A day with Big B

From the albums

This picture was taken in 1982 at our home in V V Puram when Amitabh Bachchan came to get homoeopathic treatment for his son Abhishek Bachchan’s asthma problem from my uncle Dr Karigiriachar.

It was a slate-grey dawn, the kind that turns up after a night of rain. Not unusual for July in Bangalore of the eighties though. The hour was too early for others in the household, many of whom were professional artistes and technicians in Prabhat Kalavidaru, a drama and ballet company my father and uncles had founded. Back then, we were a raucous joint family of more than 30. We all lived in an enormous, rambling house in V V Puram.

I was an officer in HAL, the odd one in this family of cultural entrepreneurs, and like every day, I was rushing out of our house at 6.30 am to catch the bus to my office in distant Indiranagar. Just as I was about to close our main gate, a huge car stopped right in front of it. I turned around to see Amitabh Bachchan getting out along with a child, unmistakably his son, and a gentleman who I later came to know was S Ramanathan, director of the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer ‘Bombay to Goa’.

I froze in my tracks. Ramanathan came up to me and asked me if my uncle, Dr Karigiriachar, a well-known homoeopath those days, was at home. I mumbled yes and ran inside to inform my uncle about his celebrity patient.

My uncle, as unfazed as ever, asked me to invite them inside and make them sit and he would see them eventually. My wife, who believed I was halfway to my office, was astonished to see me running back and forth.

Soon, my siblings and cousins woke up to the fact that the hero, who was at the height of his fame and stardom in 1982, was right there sitting in our home. My uncle examined Abhishek and prescribed medicines. It was then time to take Amitabh Bachchan on a tour of our house. Amitabh Bachchan not only showed great interest in our cultural activities but also had breakfast with us.

It was a memorable day but not the only one for us as a family during that exciting decade.

Those days, eminent personalities visiting us every other day kept us excited as much as our cultural experiments did.

(The author can be contacted at 9845980382)