Reminiscences about encounters and associations
with famous personalities from films, the arts and politics
Jawahar Pheroze Ezekiel
In the 1984 film Forrest Gump, the titular protagonist gets to meet a series of famous people by pure happenstance and narrates how his life has been touched by greatness — once removed!
Mine has been a Forrest Gump life.
Before I was born, my mother Khorshed (née Wadia), who grew up during India’s freedom struggle, decided to name me Jawahar after Jawaharlal Nehru. Not only was he lndia’s first Prime Minister, but he was also a tall, good looking Kashmiri intellectual, and I suspect my mother, who has always had impeccable taste, admired him for other reasons too. Well, guess......