Dutt Sahab, me, and my camera@ a shop in Manhattan!!!

Veteran journalist recalls his chance encounter with Sunil Dutt at a shop in Manhattan way back in 1991

By Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi from Bengaluru
As one rewinds into the nostalgic past, as to how one as a youngster approached life, and work, it’s impossible to miss out on the moments that one lived through then – say a fleeting chance encounter with a Hollywood biggie or running into a gentleman actor-politician from Mumbai, in a place where one would have the least chances of such an encounter – or for that matter the sporting Icon you had dreamed of meeting (in my case Krishnamachari Srikkant, yes, the highest scorer in the finals of the first ever Prudential Cricket World Cup India won!).

And yes, with Krish, how can I forget that I smoked away half of his cigarette packet sitting at his Chennai residence when he was opening up an interesting website of his – to teach children science and maths through cricketing terms and analogies?

It is moments like these when one is rubbing shoulders with the super achievers, that more than compensate for the poverty of money and materials things that are guaranteed by journalism – the majority of the worker journalists, for sure – and the eking out of a living that is just about decent.

Also, by the same author: Of that chance encounter with ‘The Goldie Hawn’ at a Luxury Hotel in Jaipur – THE NEWS PORTER

It is among such moments is my chance encounter with THE Sunil Dutt, that gentleman politician he turned out after an illustrious and lengthy filmy career, in a huge super-market kind of a shop in Manhattan in the 1991 winters when he had come to participate in a filmy do in the mecca of free enterprise – New York. An instant smile on his face when I walked up to him as I spotted him in the shop selling cameras, to introduce myself as that Reporter in Delhi who had covered a small slice of his walkathon when he was entering Delhi (along with an army of media corps), only revealed his gentle demeanour and pleasing personality. Once again.

Would he pose for a picture with me and Sanjay Upadhyaya (my batchmate at the UN Scholarship in the UN Building in New York during UNGA 1991)? But of course, this picture you see was shot with the same camera I was buying from none other than the shopkeeper himself. In those days, one had to get the exposed camera rolls washed in a studio (of course one collected the rolls and got them done in Delhi as the US was mightily expensive and may still be if one converted them into Rupees needed to pay up in Dollars and cents).

The chance encounter and conversation with Sunil Dutt, all of just five minutes, is something that was so refreshingly different from similar encounter (s) one had with the country’s first superstar, Rajesh Khanna (who incidentally was also in the US at that time, as were several of his co-stars participating in a Bollywood function in NY).

As a City Reporter with The Hindu covering the New Delhi constituency in the Parliamentary elections of 1991, one had to boycott the Superstar for his antics for over a week, until the great Bollywood biggie climbed down and spent time with the poor scribes like yours truly.

But that is another story, altogether, some other time may be.

Now Dutt Sahab, was Dutt Sahab and he eventually won parliament elections from Maharashtra and became a minister. But all this was about to happen in the future at the time of my chance 5-minute encounter – a pleasant one, pleasant enough to be safely storing the picture in my album for all times to come.

And for times like these, when one travelled back in time – the only thing one does when one is leading a retired life like me, now settled in Bangalore.

Picture caption: Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi (in the middle) with the gentleman actor-politician Sunit Dutt at a camera shop in Manhattan. This is the first picture taken with the aim-and-shoot camera he had purchased just then before he walked into the shop, and the friendly shopkeeper was spontaneous when he said he would take the picture. Along with him is Sanjay Upadhyaya, his course mate at the UNDP scholarship at the United Nations during the 1991 UNGA.