Why Kabir Bedi wanted to be as vulnerable as possible for ‘Stories I Must Tell’

Actor Kabir Bedi discusses ‘Stories I Must Tell: The Emotional Life of an Actor’, surfing through heartbreaks and dealing with the loss of a dear one in his deeply personal memoir

When Kabir Bedi sat down to pen his memoir, Stories I Must Tell, launched in April by actor Priyanka Chopra, he offhandedly pasted a sticker onto his computer that read: “Be vulnerable.” It resulted in reliving a quagmire of emotions and a deeply contemplative book beyond the regular glitz and glam of filmdom, a deep dive into the psyche of a personality who has seen it all. It is a story of love and loss, but also milestones and mistakes — Bedi’s words, not mine. “It is a story of what it takes to be a human; to go through the rollercoaster of emotions I went through and the lessons that emerged. I wrote the book to inspire people and at the same time, caution them about the joys and dangers of success,” says Kabir Bedi, ahead of his talk as part of FICCI FLO Chennai’s chapter titled Stories We Must Hear. Kabir Bedi is a ball of yarn. It is another thing that the stories he has write themselves. Like, for instance, when we reached out to him, he took us by a delightful surprise, narrating a fascinating nugget of memory involving his parents and A Rangaswami Iyengar, the then Editor of The Hindu. “When my father [Baba Pyare Lal Singh Bedi] who was an Indian and my mother [Freda Bedi] who was British met and fell in love at Oxford, it created a lot of controversy because the institution was quite racist at that point of time. It was The Hindu’s Editor [Rangaswami Iyengar] who supported them and my brother [Ranga Bedi] was named in his honour,” says Bedi, in his imposing baritone.