Kolkata has a special place in Amitabh Bachchan’s heart and it makes him nostalgic

Amitabh Bachchan, whom Kolkata often refers to as Jamaai Babu because of his marriage to Jaya Bachchan, has indeed a deep connection with Bengal. He started his career as an executive of a British managing agency in Kolkata and has often shared how he used to survive on only Rs. 480 a month. Every time Big B has spoken about Kolkata it made him nostalgic. So, how deep is the Bollywood superstar’s connection with Kolkata? On Amitabh Bachchan’s birthday we take a look at some of the films which Big B shot in Kolkata and his films that have a Bengal connection.

Guess how much Amitabh Bachchan used to earn during his Kolkata days

Yes, Bachchan’s first brush with the silver screen happened here, when Mrinal Sen, taking note of his baritone after an audition, selected him for a voiceover as the narrator in Bhuvan Shome (1969). You don’t see him on screen, but the picture from his debut film Saat Hindustaani — which also released in 1969 — shows you how he looked back then. Since 1962, Bachchan had been staying in Kolkata, switching jobs, doing theatre and in the process, making the city his own.

A superstar by then, when Bachchan came to Kolkata in 1975 to shoot for the song, ' Luk chhip luk chhip', all hell broke loose at the Shibpur Botanic Garden. An excited janta thronged the jetty as he took a steamer to the shooting spot. As the boat pushed out, hundreds dived into the river to catch a glimpse of his. He captured the euphoria on his 8mm camera. In the story shared by him on his blog, Bachchan says how a fan swam across the Hooghly to get his autograph. While swimming back, his paper got lost in the waters, but it was the moment that counted.

Even at the pinnacle of popularity, it’s heard that Big B wanted to work with Satyajit Ray. There was a family connection anyway: Ray introduced Jaya as a teenager in Mahanagar (1963). Later, he was offered the narrator’s job in Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khiladi. His lordly voice went well with the decadent picture of wealth that the director painted so finely.

This was Amitabh unplugged and will forever be remembered as an iconic Bachchan moment in Kolkata. As he walked through the tunnel at the Netaji Indoor Stadium and climbed the stage during the 1979 shoot, the entire audience swayed to ' Saara zamana'. How can we ever forget that overdose of bling — a jacket fitted with a hundred bulbs? The shoot went well and there were no short circuits!

This wasn’t shot in Kolkata, but near Bengal’s summer ‘capital’, Darjeeling. Portions of Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, also filmed in Bengali as Anusandhan, were shot on the tiny hill retreat, Kalijhora. His introduction scene, where Bachchan appears on a mule, his face covered in a hat, still rings a bell.

In his blog, after Rituparno’s sudden demise, the actor shared how the entire unit of The Last Lear would speak in Bengali, which helped him pick up the language. At the end of the day, the director would call up Jaya Bachchan to update her on which words Big B was having a problem pronouncing!

In 2014, traffic came to a halt at the Shyambazar crossing, when a pot-bellied Bachchan in a pink kurta, half sweater and hat cycled past the bronze statue of Netaji on horseback. Shoojit’s father-daughter relationship story, Piku, was Bachchan’s first film that was shot entirely in the city and he was seen having a great time reveling in the love that the city showered on him.