Watching Kapil Dev discuss current cricketers, the World Cup and the IPL at a promotional event in Mumbai earlier this month, I was reminded of Salim-Javed's immortal lines from Deewar, as mouthed by Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor playing brothers on screen. "Mere paas gaadi hai, bungla hai, naukar hai, tumhare paas kya hai?" asks the haughty Bachchan to which Kapoor replies with firm conviction, "Mere paas maa hai".
I must plead guilty, of course, to a somewhat contrived imagery here, for Kapil Dev is hardly the humble, middle-class protagonist Shashi Kapoor played in that epic film. In fact he must rank amongst the upper echelons of even the High Networth Individuals in the country, with a flourishing business of supplying floodlights at various stadia across the country.
