We the audiences wholeheartedly took to him, on the other hand, for the sheer intensity and charisma he then poured, in the years following Deewar, in becoming the mould itself. And later, in tweaking and twisting the mould to suit the needs of television and the multiplex.

He became the Angry Young Man when scriptwriters Salim-Javed tapped into the popular disillusion that had settled in with the refusal of the older feudal habits and structures to melt away in independent India. When the democratic System itself is corrupt and compromised, does the citizen have any recourse? In film after blockbuster film, Amitabh personified that question, until, despite the actor’s own unflagging enthusiasm, the act ran out of steam. Middle age had set in and coincidentally, the question itself was receding from the nation’s consciousness.

In less angry times, Amitabh Bachchan returned to the big screen as the hip patriarch who can also carry a film on his shoulders. For one generation, he could be the reassuring link between newer films and the older ones. For Gen Next, poised on the edge of vast social and cultural transitions, he provides yet another bridge: he’s the father and grandfather they can take to the disco.

When television weaned away big theatre audiences, he entered our drawing rooms as gracious host of a game show. When the multiplex changed the economics of filmmaking and the structure of storytelling, he became an assorted cast of characters, each one different from the other.

... contd.