Being Amitabh Bachchan

Amitabh Bachchan has been in the movies for nearly 50 years, but still works with the enthusiasm of a newcomer.

- Sourav Majumdar

There are very few complimentary epithets that have not been showered on him—Big B, Superstar of the Millennium—and yet, even at 76, Amitabh Bachchan, who made his debut with Khwaja Ahmed Abbas’ Saat Hindustani way back in 1969, continues to carry on working with the hunger and enthusiasm of a newcomer. There is hardly any award he hasn’t been conferred, and even now, decades after the practice first started, following his near-fatal injury on the sets of the movie Coolie, hundreds gather every Sunday at 5.30 p.m. for a “darshan” of the megastar. Bachchan—sometimes in trendy tracksuits, sometimes in a kurtapyjama and shawl—stands on top of a makeshift platform as the large wooden gates to his upscale Juhu bungalow Jalsa open up, and waves to the crowd which roars in joy with a hundred hands with mobile phones raised to capture the moment.

To many, Amitabh Bachchan is a phenomenon that has defied description. And yet, he has come to be the very definition of megastardom. Today, years after he fired the imagination of Indians with his angry young man image, Bachchan is still a hugely sought-after star, a massively popular brand ambassador, anchor of successful game show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), and a familiar face for social causes. Despite his age, he is also a social media sensation, something he is clearly thrilled about, pointing out that his collective following on social media stands at over 60 million.