Aaditya Thackeray’s first interview… …but as a poet, not a politician!

In 2010, when he was still a precocious teenager studying at St. Xavier’s College, #AadityaThackeray trotted into my office to pay a courtesy call. I was an editor at the Times Group then. And Xavier’s was just behind the Times. He walked down the lane between both institutions that had witnessed much bloodshed on the night of November 26, 2008. By himself, with no bodyguards.

It turned out Aaditya was visiting the Times Music office. They were launching an album of poems by him called ‘Ummeed’. These poems had earlier been published in Marathi, Hindi, and English in a book titled ‘My Thoughts in Black and White. I did not know about the book or the album. And I did not know Aaditya. But I knew his father, #UddhavThackeray, and his grandfather, the great #BalasahebThackeray. It was Balasaheb who told Aaditya to call on me.
And there he was. An earnest collegian and a Xaverite, in jeans and a chequered shirt, friendly light grey eyes peering at me from behind spectacles, a shy smile breaking out from between adulthood’s first stubble. Wondering if I might help him out with a small interview. It would be his first, Aaditya said. I did it. Not because ‘Ummeed’ was a Times album. And the poems had been put to music by Manjunath Pai and sung by Sunidhi Chauhan, Suresh Wadkar, Kailash Kher, Shankar Mahadevan, and others. But because he was a Thackeray and I liked his father and had much respect for his grandfather.

I asked him where he got his inspiration for poems. And Aaditya told me it came anywhere and at any time. “Sometimes when I am traveling, or in class, but mostly when I am in the bathroom,” he said, grinning. “It’s just a line, a thought, how long I take to develop it, depends…” I asked him how he recorded these inspirations. “I key them into my phone,” he revealed, digging out a cell phone from his hip pocket to show me the latest poem he was working on.
Did the inspirations come in Marathi, Hindi, or English, I persisted, because his book was trilingual. “It depends on the subject,” Aaditya replied. “At home, I speak Marathi. With friends, I interact in Hindi. In college, I study English. But now I am learning French!” I found him delightful. He told me the poems, in the book and the album, were about hope, they talked about love, and there was spirituality in them.

I offered Aaditya a glass of cutting chai and engaged him in conversation. He was a regular college kid. Into studies, photography, and cricket. No, he was not treated with privilege at Xavier’s because he was a Thackeray. Any girlfriends? “No, no, I have no girlfriends, I stay away from all that,” he protested with an embarrassed laugh. “But I love poetry. My favorite poems are John Leigh Hunt’s ‘Abou Ben Adhem’ and Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’.”
Any political ambitions? He dodged that question by saying, “I have been told not to talk about politics until I’m 21.” He’s 29 now, a Sena leader and the Yuva Sena chief. And Aaditya Thackeray’s contesting the Maharashtra assembly elections on a Shiv Sena ticket from Worli on Monday. The first Thackeray to ever fight a poll. Also, I think, the first poet to become a politician.

About Mark Manuel 

The above thoughts/content has been proudly copied from the wall of Sir Mark Manuel. Being interviewing almost every role model of this country and going stronger each day. Mark Manuel is a respected Mumbai editor, writer, and columnist.

With over three decades of journalism in leading publications. This includes the Free Press Journal, Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Mid-Day, and Afternoon. He is famous for his brilliant pen interviews. He himself is a TEDx speaker.

Further

His interviews have featured in several leading media houses. They include the Hindustan Times, Huffington Post, BBC, and Network 18. Almost every famous person has been interviewed by him in the country from Mother Teresa to Muhammad Ali. His first book is just out. It’s titled Moryaa Re! It is a crime thriller that is perhaps the country’s first police procedural. He began his career covering crime. And in a tribute to his experience and knowledge of this beat.

Several distinguished officers of the Mumbai Police and its Crime Branch collaborated with him to make this book possible. Amitabh Bachchan wrote the forward in a statement of friendship for Mark Manuel and admiration for his work.

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