Cinema

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Let's hit it." As he steps out of his $5,000-a-day suite at the discreetly expensive Prince Maurice Hotel in Mauritius, Amitabh Bachchan is ready for his close-up. "Chup (be quiet)," he says to a frog croaking in the pool nearby as he primes himself for the camera. He pats his coloured hair, examines himself in the mirror and puts drops in his tired eyes. "Make me look 22 again," he says as he offers to change into a violently coloured Versace shirt. Offer not taken, he sulks, rejecting one photograph in a red shirt with pockets big enough to fit in Africa. "I look like a Mumbai taxi driver," he says scornfully to the photographer. That's until she shows him a black and white polaroid. "Mind-blowing," he exclaims.

AT EASE: Bachchan on a Sandeep Khosla-Abu Jani bed at the Bollywood- at-Selfridges festival in London

At 60, that pretty much describes the phenomenon that's Amitabh Bachchan. Like the boy in the bubble, he has built a force field around him. Even if he's changing his shirt for a shoot in the middle of a hotel lobby or eating a quiet dinner by himself in a noisy restaurant at Port Louis' Domaine Les Pailles, no one dares to cross the invisible barrier. Not even metaphorically. Ask friend of 29 years Ramesh Sippy, who directed him so memorably in Sholay and Shakti. "Getting too close to him was not possible. He would laugh, joke and party sometimes, but he never gave too much of himself. He has a very sparing nature," says Sippy.

Yet, when imperative, Bachchan can switch on the charm, waving the fly from your face, posing with your child or even discussing the finer points of his favourite sport, table tennis.

PRIVATE person Abhishek, Amitabh, Shweta and Jaya at Prateeksha, their Mumbai home since 1976; (below) baby Aby

"He is very emotional and has a tremendous capacity to bear pain." AMAR SINGH, Samajwadi Party leader

A Grand Old Brand, he's in complete control of an image that cuts across several media: films, television, advertising. He's the face of ICICI, Pepsi and Versa at about Rs 2.5 crore a year each; the essence of Amitabh B, a perfume by Lomani; the actor who's priced at Rs 2.5 crore in each of the 10 films under production (in his heyday, he didn't charge more than Rs 30 lakh); and the chatty host who makes Rs 30 lakh with each episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC). The programme that changed the face of Indian TV, KBC reinvented Bachchan, allowing an adoring audience to forgive him the ghastly Mrityudaata clones. As Star CEO Peter Mukerjea puts it, "After a lean phase, he again represented stature, solidity, flair and style." At four nights a week over a year, he did the equivalent of 50 movies. The suitable boy who went slumming had become the sophisticate in a suit again.

In his 33-year career, Bachchan has traversed emotions and generations. Even when he was supposedly weighed under his angry young man albatross, he played intense lovers and loveable madcaps. Now as he ages, Generation Next is ready to write roles for him. Whether it's Aditya Chopra, whom he remembers as a two-year-old in a Superman costume at his son's birthday party, or Farhan Akhtar, whose father Javed co-wrote his iconic roles, he's responded in the fashion he knows best. Read the script, learn your lines, report to the sets on time. Work if needed from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Contribute to the script whenever possible. Just don't mess with his shoes, even if they are white-he brings his own to the party.

So how does he keep up with himself? "Most humans use only 30 per cent of their potential intelligence. I'd like to try to use at least 35-40 per cent," he says.

Books

STAR ON SCREEN: THE ASCENT OF AMITABH 1969: Saat Hindustani gets him National Award. 1971: He acts in Sunil Dutt's Reshma Aur Shera with favourite actress Waheeda Rehman. 1973: Salim-Javed write Zanjeer for him. Prakash Mehra directs. A star explodes. 1975: Hrishikesh Mukherjee gets his comic timing right in Chupke Chupke. 1975: Hrishida stretches him again, this time as Mili's lonely alcoholic. 1976: He makes magic with eloquent silence in Yash Chopra's sob story Kabhi Kabhie. 1977: His superfast English speech in Amar, Akbar, Anthony is a hit. 1978: The UP bhaiyya turn and Paan Banaras wala song in Chandra Barot's Don click. 1981: Silsila does not work, despite the triangle with Jaya and Rekha. 1982: Ramesh Sippy casts him opposite titan Dilip Kumar in Shakti. 1983: Coolie, with its near-fatal accident, released. 1990: A second coming begins with Agneepath, Hum and Khuda Gawah. 1992: Takes a five-year break from acting. 2002: Turns 60, has10 films on hand, including Govind Nihalani's Dev, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Chess and Honey Irani's Armaan. 1970: His role as Babumoshai in Anand, as second lead to reigning superstar Rajesh Khanna, makes his a recognised face. 1975: Cast as an angry young man again in Yash Chopra's Deewar. His conversation with God gets a huge following. 1975: Sholay, in which he plays the convict with a heart of gold, and which he almost missed due to a fever, reaffirms his status as a super hit actor. 2000: Brands return to him after KBC's success, Pepsi signs him as model. 2000: Turns friend, philosopher, guide with Kaun Banega Crorepati. 2001: Experiments with his dark side in Rakesh Mehra's Aks. He likes his new look, keeps it. "We share a close bond of respect, love and affection." Anil AMBANI, MD, Reliance Industries

