Manoj Kumar Travels To Delhi By Train After Forty Years

Ali Peter John

Manoj Kumar (Harikishen Goswami) has completed sixty years in films and has made some of the most memorable films based on India which gives him the title of Mr Bharat. But in all these years, he is a only filmmaker-actor who has a plane phobia and has not travelled by air even when he had to make a film called “Purab Aur Paschim"which as the title indicates had a lot of shooting to be done abroad, but he preferred to travel by ship which took him several days and sometimes weeks, but he still did not take a flight to anywhere and has stuck to his belief of keeping away from flights and still continues to travel by car or by train....

He has been confined to bed with a serious spinal problem and age related problems (he is eighty-two now).

Last week he left Mumbai for New Delhi by train to attend a marriage in the family. His wife, Shashi Goswami who has always been by his side is all praise for her husband's will power which made him take a wheelchair and then travelled by car to Mumbai Central to take the Rajdhani Express which he has always found as a very comfortable way of traveling.

In an unusual call from New Delhi, he said he had fulfilled a long standing dream of visiting Delhi whose lanes and gullies he always remembers. He may not be able to walk the lanes he wants to because of his problems with his back, but he told me that he will certainly visit his school (Savlan's) and the Hindi College from where he graduated. He said Delhi was like home for him and he would like to spend as much time as he would like to. But he said he had to come back to his Karnabhoomi (Mumbai) which he said had made him what he is today.

Manoj has just completed working on a script and if all goes well with his health he may even start shooting for a film which he says will be about the changing face and values of the new Bharat. That film will certainly be something to wait for from the maker of such classics as“Shaheed",“Upkar",“Purab Aur Paschim",“Roti Kapada Aur Makan"and his magnum opus,“Kranti", besides the hundred odd films he has worked in and the rare kind of films he has encouraged and inspired like the film on the Saibaba of Shirdi, which revived the fervour and faith in the Baba for which Manoj Kumar even has a road named after him in the way to the shrines of the Saibaba.

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