Love & Letters from Lahore: Nitish Bharadwaj recounts fandom from his Mahabharat days

Radhika Bhirani

rbhirani@gmail.com

We've all heard those stories. In Bollywood parlance, of 'jabra' fans.

There was Rajesh Khanna, whose car would be laced with lipstick marks from fanatical fans, and women sent him letters written in blood.

There's Amitabh Bachchan, for whom a fan even built a 'temple' in Kolkata, and the world of cinema has no dearth of stories so on an so forth.

But beyond the world of films, even Indian television stars have had some unforgettable -- some overwhelming, some scary and some awkward --fan experiences.

As the 1980s' epochal shows Ramayan and Mahabharat got set for a re-run to keep viewers engaged during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic earlier this year, I reconnected with actor Nitish Bharadwaj.

It is his epic embodiment as Lord Krishna in B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat which won him fans galore in his heydays. The re-run, which continue to drive high viewerships even after a four-phased lockdown, have added to the list.

 

But there's one particular fan story that he recounted as I asked him to share what he feels, in hindsight, of the unprecedented popularity that he courted with the show.

He wrote to me, "A particular girl from Lahore (Pakistan) continuously sent me letters, expressing her love and desire to marry me. Those days, all the fan mail from Pakistan was opened by the Police, screened and then delivered to me.

"I was advised not to respond at all, so I didn’t. I was amazed when the same girl came to meet me on the sets of Vishnu Puran around 2002 and introduced herself by jogging my memory."

There's more.

"I was absolutely stumped when she introduced her 7-year-old son, who she had named Nitish. A Hindu name, in a Muslim household. I couldn’t help but totally respect her feelings. I think it was one of those very few awkward moments in my life," recounted Bharadwaj.

Mahabharat, my sources tell me, was one of the few Indian television shows at the time which had a cross-border connect, even though it wasn't easily available. People used to do their 'jugaad'  to catch the signal using a wooden stick and a steel plate to get their dose of Indian mytho drama, mostly in Lahore and Karachi, apart from border areas. 

The show, naturally, holds a special space in the actor's heart. He shared how when the first episode was aired, he faced "negative" reactions. But it was the faith of the team behind the scenes that kept him going.

Rest is history, as he said, but admitted that he still gets "goosebumps" when he sinks into memories and moments from the making of the show.

Years have passed. And in between, he featured in films, left the industry to be in London,  had a brush with politics, pursues theatre,  directed a Marathi film Pitruroon five years ago, and  has an organic farm. On the big screen, he was seen in films like Mohenjo Daro and Kedarnath.  

All in all, Bharadwaj, in my view, is in a "new chakravyuh of life". It's another thing that he made it clear that he'd rather describe his journey as one that's "out of the political chakravyuh".

When I met him last at a hotel lobby in New Delhi for an interview in summer 2019, Bharadwaj seemed kicked about getting back to direction. Cut to 2020, he has has completed two Hindi screenplays.

"I was in talks with a producer when this lockdown happened. We shall hopefully resume talks and take it forward. It will be a period Hindi film."