BANGALORE: A colourful larger than life character in his sixties who has the gift of the gab and is liberal with his similes and metaphors and puns, and one who sometimes tends to overuse them is the first impression one gets of veteran musician Biddu.
That’s also apparent from his recently released autobiography â€?Made in India – Adventures of a lifetime’.
This is a man who is not averse to complimenting himself, sometimes backhandedly (maybe too often) is the next impression on hearing him and reading him. This is a man who thinks very highly of himself, and maybe with some, nay, a lot of justification.
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While overusing the grammatical comparatives, Biddu does manage to narrate an interesting, but not too enthralling (except for his fans, of which there are many, including yours truly) a tale about his travails towards his path to fame and glory. One gets the impression that Biddu is trying to create an image of a likeable pirate – of the Johnny Depp –Pirates of the Caribbean variety for himself!
I am a citizen of the world, but inside, truly deep inside, I am still made in India…, says Biddu in his book. Is â€?Made in India – Adventures of a lifetime’, a true and complete autobiography? True, yes from Biddu’s point of view, but complete? Methinks no, because it does not really tell as much as one would like to know about the writer, a genius who claims that he is now too much into writing and is likely to return to creating more music when he’s in his nineties!
While narrating his climb to fame in the west, Biddu has been more than spartan, he does not communicate too much on what was going on his mind, and neither does he speak too much about his family. Reading the book makes one feel more like one is reading an abridged version rather than the whole story.
Harper Collins has commissioned Biddu to do three books, this is the first one. The second novel will be serious fiction set in Darjeeling and Kolkata and will have a blend of romance, mysticism, bigotry and adventure, and should be out sometime in September or October this year. The third book is also fiction and is set in Mumbai and is likely to be funny and sad. Maybe a second autobiography from Biddu will be due over the next few years since he claims that he has been infected by a writing bug?
However, all told, for music aficionados, and more so of the Biddu Indipop variety, this book is a must read!
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Bangalore based Tarachand Wanvari heads South India for the Indian Television Dot Com group which publishes www.radioandmusic.com
