ARE THE BACHCHANS RESPONSIBLE?
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE TINSEL TOWN ARE BRITTLE. CHANGING FATES HAVE FREQUENTLY TAKEN AN UNFAIR TOLL ON SOME OF ITS CLOSEST BONDS. THANKFULLY, THE FIGHTS ARE EVEN MORE FRAGILE,
And, more often than not, fate again, is the favourite fall guy! However, this time, in making amends equally fast and surprising. Just as there are no permanent friends, there also are no permanent enemies in Bollywood.
It is just a matter of time, convenience, priorities, and the changing equations between their powerful, albeit warring factions of influential extended friends, families and acquaintances. A chance meeting, a concerned balm on ruffled egos, a warm breaking of ice conversation, and everything is hunky-dory again. Case in point is the increasingly of late seen cozying up between Shah Rukh Khan and the industrial baron Anil Ambani.
Forget ever being seen in each other’s visual proximity, in spite of being such high profile guests at any big ticket tinsel-town outing, they had not even been on talking terms for years. From doggedly orbiting far from each other’s allegedly ‘hostile’ radars, today, suddenly you find them at each other’s dos – smiling bonhomie on camera and dishing quotes galore! If all goes well, Anil’s company, Reliance Big Pictures, which is also the industry’s fastest growing entertainment group, may also soon be doing business with one of SRK.
Anil Ambani and Shah Rukh Khan have today emerged, if not as the best of buddies, but at least as ‘good professional friends’ in a span of just above two months. So how did this magic reconciliation happen?
Actually, the patch-up works have been quietly on roll for some few valuable months now. The consequence is courtesy more than what meets the eye, just as the avoidance was not the outcome of any openly hostile enmity. The friendship of Ambani and the Bachchans is no secret. Amitabh’s family has been close to the junior Ambani from the days of their joint dalliances with the Samajwadi Party and Amar Singh. Anil and Amar have been like the two hands of the Big B, brothers-in-arms, in good times and bad, friends for life, et al. Naturally a friend’s foe is a foe, and hence for no other apparent reason or provocation, Anil had never felt the need to overtly court Shah Rukh Khan.
The Shah Rukh-Amitabh blow-hot-blow-cold relationship has, of course, been more temperamental and unpredictable than the monsoons.
Though never acknowledged publicly, given the film industry’s politically correct – ‘loving and adoring our seniors at all cost’ – stand of bonhomie; the Shah Rukh- Bachchan saga hit its nadir, post SRK’s much talked about fracas with Salman Khan at a suburban pub, where he allegedly made some ‘unsavoury’ comments about Aishwarya Rai, not many moons ago. So incensed was the Bachchan parivar over his alleged profanities against its dearest bahu that even a generally reticent Jaya Bachchan had reacted loud and clear stating that ‘if SRK had indeed said such slanderous things about Aishwarya and had the incident happened at her house, then she wouldn’t have hesitated to slap him.’
The event and its many fall outs, overt and covert, marked the peaking of the SRK-Bachchan war in recent times. Predictably, all Bachchan loyalists and especially the family’s closest friends steered clear off Shah Rukh. And, those who could more than afford to do without Shah Rukh, like Anil Ambani, never even bothered to look his end. This was why Anil’s flagship entertainment company, Reliance Big Pictures, in spite of backing some of the biggest films and projects in recent times, never showed any interest or involvement in any Shah Rukh Khan starrer since its inception. The few and far talks between Big Pictures and Khan’s projects even in those rare occasions when they made it to the negotiations table, like Billu most recently, predictably fizzled out from fructifying, on directions loud and clear from the head honcho of having nothing to do at all with any film with the faintest SRK connection.
The hostilities were further enhanced, echoing a pattern in their star players’ choice of loyalties in the parallel and ongoing Ambani family fracas. While Shah Rukh was frequently seen with elder brother Mukesh Ambani, the Bachchans firmly remained ensconced with Anil.
However, the recent turnaround in the Shah Rukh-Anil Ambani equations, according to insiders, is the result of a series of peace and amity missions engineered by the sagacious and most influential senior actor of Hindi cinema, Amitabh Bachchan.
Step one was the burial of the ongoing Bachchan family versus Shah Rukh hatchet, which happened few months ago when Amitabh visited a bedridden Shah Rukh at his suburban Mumbai residence, Mannat, when the latter was recovering from another bout of his recurring back injury. The two apparently had a marathon chat for almost two hours on health, family and other matters, focusing especially on sorting all the major and minor irritants in between.
Step two happened when Shah Rukh added a personal touch to the strengthening offer of friendship by doing the unthinkable and personally apologising to Aishwarya at Karan Johar’s party that had soon followed the Big B-King Khan meeting. Today, Abhishek and Aishwarya lead the list of star attendees and guests at any Mannat do. So with all becoming well between the Bachchans and the Khans, it was now but natural for their extended families of friends too, to join in, especially since they anyways didn’t have any strong personal agenda to foster their indirect animosities.
Thus, the Khan-Bachchan patch-up, according to sources close to Ambani, became the catalyst for the current Shah Rukh-Anil reconciliation. For the recent Reliance Big Pictures party, Anil apparently had personally invited Shah Rukh to the event, and the superstar, regular at all of Mukesh Ambani’s parties, was finally seen at an event hosted by the junior Ambani brother for the first time. Another first has been the Big Pictures’ investing in Farhan Akhtar’s Don 2, the forthcoming sequel to Shah Rukh’s successful remake of the 1970s Amitabh Bachchan film, Don. Anil’s production house apparently bagged Don 2 after shelling an astronomical price of Rs 106 crore.
And this isn’t all; in fact, it seems like just the beginning. As Shah Rukh gets into the shooting of his other celluloid biggie and home production Ra.One, insiders inform that though the rights of the film are yet to be sold, Reliance Big Pictures is keen to acquire it at an unprecedented price. Shah Rukh has also been penciled in for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s next Ferrari Ki Sawari, which given the Chopra-Reliance strong and growing partnership post 3 Idiots, might be blessed again with a sizable investment from Big Pictures.
In a win-win situation for all, wonder who is to be credited for these spreading bouts of camaraderie? The Big B for his sagacious behaviour of a responsible elder, or Shah Rukh Khan for adding another welcome leaf to his Samaritan acts, or the savvy businessman Anil Ambani in his finally waking to an opportunity, though late. No matter who wins the maximum brownies, the fall-out definitely augurs some great news for Bollywood in the coming together of a top star and the most influential production house.
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