An extract from 'Looking for the Big B' 
By IndiaFM News Bureau, February 26, 2007 - 10:06 IST
"He is genuinely a kind man", claims Jessica Hines, Amitabh Bachchan's English biographer who met him seven years ago at London University.
She has attempted to reveal the life of Amitabh beyond super stardom in her book ‘Looking for the Big B’. Here is an excerpt from her
work:
How come I'm in Bangkok? Well, apparently now, three years later, Amitabh wants to talk to me about the book. He's here shooting for yet another
film, so I've flown out to meet him.
Hang on just one goddam moment! I hear you cry, didn't you start writing in 2002? What the hell happened? Quite a lot, actually, thank you very
much.
For a start, I have had personal experience of all of Amitabh's film personas. It has been an edifying experience.
It all started when I sent Amitabh a copy of the first draft of the book. He didn't like it. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. 'He went mental' would
be more accurate. Threatened to sue me and anyone else it might be useful to sue. He would, I was informed in an email, fight me to the last drop of
blood in his veins. A threat which, even at my most upset, struck me as a little filmi.
It was as if the real Amitabh has been replaced by one of his film roles. I had wanted to find the key to the man on screen for so long that I appeared
to have manifested him. Abracadabra! A loud poof! A head nose of cordite et voila: he was suddenly the Angry Young Man - Vijay in Trishul, to be
exact. (Just my luck to get Vijay, the most extreme version, and not one of Amitabh's more lovable characters, like Anthony Gonsalves from Amar
Akbar Anthony).
I replied that instead of fighting me to the last drop of blood in his veins he could just tell me what he didn't like and I would change it. Mais non. All
communication cut. To say that I was devastated would also be a bit of an understatement.
It was like being sucker-punched by your dad. It had never occurred to me that he might not like the book. But maybe I had been looking so hard at
the past I had failed to recognize that he had changed again. Who he is in the minds of the public these days ¬ man of the Millennium, the good man
of India, a living demi-god, a goddam gen-u-ine hero ¬ has so little bearing on the man he was in the seventies and eighties. Was it that he didn't
want people reminded of it? It was his idea that I write his biography in the first place ¬ was I supposed to help perpetuate the myth he himself had
created? I had been a fool to think I could help him get behind his image, dig up hidden memories and present the whole story.
I felt I had become trapped in someone else's life; caught in some weird loop that appeared to have no resolution in sight. I wrote Amitabh; I lived
Amitabh Gothic ¬ all spooky portents and a dark brooding man curled up around my hard drive, my head, my heart and my life.
Or perhaps this angry Vijay ¬Amitabh is the real Amitabh, with his blistering white light of rage coupled with a determination to get his own way, no
matter what. Is that what lay beneath the Amitabhs I had explored over the last couple of years?
Then, in September 2004, Amitabh and I managed to reach a kind of uneasy truce. I had finished the second draft and sent it to him, asking if he was
going to help me with the book. When he replied to my email in a reasonable manner I felt shockingly alive. Amitabh is a hard habit to kick ¬
especially for an intensity junkie like myself.
It was bizarre; I went and saw him at his hotel and it was as if the last nine months hadn't happened; as if he hadn't threatened me with ruin, causing
me deep depression and many sleepless nights. We ate Chinese food. We watched Lost in Translation. Amitabh didn't enjoy the film; didn't really
see the point. Ah, the irony.
The following week we talked about the book. He didn't like the fact that I had repeated what his father had written in his autobiography. He said
that, in India, people were impressed that his father had been so open and honest about his life, but they had the decency not to talk about it
themselves (he also felt that I had used the source too heavily, which he thought ethically incorrect). I pointed out that in England a biography would
be expected to include such information: his parents had obviously shaped Amitabh, and were therefore essential to the telling of the story of his
life. Especially since it was all already in the public domain. I think he understood this but he still didn't want me to talk about it. He spun out again.
So I spun too. And more angry words were exchanged. I felt he was trying to own my mind. I told him that if the past couple of years had taught me
anything, it was that nobody owned me. (Me getting my filmi melodrama bit in too.) We both stomped off in a huff.
I'd always imagined that I was a true believer at the Church of Amitabh Bachchan within the greater religion of Bollywood. But now I am not so sure.
Perhaps I was always just engaging in participant observation and 'methoded out'.
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(Courtesy: Looking for the Big B: Bollywood, Bachchan and Me By Jessica Hines, Published by Penguin India)
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The Big B complex
