My mother always told me, 'Karan, he is one person I have known since we were in college in Dehradun. I want you to touch his feet, whenever you meet him. And that’s what I have always done since I was young.' - Karan Johar -

Things weren’t going his way in the last decade. Infact, the late 1990s were nightmarish for Bachchan. It was almost as if Fate was demanding payback for all the privileges she had accorded him during his superstar days. After a five-year hiatus in the mid-90s, when Bachchan returned to the movies with the Mehul Kumar-directed action flick, Mrityudaata, the film suffered a quiet death. And it proved to be just the first in a long array of wrecks-in 1999 alone, Bachchan starred in four box office duds-Lal Badshah, Kohram, Hindustan Ki Kasam and Sooryavansham.

Worse, Bachchan’s ambitious venture into the corporate world, ABCL, came undone. Having ventured into several directions at the same time-from film production to hosting a beauty pageantthis mismanaged company was several millions in the red. Bachchan had simply taken on more than he could manage and along with wife Jaya, he was standing on the edge of a financial abyss.

It is said that in the world of showbiz, today’s peacock could well be tomorrow’s feather duster. There have been countless instances of stars who make one misstep and find themselves taking a vertiginous plummet into anonymity and degradation.

But when you consider how abjectly hopeless Bachchan’s situation seemed just four years ago, a poser springs to mind: How has he effected this 180-degree turn?

At the retirement-ready age of 58, however, Bachchan showed himself willing to roll up his shirtsleeves and go to work. The actor backed his undeniable talent with a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic and a willingness to take calculated risks.

At an awards show in Singapore in May

Quelling his ego, he went across to old friend Yash Chopra’s house and asked for a suitable role. At a time when it was considered infra dig for film stars to appear on TV, Bachchan agreed to helm a quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Exhibiting great personal charm and an unsuspected genial side in his interactions with the participants, Bachchan was primarily responsible for the show’s recordshattering success. It enthused film stars like Govinda, Madhuri Dixit and Manisha Koirala to migrate to the small screen too, albeit with noticeably less heartening results. To paraphrase a popular KBC catchphrase, for Bachchan’s career, it was a case of segueing from 'Career lock kiya jaaye?' to being thrown a lifeline.

 Soon thereafter, Amitabh's much-appreciated turn as the gimlet-eyed Narayan Shankar in the Yash Chopra-produced Mohabbatein was like a seal of approval to his resurgent status.

The film industry welcomed him back. Though the industry is indubitably hard-nosed and professional, what helped Amitabh is that filmmakers appreciated the goodwill that he had developed over the long years of his professional life.

And one is not talking only of his fabled punctuality and professionalism. Amitabh is that rare star who has made some two-dozen special appearances in films, showing himself constantly willing to help friends, colleagues and old producers make their films more saleable for finicky distributors.

Significantly, Bachchan’s performances continue to have a contemporary edge and his subsequent appearance in commercially profitable films like Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham, Ek Rishta, Aankhen, Kaante and Baaghban have ensured that he remains topmost on most directors’ casting wish list. Inflated by the star’s triumph over his tribulations, Bachchan’s legend has assumed immense proportions in his own lifetime.

Bachchan’s ability to boomerang back into the winner’s circle has won him admiration. But the taciturn star has done the same once before too. When Bachchan began his career in films, he was written off even before the release of his first film, Saat Hindustani. The late 1960s was the era of Shammi Kapoor-Rajesh Khanna musicals and the lanky newcomer with the unfashionable hairstyle got short shrift from most of the producers he met for work. His illustrious surname (father Harisvanshrai Bachchan was a renowned Hindi poet; mother Teji Bachchan was a close associate of the Nehru-Gandhi family) got him an audience but few offers.

Bachchan says he had left his job as an executive in a Kolkata firm and come to Mumbai with his driver’s license. The license was his safety net-if pushed into a corner, he could always work as a taxi driver. But in retrospect, that seems like an example of his characteristic wry humour. Music director Anandji, who has been on countless shows across the world with Amitabh, says the budding actor was nicknamed Tiger by his friends in those early days. And he lived up to his 'Tiger' tag. After a long initial line-up of flops and rejections (he was thrown out of a film named Duniya Kya Jaane), Bachchan picked up the gauntlet-he adapted a designed-by-Hakeem hairstyle, chose a fashion house called Kachchins to design his wardrobe and sacrificed the onscreen softness (he was bespectacled in Sanjog, mute in Reshma Aur Shera) of his earlier films for a belligerent new attitude.

