On tour with the stars

From making and breaking friendships to igniting new romances, Bollywood tours involve a lot more than song and dance

- RAJEEV MASAND

By the time you read this, I'll be halfway across the globe, touching down in San Jose, California, to attend the final show in a four-city world tour, starring Akshay Kumar and a troupe of Bollywood actors and musicians.

The world tour first became a thing in the 1980s, when, at the peak of his popularity, Amitabh Bachchan would routinely take four-to-six weeks off from film shoots every other year and travel across the US, Canada, and the UK, to perform live shows for a primarily NRI audience. The most popular of these was the Jumma Chumma concert. Its London show in 1990 included Sridevi, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Neelam, Anupam Kher, and composers Kalyanji-Anandji alongside Bachchan. It was staged for a full capacity audience at the sprawling Wembley Stadium. The show was so big, the promoters saw in it an opportunity to further exploit it commercially by filming it and releasing it on VHS.