Amitabh Bachchan and Shabana Azmi unveil book on legendary filmmaker

Veteran actors Amitabh Bachchan and Shabana Azmi, yesterday, launched a book on the famous filmmaker-journalist-author Khwaja Ahmad Abbas.

We just celebrated 46 years of Big B’s presence in Bollywood. While Indian cinema has been enriched like never before with his contribution, co-incidentally Bachchan had made his Bollywood debut with none other than Abbas only, in his film ‘Saat Hindustani’.

Big B sounded nostalgic and respectful at the same time, while going down to the early days; days of filming for ‘Saat Hindustani’ and times he spend with Abbas. Describing him as a man who belonged to a different school of thoughts, he shared how in ‘Saat Hindustani’, Abbas had assigned seven roles to seven actors; characters which were exactly opposite to their natures. That way, Amitabh played a Muslim character, Anwar Ali played a hindu character and Malayalam actor Madhu played a pure North-Indian character.

Shabana Azmi, who used to call Abbas ‘chachu’, read an extract from the book ‘Bread Beauty Revolution- Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, 1914-1987′. The book is edited by Iffat Fatima and Syeeda Saiyidian

Ranjini Maitra

Journalist. Writer. Reader. Enthu cutlet. Mood-swing machine. Day dreamer. Sandwiched between ‘live life fully’ and ‘lose some weight’. Mantra of life: Love and love more.