiences...

His prolific acting career apart, Bedi – unsurprisingly perhaps – is also well known for his personal life, one replete with drama, hedonism, unbridled love and tragedy. His first wife Protima was a model, dancer and fearless feminist who regularly rustled feathers in ostensibly conservative Bombay society. She was renowned for her insatiable love for life and famously streaking along Bombay’s Juhu beach for the launch of a celebrity magazine. Bedi and Protima eloped in 1969 much to the chagrin of her family, enjoying a famously open marriage which bore two children – Pooja, who went on to forge a successful career in Bollywood, and Siddarth. In the 1970’s, as the marriage began failing, Kabir began seeing Parveen Babi, another sultry actress and sex symbol. Bedi and Parveen however never married. It was an extraordinarily bohemian and artistic time for a successful and internationally renowned actor blessed with the sort of classically handsome good looks that could turn rocks into molten lava.

After the short lived affair with Babi, Kabir married British fashion designer Susan Humphreys in 1979, bearing a son – Adam Bedi – a ravenously striking product of east and west who became a successful, international model. After his second marriage ended in divorce, Bedi married Nikki Bedi, the fresh-faced Anglo Indian TV and radio presenter. That marriage too ended in divorce in 2002, although the amicability (and Bedi’s certain charm) resulted in Nikki holding on to the Bedi surname.

Contended...

Whilst he has had his fair share of utterly desirable females and mind-expanding hedonism, Bedi’s also had his share of tragedy; his son Siddarth committed suicide in 1997 after being diagnosed with Schizophrenia. “He had made attempts on his life and we had alerted the suicide squads in LA. He was suffering. He was such a handsome boy but had lost a lot of weight. I think he was very

brave, he chose to go because he couldn't handle the pain and agony of living life in a fog. When Siddharth's friends came to his funeral, I felt it could have been any one of them. God chose my son. Really, there's no explanation for schizophrenia.”

Outwardly at least, the sanguinity on display at the Cumberland Hotel in London suggests that he finally feels a deep contentment with his life and his achievements. Bedi confesses that it is partly due to the new love of his life; Praveen Dusanj, a vivacious, London-based Social Researcher who seems to combine an irresistible nonchalance with a steadiness that seems to have disarmed and grounded Kabir Bedi. Whilst the two have been together for several years, there’s no rush – particularly on Praveen’s part – to rush. “I think we have a very wonderful relationship”, Bedi says with a glint. “I hope it lasts forever; what form it will take we will have to wait and see”, he adds laughing. “I’ve asked her to marry me but she’s asked me to make absolutely sure because I’ve made the decision before.” He says with a smile.

The other aspect is his twin loves of Burma and Tibet and his passionate drive to shed light on the atrocities taking place in both countries. His passion however is misleading. “For many decades of my life I never took up any causes because I looked at my family who had given so much to various causes but had nothing to show for it in the end, whether in monetary terms or anything else. I found that a bit futile. I think I needed to set my life in order first! It’s only in the last 10 years or so that I have taken up causes. Apart from Tibet and Burma I also have the grassroots foundation which my daughter has set up empowering village women to become economically self-sufficient.”

Nonetheless, the two causes – Burma in particular – has deep meaning for Bedi. “I spent a lot of time in Burma as a child, because of my mother’s Buddhist connections. I was actually ordained as a young monk in Burma so I know Burma very well; when it was a democratic country, a happy country. A time when us monks would go out at 5 in the morning and people would come out of their homes to offer us food. There is a certain beauty and serenity that I recall about Burma, a beauty that has disappeared since the military took over and the country became one large repressed society.”

Bedi had a similar experience with Tibet, although this time it was with the starving and emotionally and physically broken refugees streaming into India in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The young Bedi followed his mother around Dharamsala as she set up schools and taught English to Lamas who would then go on to travel to the West to advocate against Chinese rule in Tibet. “Today we are so conditioned by Television that if TV cameras are not in a particular place, a particular situation would not enter the conscience of people. Because TV crews are not there in Tibet and Burma we tend to forget the enormous injustices that happen in those countries. In the case of Tibet a whole culture is being annihilated. When you don’t allow people to exercise their freedom of religion, their freedom of speech, then you destroy their culture. It becomes cultural genocide.”

But while the failure of the almost oligarchic Western media to highlight the plight of the Burmese and Tibetan people certainly irks, he accedes that the failure of the Indian media to shed light on what is happening on its doorstep is even more tragic. “In the first instance, I think the media in India are performing an extraordinary job in that in the absence of a quick moving judiciary the media are the only point of accountability. However they have failed when it comes to dealing with issues that affect us intimately in our neighbourhood. The coverage of these countries, even Pakistan, is highly limited. We get more news on what happens on Obama’s travels than China even. The average Indian wouldn’t know what the name of the Chinese president is. They wouldn’t know the name of the rulers of Sri Lanka or the injustices taking place in these countries.”

It seems a new phase has begun; a new incarnation of a man renowned for reinventing himself again and again. We wait with bated breath.

Poonam Joshi and Viji Alles