Amitabh Bachchan: Our Hero for All Times!

It was January of 1979, I was 11 and our Air India flight from Karachi was about to land in Bombay (now named Mumbai) International Airport. Our trip had taken us from Tehran to Karachi and after two days in Karachi we made it to Bombay. After we landed there, we were driven to Poona (Pune) and onto to Panchgani, a hill station in the western State of Maharashtra where my sister, my brother, I would attend, New Era High School, an international boarding school.

One day we were in Ahvaz, in the comfort of all that was familiar to us…our city, our home, our language, our food and above all, our family and friends…in what seemed to be, a blink of an eye, we were taken away from it and put in India. Fortunately for us, we went to a boarding school where most students were our age and came from all over the world, from Iran to Canada, United States to Ethiopia, and Somalia to Australia. Exposure to this rich mixture of diverse cultures at a young age developed within me the ability to mingle with all peoples and see diversity as a strength and looked for it rather than avoid it! Give me a work force from 10 countries, 50 cultures/tribes and a table with chicken briyani, Awaze tibs, chelo-kabob, goat curry, and Tuo Zaafi with bito soup and Guinea Fowl meat on it and I am as happy and productive as can be!

That was the campus of New Era High School….But outside of that, there was India. India with its populations of 700 million (1979)! The wealth of Indian culture was immense, this wealth was a direct reflection of its diverse population. Different languages, nationalities, tribes, religions, food, music and geography, all within this huge land mass. For me as a kid, nothing and no one brought these difference into one arena as did Bollywood and its incomparable hero, Amitabh Bachchan.

 

 

Amitabh Bachchan became our hero. I remember the first movie I saw with Amitabh in it. It was in the city of Sholapur and the name of the movie was “Suhaag”. The movie was “house-full”, no seats available! A few minutes into the movie, Amitabh finally appears on the screen, with him drinking a bottle of whisky and the theater erupted…as if he was standing on the stage in person!! People started to throw coins towards the screen! The best a Hollywood megastar could do was get a clap or two!! Whether you were an 11 year old kid like me or a 50 year woman sitting behind us, we were all taken over and mesmerized by Amitabh baritone voice, acting, singing and dancing. And when the movie came to an end, it was as if you woke up from a dream! It was an amazing feeling. The songs from the movies were all around us, whether walking in the bazaar or in school. We would try to imitate Amitabh’s dance moves and the term “hero” and “Amitabh/Amit” were interchangeable in our lingo…Ultimately, Amitabh’s heroism on the screen infused some of us with the wealth of Indian music, and our love for it.

 

In 1984 when my siblings and I left India for the United States, we brought with us a piece of India, which was our love for Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood and its music which had sustained our childish spirit during the five years we lived in India.

Till today, when the times are tough or when my days are not going well, one of the avenues I turn to for spiritual upliftment and motivation is an old Amitabh song and dance number! So it was in 1989, my first semester at Holyoke Community College, when taking one of my first international affairs classes. It was mid-terms and we had to write a paper. Let’s just say my professor did not like my paper, she came quite hard on me, and told me “what the hell is this?” She used the word “hell’ because she was too polite to use the “F” word! I took the paper came home and just fell on the couch, depressed and looking at the ceiling. Not knowing how to get myself up and motivated after that very negative encounter with my professor!  I simply got up and took a cassette and put it in the video player and turned to Amitabh, the hero of my childhood to save the day and put some motivation back into my being!! It just took a song from the movie “Mr. Natwarlal” where Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha sing and dance to the song, “Oonchi Oonchi Baaton Se”! A week later I stood in my professor’s office and she turned to me and said, “This is what I was looking for, much better…good job”.

If I told her what was behind the better performance, she would have never believed me!

The Date Palm at the Entrance!

“Where are you going?” asked Azanpoka, “I am going to Bolgatanga” I replied. I had not walked more than 20 meters from Mr. Tony’s house, where I lived, and Azanpoka was the third person asking me where I was going!! Such was the culture in Namoo, a small village, located in Bongo District, on the Ghanaian border with Burkina Faso. Asking where you were going was a way for the community to make sure they knew where you were at all times and if you did not come back they would know where to start looking for you. Since I was a visitor they felt an extra sense of responsibility for my safety!

