Excerpt – Amitabh Bachchan: A Kaleidoscope
Bachchan’s film career was a roller coaster after the release of Main Azaad Hoon. By the late ‘90s, he was grasping at straws. He was reduced to playing caricatures of his glory days, in a string of forgettable movies. His movies were bombing- right, left and centre. He was also under a crushing financial debt resulting from the failure of his business ventures.
In the early part of 2000, two events happened that would change his fate. He signed on the television game show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC). His avuncular turn as the gentle quizmaster in KBC was an instant hit. And having not worked with Yash Chopra for the best part of two decades, he reached out to the director, whose Deewar will probably top fans’ choice as Amitabh’s best.
One morning, during the late ‘90s when he was buffeted by multiple crises, Amitabh woke up and as his wont, went to the small temple he has built in his house in Mumbai. Alone, he stood in front of the deity and reprised his famous Deewar monologue with God, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ An idea struck him. It was very early in the morning, but he still went over to Yash Chopra’s house. In Bachchan’s words, ‘I went over and told him the facts. I was out of work. I needed money and would he give me a job?’ Chopra was stunned. However, he said that his son, Aditya, was going to make a film just then and he was welcome to join the cast. The result was Mohabbatein released in 2000. Bachchan shared the screen with superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The two bickered over their contrasting attitudes to the teenage lovers. In spite of the film being a tale of romantic love, Bachchan held his own against the ‘Badshah’ of romance, Shah Rukh – the reigning superstar.
The success of Narayan Shankar in Mohabbatein and that of the greying quizmaster of KBC brought Bachchan face-to-face with a new reality. Bachchan the star realized that he needn’t be angry or young any more to be accepted by his fans. In his heyday, he had done offbeat films such as Alaap, Jurmana, Bemisal and Manzil, many of them with the master film-maker, Hrishiksesh Mukherjee. But these ‘slice of life’ movies had not succeeded. Film critics in the ‘70s and; ’80s accused him of being unwilling and unable to snap out of the larger-than-life ‘dhishoom dhishoom’ roles that had made him a superstar. They felt that he had settled for the mountain peak when the sky was the limit to what he could do. But with the success of Mohabbatein and KBC, Bachachan the actor had been liberated: of his image, of any self-imposed barrier, of commercial risk consideration. The sky, indeed, had become the limit for Amitabh Bachchan.