His star-girlfriend Jaya Bhaduri, and luck, sided with him. Attracted by the intensity of his portrayals even in failed films, scriptwriters Salim Javed and director Prakash Mehra cast Amitabh as a committed but anguished policeman in Zanjeer. Amitabh’s well calibrated performance as the anguished man of the law earned him fulsome accolades and the film's box office success saw the genesis of a new star. The film had concocted a totally unexpected alchemy and turned the tall, lanky newcomer into a matinee superhero.

Manoj Bajpai pinpoints Zanjeer as the birthplace of the Amitabh phenomenon. "I saw the film during my childhood," says the actor, "Amitabh’s performance left a tremendous impression on me. And do you know, because I want to hold onto that feeling, I haven’t seen Zanjeer ever again." While Zanjeer was hugely influential in moulding Amitabh’s screen persona, and consequently that of an entire generation of screen heroes, into the angry young man slot, Manmohan Desai and Prakash Mehra went one step further  and   presented  the  actor

ROLE MODEL: With Sanjay Dutt in Deewar

 as a complete entertainer in light-hearted, crowd-pleasing films like Amar Akbar Anthony and Namak Halal.

The true dimensions of the Amitabh cult became evident when the actor suffered an on-the-sets accident on the sets of Desai’s Coolie in Bangalore, and it proved to be near fatal. It seemed as though the entire country had stopped in its tracks in 1982, but Amitabh, then 40, pulled off a recovery.

An ill-advised side-step into politics in the mid-80s soon led to Bachchan’s return to films. But the strain of a wearying disease (myasthenia gravis) and two decades of punishing work schedules saw Bachchan take an unprecedented step. Despite box office successes like Aaj Ka Arjun (’90) and Hum (’91), he chose to voluntarily take a hiatus after Khuda Gawah (’92). The break stretched for five years and when he returned it was in his corporate avatar as head of ABCL and he signed himself a check of Rs 30 million for Mrityudaata. Bachchan’s failure to quickly secure a successful comeback for himself has, arguably, added fortuitous aspects to his screen persona. Losing his one-man-industry status definitely freed Bachchan from the responsibility of delivering a super-hit each time and gave him the space to experiment with his craft. As long as Bachchan was part of the rat race, he circumscribed his creativity by doing largely conventional roles, although he did compensate by introducing inflexions to the most mundane characters. What is welcome is his recent willingness to shun playing romantic characters as in Lal Badshah and Sooryavansham and reinvent himself as a patriarch in films like Mohabbatein, Ek Rishta, Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham and Baaghban or the troubled older man in films like Aankhen, Khakhi, Dev.

Make no mistake — he is still nifty even if he has crossed 60. "We did Aks together and I felt so proud just to be sharing the frame with him," says Manoj Bajpai. "He constantly amazes me with his dedication. He does 15 rehearsals before a take. He works on every nuance. He makes all kinds of roles seem convincing. Can any actor manage that?" Few actors can also match Bachchan’s self-possession, which people have accepted as a given.

Bachchan’s supporters proudly point to his suave exterior and articulate expressions on several public occasions while skeptics remark that this outer shell keeps the inner Bachchan forever under wraps. Certainly, however, Bachchan has been unerringly civilized in public and has also exhibited an old-fashioned sense of honor in his willingness to plough back part of his income and pay back his many loans.

While the audience does respond to a star’s extraordinary off-screen personality, they still primarily relate to him as an actor. And that relationship remains Bachchan’s main claim to fame.

His recent forays into cinematic experimentation have yielded perceptive performances resulting in most sought-after directors automatically gravitating towards the actor. Post Devdas, Sanjay Bhansali has cast Bachchan in his forthcoming film, Black. Gadar director Anil Sharma is making Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyon with Bachchan headlining the cast. Vinod Chopra wants him for his next film and so does Rajkumar Santoshi. Mahesh Manjrekar is all set to direct him in Viruddh co-starring Sharmila Tagore, Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham. And Ram Gopal Verma is trying to see if he can be the first filmmaker to showcase Amitabh alongside his son Abhishek. Despite the body of work already accomplished, the future still holds promise. Bachchan’s career remains a work in progress. At 61, the evergreen superstar is ready for his next close-up.