Excerpts from Amitabh Bachchan’s blog, penned after his visit to the hospital

Large crowds and media keep a constant vigil on the hospital premises and I spend time with immediate family and other important personalities of the region. Members from the politburo, members of Parliament, ex-Speaker of Parliament, Somnath Chatterjee, ex-chief minister of Bengal and brilliant legal luminary and diplomat Siddharth Shankar Ray, Prakash Karat, leading party member, and his charming wife Brinda Karat!!

I am delighted to meet Brinda because she is part of the nostalgia of Kolkata and indeed of Delhi University during the years I studied there. Brinda Das she was, Miss Miranda House, the prominent ladies college in the campus. Her elder sister Juni Das also from Miranda and a colleague in the Miranda House annual play The Rape of the Belt, which I enacted way back in 1961-62, much to the envy of other class and university mates because the girls’ college was a major attraction for the boys, and we Kenneth Maharaj Singh, Anwar Abbas and yours truly were the only ones allowed to actually enter the hallowed portals of Miranda!!

Kenneth and Anwar were the other two men roles in the play.

Juni Das, from Kolkata, then met up with us when we did theatre under the Amateurs here in this city and played many an important role in several plays we did together. Later, in a couple of years, we were joined by Brinda who also was a most accomplished artist and performer on stage. After Kolkata, I think she went for further studies to England, met her husband and joined the Communist Party of India and is now in Parliament.

Juni, we sadly lost some years ago in a hospital in Mumbai, very suddenly. I had been to visit her as she lay in the ICU. Her vibrant and joyful demeanour now almost lost and still. It was a sad sight to see someone go away so young.

As we sat in the hospital room in Kolkata tonight, Brinda talked of those days we had all spent, of her great companionship in Parliament with Jaya and the excitement they both shared in the various debates they took part in. Time passes and leaves behind words thoughts acts and memories, never to be lived again. The location is the same, the situations become different. The people are the same, but their vocations change. The vibrations are similar, but they touch different chords.