Fear Factor

But the fears hounded her. She was like a storm in a room. Sometimes she’d say the air conditioner had a bug. We had to dismantle it and show it to her. At other times there was ‘ a bug’ in the fan or in the perfume... Once we were driving back after meeting my friend, philosopher and guide UG Krishnamurthy, when she said, “There’s a bomb in the car. I can hear it tick!” She threw open the door of the moving car, saying the bomb would burst and ran out on the road with me trying to hold her. People thought ‘ Parveen Babi’ was having a fight with her boyfriend. Somehow, I huddled her into a taxi and brought her home.

She also feared that Mr Amitabh Bachchan was out to kill her. Once she accompanied me to Mehboob Studio, saying she wanted to apologise to him. She believed she had harmed him and so had incurred his wrath. Her hallucinations were real for her. At another time, she even confided how during the riots in Ahmedabad ( 1969), the nuns in her school hid her in a tempo in between mattresses to be taken to a safe zone. She recalled that experience of her body trembling with fear albeit matter- of- factly. Once in the throes of her attack she even told her mother, “Hum nikaah kar lete hain!” She said that thinking marriage would be a safe haven. But I was a married man. There was no way I was going to leave Lorraine. And she was doing too well to give up a career for a nobody like me. Also, it was a nightmare to give her medicines. She’d refuse to have the pills. We’d mix it with the food and drink. But she’d insist, ‘ You eat it first!’ At times I did.