When I started making enough to feed myself in this city, my friend Anwar Ali, Mehmood Bhai’s brother and I, would often slip out in the middle of the night to desolate suburban train stations, catch a few hungry kids huddled together in deep slumber, wake them up and give them money to buy meals for them and their near ones.

My visits to Chowpati have been restricted, but whenever I have been there I have not dared to eat without feeding a few. In Juhu Parle where I live, I have often given the odd blanket and some used clothes to a shivering mother with child, lying on the footpath or dangerously, on the central divider. The look in their eyes is indescribable. I would challenge any actor in the world to replicate that. A few days later, I would find the same woman again on the street, minus the clothes and blanket. Probably sold it for a full meal.

Back to my memories. It was 1968 and it was Roop Tara Studios, in Dadar, now razed, I believe, for more lucrative development, my first screen test. The thrill of living in a hotel on Juhu Tara Road, the Ajanta Palace and the anxious moments spent in learning and rehearsing my lines for the test.

The mundane, and disorganised settings of a studio, the wait for hours till I was called by Mr Mohan Segal, the eminent director to perform, the comfort and guidance given during the two days I spent in the city by Mrs Nargis Dutt and Dutt Saheb, who had organised and hosted my visit, my first film party they took me to at Sadhanaji’s house and my impressions of that night, my return back to New Delhi and the advice given to me by my father about that trip, the complete absence of that test on film, no one still not knowing where it is and what became of it — all so vivid still in memory.

... contd.