More From Big B’s Weblog

DAY 37(ii) Post

[quote]
On the sets of ‘Aladin’ again and a song !!

Petrified ! Songs have always been a nightmare for me. But more of that later.
[unquote]

Dear Amitji,
I have quoted the above two sentences from your previous post. It leaves many of us surprised, since your songs have always played a key role in your success. Kindly, grant me the permission to make the following observations in this regard.

1. This blog seems to be carrying out a two-way communication: Helping you know us (the audiences) better and vice-versa. You recently mentioned how tired and doubtful you were feeling the morning you had a shoot, and suddenly somebody’s positive sms made up your day….seems like a familiar story, since most of us have to go through the same, in one or the other way. This blog is, therefore, helping us know you as much as you might do about us!

2. When you have finally spoken and shared enough about your current projects and your close ones (we are enjoying it, no doubt), kindly, look back into your past and let us know once again about your past associates. Allow us to read the “not-so-diplomatic” version of that era. Let us know about your working with Hrishida, his movies like Mili, Abhiman Chupke Chupke and Namak Haram. This author recently watched Namak Haram (doesn’t know if it was produced before or after Zanjeer) and noticed how you had this “angry young man” character flowing out of your (on-screen) persona by that period.

This explosive energy, which would then devastate your on-screen adversaries, and your ability to act it so fabulously, proved out a crucial aspect for your later career, and may not be reenacted by anybody else, however hard they may try at it. Allow us to know more about this on-screen transformation – going into the top of aggression (Zanjeer and Deewar) from the earlier works. How did you realize you could/ should do it? Didn’t this aggressiveness suit the actor that was lying inside you? Or was it also a nightmarish experience just like songs?

3. An interview that you gave after the success of Abhiman was re-aired by the BBC Hindi service a few years ago. They sounded as if you had reached at your pinnacle by then. You also seemed to agree with them, forcing this author to be amused. You did not have the idea of the rise you were yet to see in the Hindi cinema…did you have really?!

4. Let us also know things about Prakash Mehra, MM Desai and Yash Chopra, with whom you gave so many major hits. You, Mehra and Desai seem to come out of the same age group…almost! Did this help in making your association bloom, in anyway?

5. Being an ardent Kishoreda fan, let me ask you this. How was it acting, when you knew, you had his voice to rely on? The two of you together gave so many great numbers….this despite of you saying songs were nightmarish!

It wasn’t a piece of cake for everybody to act on Kishoreda’s voice – he used to sing with so much energy and passion – yet you succeeded in reciprocating his brilliance on-screen. How challenging was it to shoot on KK numbers? And where do you see today’s playback guys? Do you still feel the same charge and excitement that KK (along with RDB, Ashadi, Latadi and other singers and composures of that era) provided you in those days? You had some kind of misunderstanding with him during the mid 80s. It left us short of a few more milestone numbers!

More later…
Warm Regards,
Pankaj Mohan

I wrote down the following message at Big B’s blog, and now sharing it out with you as well. It is interesting to find Amitabh Bachchan rant about his daily chores at the aforementioned link. He recently spoke out about his father’s long battle with ailments before finally the latter passed away, something quite touching and worth a read. I have bookmarked his weblog and would look forward to reading some more interesting news, controversies and revelations in the weeks to follow. May be I can get someday answers about his on and off-screen equations with Kishoreda, who knows.

My Entry At Big B’s Web Mouthpiece

While surfing through this weblog, I fondly recalled my Mumbai (then Bombay) visit about 27 years ago. I was merely 12 at that time and was accompanied by several of my family members during that journey. We were out in the late afternoon having a reccie of the area we were lodged in – Andheri to be precise – and trying to figure out and grasp the “Mahanagari” character of Mumbai in those days. Suddenly a commotion erupted at the gate of a cinema studio, we were passing by, and people frantically began trying to have a look of somebody who had just sneaked inside there. One of us asked who was it. They shouted back Lamboo…Amitabh! We too joined in the fray for a while, but in vain of course, as the mega star was already behind the studio’s high walls. Being the youngest in the whole crowd meant, I had no chance of getting Amita-Vachchan’s (as kids would fondly call him back in Ahmedabad, from where I hail) glimpse anyway! I still feel remorse for having missed the sight of an Amitabh Bachchan at his pinnacle! (he is continuing to rise on, no doubt…but, that was something more special)

Those were the days when Lamboo would occupy the first ten spots (and not merely the top slot) in various Bollywood ratings, as Jitendra, another of his immensely successful co-actors, had once famously suggested. People would flock, both the new and old Amitabh releases, with an amazing show of excitement. Kids would go berserk looking at Big B’s mammoth posters outside the cinema halls. Audiences would shout their lungs out, whenever Amitabh would finally appear over the wide cinema screens, and Man Mohan Desais and Prakash Mehras would also do their jobs well in those days to sustain the euphoria of those exciting moments.

That was also the era when, when Sholay was yet to be archived in the Indian cinema’s history. Zanjeer, Deewar, Don and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar were still collecting great moolah at the box office. Kishoreda was still alive and going strong like never before, while RDB was as legendary as ever. And with the melodious voices of Latadi and Ashadi around and some of the best production houses, screenplay writers, female co-stars of that era accompanying him…Amitabh Bachchan was simply invincible in the truest sense!

Heck! So many years gone by, yet the memories reignite as if it was only yesterday. So Big B has finally gone on to become elderly….this author sudenly awoke out of the slumber to rediscover this paramount truth. He was 12 in those days, now 39 with the first round of gray hair and baldness appearing on him as well. Time did quickly fly by indeed, one would have to concede!