Abhishek at his entry for the Unforgettable Concert Tour, London. Its been an exact year since. Ritesh sent me birthday greetings I expressed surprise of how he knew. I asked him if Abhishek had told him he said no he remembered from last year aug 2 when we were at the Unforgettable Tour Concert. What a coincidence I told him I was just rummaging through pictures of the concert when your greetings came through !!

Abhishek again. Leaning out to his fans below !! Interesting photograph.

Them !! Abhishek and Aishwarya watching Jaya and I do the ‘teri bindiya’ moment !!

The ‘Deewar” monologue. Written brilliantly by Javed Akhtar. The film released in 1975. 33 years later there are still some among you that remember and listen in silence !!

Father and son and bahu and ‘Kajarare’… never ever imagined that when it was being shot the three of us would be performing it on stage as family !!

The family at the finale of the Concert.

That has been put up just for the ‘aviators’ !! Ahem !!

August the 2nd ! And I am surprised that there are some among you that remember this day ! Thank you for your sentiments and thank you for making me alive again at 27 years !

Abhishek PING ed me the first from Ooty. 2882 !! he exclaimed, happy birthday Pop, you just turned 27 and I am older than you. I thought he was referring to the pedometer and the number that I should achieve for the day. But its 02.08.1982 - 2nd of August 1982 ! The day I was clinically dead.. and then survived !! Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai after the accident on the sets of ‘Coolie’ in Bangalore.

27 years !! And it seems like it was yesterday.

Coolie in Bangalore being shot because Manji - Man Mohan Desai wanted a genuine railway station and wasn’t getting permission for one in then Bombay. The authorities had been most co operative. They had blocked off an entire platform for us and made it so convenient for us to work that I sometimes joked with Manji whether he had taken over the Railway Ministry !

That telephone call from Smita Patil a night before. She was a dear friend and a hesitant entrant to the commercial mainstream escapist cinema, which she felt extremely awkward performing for. I used you to encourage her along. She was uncomfortable with the song and dance routine. In the spoken scenes she wanted to justify what she was asked to speak. She questioned the outlandish costumes that were designed for her and insisted on being presented in as natural and normal a manner as possible, even in the most over the top scenes. She got her way. She was a strong woman with very strong basics - the average common person. She never contributed to or was ever concerned about image and glamor and position. She had always wished her work to be as close to genuine as possible. A tough girl who never succumbed to the frills of the typical Indian commercial Cinema. Yet her countenance was so far removed from what she believed in. She was gentle and frail almost in appearance and speech, but her presence committed and determined. I had done her first commercial film with her, Namak Halaal. She would shy away from all the ‘ridiculous’ moments for her in the film, but goaded and assured she would go and perform to perfection. After its release and its massive success, she worked with me in Shakti and when she arrived in Madras to shoot for a sequence that we were doing there, she was like an excited embarrassed child when she informed us that in the flight people were asking her for her autograph; something she said she had not experienced before. We would meet on the sets and on occasion at a formal gathering or a rare function. I never knew her socially nor did we interact as friends. It was therefore most surprising for me to get her call in the middle of the night at an alien destination. She herself was at a remote location for a film and telephony was not the most immediate and convenient facility in 1982 India. She sounded concerned, an attitude I had not expected from her. She asked after my health and wondered if I was alright. She had had a bad dream she said. And then after a few pleasantries, she disconnected. I had never spoken to her before on the phone. I did not know her well enough to have indulged in such activity and neither had our interactions gone beyond the action on set. So yes I was intrigued. The next day Jaya and the kids had come over from Bombay, it being a weekend and life was normal. We were shooting some action sequences at the platform and all went off well. I had to jump off an over bridge on to the roof of a moving train and that went without incident. The next was a dive from inside a moving train on to a trolley at the platform, the trolley then in motion carrying me down a large portion of steps that went rolling down into the basement of a tunnel. And that went off well. We shifted location to the Bangalore University campus next and many daring deeds were performed. Until … perhaps the most simplest of shots, of taking a punch in the stomach and rolling over a table, brought me to a halt. In more ways than one..

There was sharp pain as soon as I got up after ‘cut’ had been announced. I had experienced it before many times in the boxing ring in School. Its like a punch from your opponent in the solar plexus. You get ‘winded’. You grimace and try to find your breath. In the ring the ’seconds’ help you take deep intakes of it and get you to touch your feet a couple of times and you are ready for the next ’round’. But on set that day the pain did not go. On set in front of crew and visitors you tend to feel embarrassed if you are injured and show it. Pretending as though all was well, I slowly walked out to a small lawn and lay down. No one came up to me to inquire. No one thought I was in distress, in fact they thought I was shamming pain in order that Manji would declare a wrap for the grueling day that the unit had been through. Many home remedies were suggested by various people intermittently, while the shooting continued with the others. Things were being considered as normal. I requested Manji to be excused for the day, asked for a car to drop me back to the Hotel and drove out for about 45 mins in excruciating pain over a rather bumpy road. I reached my room, snapped at little Abhishek, who had a habit of greeting me everyday on return from my shoot, with a leap on my chest, and collapsed on my bed, having just about enough energy to tell Jaya to get my personal physician across from Bomabay urgently and to send the kids back home.

