Abhishek Successfully Crosses The Difficult Bachchan Bridge

 Ali Peter John

It is an age old problem to see a son see a successful father give him a problem that lives with him all his life. The most successful the father is, the more the son is naturally dwarfed by a major complex to try and keep up with the father and his success, but it is only one or two sons who come anywhere near the success of their fathers and in most cases, the sons even wilt and wither under the looming shadow of their fathers, the greatest examples being the sons of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, with one of them even said to be ending up as a hopeless alcoholic. And if they are the most cases of sons being burdened under the weight of the success of their fathers, it is in this good, bad, sad, mad world of Hindi films. I have seen many of these sons ending up in gambling dens, in pubs, in dancing bars and even in cheap bars where hooch is served for a few rupees with a pinch of salt or a couple of green chillies and where after they have got sozzled, they spend the rest of the evening and still they are drunked totally cursing their famous fathers for reducing them to the sorry state they are in now....

It is in this kind of a backdrop I have no other way, but to raise my right hand and salute the 44 year old son of Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, who I have had the pleasure of knowing from the time he was born to Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan on February 5 (or was it February 4, 44 years ago?). I saw him grow into a very smart boy, who was worthy of being a part of the Bachchan family which was headed by one of the greatest Indian poets, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, his grandmother Mrs Teji Bachchan, his father his mother and the glory and the honour the Bachchans were always surrounded with, the fact that could either have spoilt the little Abhishek crazy or made him learn from them or find inspirations on them and aim for a place higher than boys his age were in. He seemed to have chosen the latter part.'

He completed his studies abroad and came back to India and joined his father's company, ABCL as one of the youngest production controllers and it was a great sight to see the little boy supervising the making of the early films of ABCL like “Tere Mere Sapne",“Mrityudaata",“Major Saab",“Sooryavanshi" and some other films, all of which unfortunately didn't do well at all. He was a Bachchan and was trained not to give up easily and he was with his father when he started the Miss World Pageant in Bangalore, which again turned out to be a fiasco and left the Bachchans high and dry and in a serious financial mess...

It was time for the young Abhishek to take his own decisions for himself and he decided to take up acting as an acting career, even though he was sensible enough to know that he faced the risk of being compared to his father all the time, but the Bachchan in him spurred him on. And like his father in the initial stages, Abhishek Bachchan too had to face a series of flops, but again like his father, he never gave up.

He first found big-time recognition in two films directed by a genius director, Mani Ratnam,“Guru" in which he played Gurukant Desai which was a fictionalised version of Dhirubhai Ambani and for which he won both applause and appreciation, which was followed by “Yuva" which was a contrast to the character in “Guru". He proved to be a versatile actor in a wide variety of roles in films like “Paa", which was also produced by him and in which he made bold to play the father of his real life father, with Vidya Balan playing his father's mother, “Bol Bachchan",“Bluffmaster",“Dhoom",“Dostana", which was a film not many heroes would touch as it was a subject dealing with homosexuality, with John Abraham and Priyanka Chopra as his co-stars. According to box office experts, “All Is Well" was one of his films which did not do well at the box office, but according to lovers of good film, it was one of Abhishek Bachchan's best films to date. Abhishek is being very selective about the films which he will be doing now and the only film he has on the floors and whose first schedule he has recently completed is a film called “Bob Biswas".

And what is very good about Abhishek is that acting is not to be all and end all of his life. He is considered as a leading producer of the films. He is the owner of a Kabaddi and a football team. He ran several business Ventures which are associated with entertainment and he keeps himself busy making fans for AB Corp, the parent company of the Bachchan now.

And above all, he is a complete family man. He is always there for his father whenever he has any help, it has been like this for years and the same goes for his mother, his wife Aishwarya and their daughter Aradhya. The staff at Jalsa have been calling him the man who takes care of all of them like a big family, which had been a common quality passed on from the grandfather to the father and now to the son.

44 is just the beginning of this Bachchan and he has certainly a long way to go, because the Bachchans have always gone far and made their journeys memorable.

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