The Ajanta Palace Hotel of 1968 is still there and has built an extension, where in 1995 we put up our office for ABCL. A sheer coincidence. Roop Tara Studios became a regular shooting venue for several of my earlier films, later. Some of them now being referred to in the electronic media as classics and of record box office returns. Mr Mohan Segal has passed away, but years later as I prepared for another tense ordeal in my creative life — Kaun Banega Crorepati — I discover his son on the executive team of Star, working along with me.

Dutt Saheb and Nargisji, God bless their souls, remained their generous and kind self throughout my years in the industry and now Sanju their son, equally close and a considerate friend of Abhishek and the family, works with me on several projects even as we talk.

Mumbai 1969. I come again at the behest of my brother who has shown my photographs to Khwaja Ahmed Abbas. And the confirmation of my first film Saat Hindustani for that unheard of and enormous sum, to me, of Rs 5000, and the small celebration between some local friends of my brother at Bombelli’s, the quaint and delightful little restaurant opposite the, yes, Breach Candy Hospital.

Breach Candy Hospital — where I died to live again. Because the people of my country so wished and prayed for it.

...As far as the place where I was born goes, of course, how can you ever forget the Mother that gave birth to you? There is something about the earth the air and the environment of your place of birth. Consciously or unconsciously it will forever remain an integral part of your being and in the being of generations that follow. It is nature. But it has never been restrictive.

... contd.