Having cleared five-levels of Namoo security! I got to the roadside waiting for the taxi. The taxi having crossed from the village of Yelwongo on the Burkina Faso side into Ghana, had already pick up 5 passengers. The taxi driver stopped, having recognized me as Anamoo (local name given to me by the Chief of Namoo), he looked around in his taxi and asked the passengers to shift around and make room! I was able to fit myself inside this beat up Nissan. I got very close to the passengers, we all got too close… but hey as my dad used to say, “Cheltaa Darvish tooyeh yek Poosteh Gerdoo Zendegi Mikardand!” “40 Dervishes lived in a walnut shell!” For those who are trying to understand what does 40 dervishes in a walnut shell have to do with 6 passengers in a beat up taxi, basically it means that if we live simple like a dervish, then there is always room for everyone….OK…never mind!

So the taxi started to move. Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region in the north most part of Ghana, was about a 45 minutes ride from Namoo. As we passed by the village of Sambolgu towards Zoko, I saw a beautiful palm tree, and for a second I remembered the palm trees filled with dates that use to decorate Ahvaz, the city of my birth, in southwest Iran. And at that moment I craved those sweet dates we use to eat with no end in sight!!! If you put a million dates in front of us, we would finish them all!!

We got to Bolgatanga and were dropped off at the the Namoo/Bongo transport yard. I got out of the taxi..a bit soar, a bit dusty and a bit nostalgic! I started to walk towards the town center, where I would usually stop by the Traveler’s Inn, a small restaurant/shop. This is where I would get a cold Coke to drink, a luxury considering that Namoo at the time did not have electricity and therefore no cold drinks to enjoy! And with temperatures well above 100, anything cold was heaven send.  As I sat there with a bottle in my hand, the thought of the date palms of Ahvaz lingered in my mind. I looked around and then suddenly out of nowhere appeared a woman with a big round tray on her head!

“Sir, do you want to buy?” she said as she brought down the tray and long behold there was a tray full of dates!!! I looked at the woman and asked, “Are these dates?” asking for a second opinion in case my mind was playing tricks on me or I was hallucinating…maybe someone had put something in my bottle of Coke! Out of nowhere had appeared a woman with a tray of dates…”Where did you get these dates?” I inquired and she pointed to the sky and said, “by Bawku side”. I later found out the dates were from Niger. But at that moment I was so excited I did not care where they had come from. I bought everything or almost everything this woman had on her tray and made her a very happy person, she did well that day!

In matter of minutes I ate most of the dates, but I did control myself enough to save a couple of pieces for Mr. Tony. I returned to Namoo that evening and sat with Mr. Tony eating our dinner of Tuo Zaafi (TZ) with Bito Soup and Guinea Fowl meat. After dinner I introduced him to his first date! He ate it and liked it. After a few days when the excitement of eating the miraculous dates had died down and I had gotten back to my senses! I remembered that I had saved some of the seeds and brought them back from Bolgatanga. I went to Mr. Tony and said why don’t we plant these seeds and see if they will grow, he readily agreed. Mr. Tony was desertification’s worst nightmare! He would plant any seedling or seed he could get his hands on!! So he called Ibrahim and Abdulai, two of the kids in our house to come and dig a small hole in the ground and we brought the seeds and planted them. From that day we all kept a close eye on the spot that perchance we could get a sighting of sprouting vegetation, after weeks of not seeing any growth we stopped looking.

Then the rainy season started, when after about 7 months of no rain, windy weather, and extreme heat, the brown, parched earth was revived and born again. One evening, a few weeks into the rainy season, I heard a bit of commotion, and soon after I heard a knock at my door, it was Ibrahim, who said, “Mr. Anamoo come on, come on and see”! So I followed Ibrahim to the front of the house where he and the rest of the kids had gathered looking at and pointing to the ground! I looked down and there out of the ground were two baby leaves that had shot out from where the date seeds had been planted! We again continued to keep an eye on this small seedling. The dry season came around and Mr. Tony made sure the baby plants were getting their fair share of water. Soon after I left Namoo and Ghana and returned to the United States, leaving behind a home, a family, and a village which was my community for two years and had contributed greatly to who I had become. That was November of 2000.

 

Ten years later I was back to Ghana and made my way back to Namoo to visit Mr. Tony.  The next morning after we arrived, he took me to the front of the house and pointed me to a tree and said, “do you remember the date seeds we planted? Here it is! And there stood in front of me a small palm tree that looked like it had struggled to make it! The seeds that had been planted all those years ago had grown to a youthful date-palm!

Five years later, again I am back to Namoo and our palm date has grown into adulthood! She stands next to the entrance of Mr. Tony’s house as if to welcome the visitors. We found out that the tree is a female and needs a male next to it to produce dates. As the saga continues, we are looking for a husband to be planted next to her! One day she will bare dates for all to enjoy, the same enjoyment I experienced, on that miraculous day in Bolgatanga!