Sometimes a single event tells you everything about a person, and so it was, earlier this summer. Amitabh Bachchan recited his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poetry at the Theatre des Champs-élysées, in Paris. Correction, he not only recited, he sang, he translated and told stories that set up the context of the poems. It is important to discern that he was not grandiose, not pompous and not contemptuous of the doubtful comprehension of the audience. He thought nothing of breaking a poem’s rhythm (sacrilege, I think) to translate it into English, with unselfconscious ease. He was clearly there to communicate, not to join ranks with connoisseurs to affirm his compatibility with them. Amitabh kept it simple. It was a simplicity that begs a hermeneutic process, because it is devoid of oversight with an abundance of circumspection. True art says the unsaid, and touches a tiny nerve that has been pinching in your subconscious. It takes the mundane, strips away cliche concepts and turns it into something extraordinary,...
