Once Upon a Cinema is series which will illuminate the dark, unexplored crevices of Indian cinema. In it, the writer will showcase stories and faces long forgotten, share uncommon perspectives about stars and filmmakers, and recount tales that have never been told.
June 1984. Lying on the bed of room no. 317 at Breach Candy hospital, Amitabh Bachchan told a veteran film journalist, "I know I am quite ill. It doesn't look as if I will ever be able to face the camera again. Anyway, people are getting fed up of me doing the same role over and over again, aren't they?" India Today wrote, “His confession stunned the Bombay film industry which had until then believed that Bachchan had been admitted into the hospital for routine checks because of exhaustion.” Just four years prior, the same magazine had done a cover story on how Bachchan was literally carrying the whole film industry on his lanky shoulders, referring to him for the first time as a “One-man Industry”.
Each time he leaves his house, they said, more than rupees 50 crores worth of investment was riding on him. Vir Sanghvi wrote in the issue dated May 15, 1980, “So much in demand is the dark, taciturn star that the hordes of eager producers who queue up outside his dressing rooms are told that they cannot expect shooting dates before early 1983. And yet, the offers keep on coming. As French producers Alain Chamas who tried unsuccessfully to sign him for Crossings opposite Jon Voight and Richard Dreyfus finally remarked in sheer exasperation: "This man is not just a star. Amitabh Bachchan is an industry."
Now, almost exactly four years later, the industry lay on a hospital bed struggling to accommodate all six and a half feet of him. But this wasn’t new. On August 2, 1982, he had been discharged after recovering from a near-fatal injury on the sets of Manmohan Desai’s Coolie. Fans across the length and breadth of India were praying desperately for his return, because they also feared the worst. Mithun Chakraborty, an industry colleague but also an obsessive fan, is said to have slit his chest, praying for his well-being. As he stepped out, recovering from the injury, August 2 became known as the “second birthday” of Amitabh Bachchan. In barely 22 months, he was back with another grave condition that once again threatened to incapacitate him and derail his career. And once again, this happened when he was shooting for a Manmohan Desai film. An industry already cornered due to the video onslaught and the middle class turning away from theatres, was wondering what will happen to the sundry projects the superstar had agreed to star in. But what was wrong with him? Something had happened on the sets of Mard, which he was shooting for in Bangalore.
Filmmaker-actor Tinnu Anand had just signed him for Shahenshah. After Mard, Bachchan was to shoot for his film, which was also being planned in Bangalore. He told me during an interview on the making of Shahenshah, “A fifteen days schedule was to be held at Bangalore. I think Bachchan was shooting for Mard at the time, and once the shooting got over the next day, he would join my unit in Bangalore. We were going to shoot in Bangalore and Mysore, and at that time Dimple (Kapadia) was the heroine of my film. I got a distress call from Mysore, asking me to come to Bangalore, because that’s where Amitabh was. He was about to travel to Madras to have a check-up. Something had happened on the sets of Mard.”
While shooting in Bangalore, Amitabh Bachchan was beset by a strange affliction. His knee pained excruciatingly, and he developed a stinging sensation in the eye, coupled with a throat infection. Everyone thought it was due to exhaustion and overwork. They were not wrong. Stress and overwork were some of the causes behind what ultimately happened. Things came to a head when he realised he couldn’t even drink a glass of water. Instead of him gulping it down, it trickled down his face. He was flown down to Madras and eventually to Bombay. And this was when the doctors cleared the air about his condition. Amitabh Bachchan had Myasthenia Gravis, a neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the skeletal muscles. It is believed to be caused by a breakdown in the linkage between the nervous system and muscles. Basic functions like eye movements, chewing, swallowing, and breathing are affected. Left uncontrolled, the disease spreads to the trunk and heart muscles. Amitabh Bachchan, once again, was at death’s door.
There were at least 15 producers whose projects, all Bachchan starrers, were in various stages of development. The Hindi film business hadn’t been officiated as an “industry” yet. Producers often borrowed sums at exorbitant rates of interest to pay advances and get their films on the floor. After the exuberant 70s, the 80s were experiencing a major slump in the Hindi movie making business. Bachchan was the only bankable star who could guarantee a big opening day, and even his films were not doing as well as before. Coolie was the last big hit and Sharaabi had had a decent run. But regardless, he was still the alpha in the jungle. This was an era where even a moderate success scored a “silver jubilee”, which meant a continuous run of 25 weeks in a single theatre!
There was a lot riding on this superstar, including the scores of fans who were crazy about him. A team of doctors fought tooth and nail to get him back on his feet. He was put on a strict regimen involving medicines and therapy. Finally, it was reported that he was responding well to treatment, though the fact that he was asthmatic seemed to present a problem. But he was getting better. Within a matter of months, contrary to his own prophecy, the towering figure of Amitabh Bachchan was back on the sets, bashing the villains to a pulp. The “industry” was back in action.
Amborish is a National Film Award winning writer, biographer and film historian.
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