|
Kabir Bedi, her former husband and a Bollywood star says: Yes, she
was searching. But I can't say what…
Her lifestyle often caused arguments between the mother and daughter
(Pooja Bedi). Pooja says: "Yes, we had terrible arguments on
her lifestyle. I hated all her boyfriends and whenever she wanted
to take me out with them I would adamantly refuse.
I remember the streaking incident when children in school came
and teased me. Teri mummy nangi bhagti hai. Enraged, I went
home and immediately questioned her. And she told me: "I live
life my own way and do not want you to question me. When you grow
up, you too can live life as you wish too.
Two words explain her behaviour best, says psychoanalyst, Madhu
Sarin - bravado and grandiosity. Both refer to a surface behaviour.
In psychological terms she displayed a counter phobic tendency,
which means acting the opposite of what you feel. Hence the display
of bravado when deep inside she was cut to the bone.
When Sonia Sahni, a Bollywood actress unabashedly asked her to
share her handsome husband Kabir with them she retorted: "He
will never need my permission. I am not his mother."
But the bravado was a just mask and so it slipped too often leaving
her feelings exposed.
For the teen brigade, the age when the hormones start kicking in,
Protima Bedi was quite an icon like Madonna defying sexual taboos
and challenging hypocrisies. Her nude run on the Juhu beach in Mumbai
was the acme of her defiance and spawned a legion of young admirers
along with a bunch of raised eyebrows and people who just stopped
short of calling her a whore.
Birth of an Odissi dancer
That one day in 1975, at the Bhulabhai Desai hall in Mumbai was
an epiphanic moment for Protima. In that one meeting with Guru Kelucharan
Mohapatra, the doyen of Odissi dance, Protima telescoped a lifetime
with just one stilletoed step.
In that one meeting, she changed from the glam doll in a clinging
dress, twirling a cigarette in her hand with her hair-streaked gold
to an accomplished dancer who gave birth to Nrityagram.
|
