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Bachan’ & Bolly extra
THE INDIAN CONNECTION AT THE
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Amitabh Bachchan: codeword
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“Where from?”
“
“Oh, Hind? Amitabh Bachan?
Amitabh Bachan?”
Taxi driver Maher is not the only Egyptian who
thinks that
You go on a top-end dinner cruise on the Nile, you smoke a sheesha in the Khan Al Khalili market, you bargain over a piece of papyrus in front of the great pyramid in Giza… anywhere you say you are from India, they will greet you in only one way: “Oh, Amitabh Bachan!”
Most of them people have not seen any Bachchan
film from start to finish. Nor has Bachchan made frequent trips to
Shah Rukh Khan (Suraj hua maddham in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Akshay Kumar (Teri Ore in Singh is Kinng) are two superstars who have stretched their arms out wide in front of the Sphinx to telling tinsel effect but ‘Amitabh Bachan’ remains the password for India.
But just when you feel you are being had by
locals out to con Indian tourists by dropping the magic name without any
knowledge about Bollywood’s biggest star comes the Dekha na hai re socha na jig
(from Bombay to Goa), straight from the heart. They may have seen little
of the Lambu from
One of the few Indian films screened out of competition at the 32nd edition of the Cairo International Film Festival was Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear starring Bachchan as a veteran stage actor. The turnout for the screening at Grand Hyatt’s Good Cinema, the main hall for the festival, was big. The second screening was even bigger because by then word had spread that the old man on the screen was none other than Amitabh Bachchan!
“I have travelled with The Last Lear to many festivals across the world but the reaction I got in Cairo was very different, in the way that they all came to watch Amitabh Bachchan,” said Subho Sekhar Bhattacharya, the CEO of Planman Motion Pictures, that produced The Last Lear. “It was more like an Indian theatre where they come to watch their favourite star!”
Compared to the The Last Lear screening, Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar was a thanda affair. The far more successful Bollywood film found few takers in ‘Bachan’ land.
Gaurang Jalan, the Indian representative at the Cairo International Film Festival, said: “I have been coming here for the past four years and Amitabh Bachchan is all I have ever heard from the people here. The next name they can come up with is Dharmendra.”
The obvious reason for this is that new Hindi
films don’t release in
“Bollywood is my main source of income alongside English films,” said DVD vendor Noor, who sells the Hindi film discs for 12 Egyptian pounds (around Rs 110) each. “Everyone only wants old Hindi films, not new ones.”
A big reason for that is the local Bollywood TV channel Zee Aflam which airs Hindi films dubbed in Arabic. There is always an Amitabh Bachchan special on air and the Egyptians invariably go and buy the DVDs of the films they like watching on television.
Dr ?? Bashir, the head of the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture said: “The movie channel is the constant local connect with Bollywood because it shows the films in their own language. For the new films, we have screenings at our own theatre which are attended not only by our Indian students but also by Egyptians. Here too, Bachchan is very popular and when we show a Baghban or an Ek Ajnabee, it is always full.”
But Shah Rukh can take heart from the fact that
youngsters by the
While Mariam may come to
Who do you think is the most popular
Bollywood star in the world and why?
Tell t2@abpmail.com
PRATIM
D. GUPTA 
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081208/jsp/entertainment/story_10218806.jsp