That's also about the extent of physical ability he was left with after his accident on the sets of Manmohan Desai's Coolie. "I'd forgotten how to walk," he recalls after his three-month stay at the ICU. It took him three months of intensive therapy at the Tania farm in Mehrauli, Delhi, to get back on his feet. A year later, when he was going up the stairs of his hotel room in Mysore, his legs refused to carry him. "I could not swallow liquid. I would comb my hair and my hand would fall off," he says, a faraway look in the eyes whose irises are now rimmed with grey. "It happens with age."

Later, at Diwali, a firecracker exploded in his left hand, which had to be restructured from the wrist up. "It took a month of exercises before my fingers could touch each other. The blood you see in Sharaabi when the glass breaks in my hand is mine." As if that were not enough, he occasionally sees a bright flash in his right eye. Doctors have diagnosed it as a gap between the retina and the cornea-it can't be treated.

His battles with ill-health have added to his iconic status, as a man with his back constantly up against a wall. His "younger brother", Amar Singh, the Samajwadi Party leader, calls it his tremendous capacity to bear pain. "He's emotional and sensitive. The best thing about him is that he doesn't disparage his critics," says the man who first met him 20 years ago with journalist K. Srinivasan (he later became his secretary) at his Gulmohar Park office in Delhi. Bachchan returns the compliment. "People call Amar Singh a power broker. It's rubbish (see interview)."

Bachchan's recent choice of friends has been controversial but he defends it stoutly. Sahara Shree, he says of Sahara Group Managing Worker Subrata Roy, is an exceptional man. "He's younger to me but I consider him to be my elder brother." Indicating the stones he wears on his fingers-an opal, two sapphires and an emerald-he says they were suggested to him by Roy's astrologer.

It's a lifetime away from the preppy days at Nainital's Sherwood College (his house was called Robin Hood) and Kirori Mal College in Delhi. His group would hang out at Volga, at Cellar, at Tabela and at La Boheme, which was "very dark and very cosy". They'd bunk and watch movies at Regal and Shiela theatres. That's where he continued to indulge his passion for theatre under the celebrated teacher Frank Thakurdas. It was a love he inherited from his mother, Tej Kaur Suri. She was very active on stage, even having played Anarkali in Allahabad. But one experience didn't bode well for his future choice of career: he muffed up a line when playing Zeus in Benn W. Levy's The Rape of the Belt at Miranda House. His mother was watching. "It was hell," he groans.

His Kolkata days were more of the same. "It's a very indecisive period in any man's life. You are not qualified for anything in particular and you are getting to the age where it is expected of you to provide for your parents," he says. After All India Radio rejected him as an announcer, he joined Bird and Co, a managing agency, at Rs 500 a month, and later moved to Blacker and Co, a freight brokerage firm. He loved it even though he shifted 25 times in five-and-a-half years. He would act on stage at the Amateurs Club and Dramatic Club. He would sneak into concerts by greats like Bismillah Khan which would go on till six in the morning, go pandal-hopping during Durga Puja, take the tram. He and his friends would eat out at Skyroom, Firpo's, Blue Fox, Prince's at Grand. Any girlfriends? "Oh, eight or nine of them. Remember, we were all in a big group."

Younger brother Ajitabh, who worked at Shaw Wallace, took his pictures outside the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata and sent them to the Filmfare Madhuri Talent Contest. He was rejected. Disheartened, he quit and went back to Delhi. Nargis, his mother's friend (they volunteered together at the United Military Camp), arranged his screen test with actor Mohan Saigal. He never got the result, but his brother's friend Nina Singh told him about how K.A. Abbas was looking for a new face for Saat Hindustani. That was 1969. Bachchan was past the first hurdle.

In Anand, he cleared the second. He left his Andheri home one Friday morning, just another struggling nobody in Mumbai. By evening, on his way back, he was a somebody. Yet he still wasn't a star. Producer-actor Romesh Sharma remembers playing cricket in the compound of his apartment block. Kabir and Protima Bedi would drop by, so would Tiger and Sharmila Pataudi. Says Sharma: "Every Sunday, we'd play cricket with the drinks trolley at square leg. We'd have potluck, drive to the beach, go water-skiing, see a film. All of us had lots of time."

Real stardom came with Prakash Mehra's Zanjeer. Bachchan had become a minor constellation. Marriage to co-star Jaya Bachchan followed (see extract from To Be or Not To B: Amitabh Bachchan, a gift from Jaya Bachchan to her husband on his 60th birthday on October 11). Deewar, Sholay and Amar Akbar Anthony established his talent.