TO MOM, WITH LOVE

There’s been a reticent air about him. Yet also a marked resilience. To rise above the heartbreaks. To stay resolute in the face of enervating upheavals… Like losing his mother, veteran actor Nutan, who was just 54, to cancer. Like remaining unaware that his father, ex-naval Lieutenant-Commander Rajnish Bahl, was being engulfed by flames just a floor below his. Like having to deal with unkind scrutiny about his parents’ allegedly troubled marriage and subsequent conjecture about his disturbed bond with his father. All this even as he was battling the vacuum they left behind. The randomness, the ruthlessness of the events in his life have lent him a rare temperance. Just that sometimes his eyes turn misty as he recounts the sequence and dates of events that unfurled with precision. He reveals he finds recourse in the Bhagvad Gita, something his mother introduced him to. It’s enabled him to look at life through a philosophic prism. His support system – wife Aarti, daughters, actor Pranutan Bahl and Krishaa – remain rapt as he reminisces… “Listen to silence. It has so much to say,” wrote Rumi. Mohnish Bahl is all about that…