The entire night I wreathed in pain and kept asking for morphine to relieve it. By the morning doctors came with portable X-ray machines and took pictures since I was unable to move. They shifted me to the Philomena Hospital in Bangalore, a facility with limited means at that time. Much of my activity and my memory is a blur from then on. I was slipping into a coma, the pain was getting worse, I was having trouble breathing and kept snatching away the oxygen mask that was being put over my face. My dearest friend Habib, Jaya and my brother whom I has asked for, were the only ones next to me. I had no idea of what was transpiring elsewhere. I remember Habib coaxing me to keep talking and even singing, as instructed by doctors to avoid me slipping into unconsciousness. I vaguely remember a tiny bird that kept appearing on the window of the room I was in. And I remember humming the background score of Mr Natwarlal repeatedly when urged to sing.

What happened after is not known to me. But several days went by until I could register anything. In between, moments of consciousness did occur. I recollect Javed Saheb the writer and poet Javed Akhtar, of many of my successful films and his wife Honey, parents of Farhan Akhtar by my bedside in Bangalore and me responding to them in slurred tongue. But that is all.

A very senior and renowned neuro surgeon who had come to the Hospital for a surgery on one of his patients was requested by Jaya to take a look at me before I was to be shifted to Bombay by the evening flight and I am told he stood by the door of my room and announced - “Get him on the operating table , right now, else you will be taking a dead body on the evening flight”.

I was operated. It was then for the first time discovered that I had ruptured an intestine and that the poison had flown out into the stomach and was attacking all the organs. The doctor had warned that his surgery was not adequate, that he had merely eased the situation and that the gut would burst again in a few days.

Indian Airlines had graciously removed seats in the front cabin of the aircraft to allow me to be transported there on the stretcher and the Hospital set up a mini mobile ICU for the duration of the flight. It was the monsoons in July and weather conditions were a concern especially since any bump was a huge worry for the doctors and for me. Most of the flight I was too drugged to remember, but I do remember that it was one of the smoothest landings ever at the airport, despite the heavy rain conditions and I do remember the spontaneous applause from the passengers on the flight, in appreciation of the fantastic job that the Captain had accomplished. I was taken off on the food service carrier for convenience and in doing so some drops of rain fell on my face. A drop lay on my eyes and Javed Saheb removed it. Honey and he later narrated the incident to me, emotionally - “It was a terribly sad sight to see, you, this symbol of the angry young man full of vigor and action, unable to raise a finger to remove a drop of rain over your eye !!”

On an ambulance supplied and operated by the Shiv Sena under instructions from Bala Saheb Thakeray I was moved from the airport to Breach Candy Hospital. Mr Yash Johar, Karan’s father did all the arrangements. He had been shuttling between Bangalore and Madras on rapid visits, getting urgent medications and blood platelets required for me while I was at Philomena Hospital. A selfless gentleman Yashji, was always on hand to help and assist anyone in trouble. He was the one that travelled to London to convince the two specialist doctors of the country to come over to Bombay to attend to me when I developed complications. One of the finest humans you could ever have come across. Loved and respected by all, sadly no more with us now.

As predicted on the fifth day the stomach burst open again and I had to be operated. Under the guidance of the marvelous Dr F Udwadia and his team the second surgery within five days went off well, but … I did not come out of it … for hours they battled with my system to revive me to consciousness .. and nothing … Jaya was beckoned by the doctors and told there was no hope .. she was brought to my bedside to have a last look …

It was then that Dr Udwadia decided to give me one last shot .. my BP and pulse was almost zero .. I had sunk to a clinical death one could say .. but Udwadia persisted .. 40 ampules of cortisone one after another in rapid succession was pumped into me. He knew what the consequences of that excessiveness would do to my insides, but he took the risk. His argument being that revival at this stage was of importance, consequences he would tackle later. The procedure continued at feverish pace, when …. Jaya noticed my toe move and shouted it out to the doctors busy with the upper portion of my body.

Loud shouts from the doctors asking my name and who I was ensued next, to keep me talking and conscious … I lived ..

It was late in the night.. very late .. an entire day had gone by … it was the 2nd of August 1982 !! Happy Birthday !!

The days after, at the Hospital, are by themselves another detail. If it is desired I shall talk of it .. perhaps on another occasion.

But for now … good night … God is Great … read a banner outside Prateeksha as I drove in after a couple of months at Breach Candy.. HIS ways are unique and we shall never know why HE does what to whom ..

Amitabh Bachchan