Timepass

Few lives have been more eventful and controversial than Protima Bedi's, and Timepass, derived from her unfinished autobiography, journals and her letters to family, friends and lovers, is a startlingly frank and passionate memoir. Protima recounts with unflinching honesty the events that shaped her life: her humiliation as a child at being branded the ugly duckling, repeated rape by a cousin when she was barely ten, the failure of her 'open' marriage with Kabir Bedi, her many sexual encounters, and the romantic relationships she had with prominent politicians and artistes. She writes, too, of her intense involvement with dance, her relationship with her guru and fellow dancers, the difficult mission of establishing Nrityagram, and the suicide of her son--a tragedy from which she never fully recovered. In a moving epilogue to the book, her daughter, Pooja Bedi, describes her last days and the circumstances of her death. Illustrated with over fifty photographs, Timepass is the story of a remarkable woman who had the spirit, the courage and the intelligence to live life entirely on her own terms. "I have broken every single rule that our society has so carefully constructed. I have known no barriers, I have done precisely what I bloody well felt like doing and never given a damn. I have flaunted my youth, my sex, my intelligence, and I have done it shamelessly. I have loved many, been loved by some..."