I just hate using the word ‘Bollywood’: Amitabh Bachchan

Of the multiple issues and passions he touched upon in the course of a lecture in Delhi recently, ranging from female literacy to the nuances ofentertainment, Big B often came back to the domain he is the regent of – Bollywood. Oh, and he also hates both ‘Big B’ and ‘Bollywood’ Excerpts from a voluminous discourse:

India’s a grand narrative 
I stand before you famous for being a foil – not for what I’ve done of my own authorship. I’m famous for characters, not the character. That given, many of my characters have indeed been epic, and that’s India for you. A grand narrative of big leaders, big movements, big argument, big drama, big passion, big suffering, big overcoming. The only big the media insists I have contributed to this great nation is a rather an overly persistent B – the homemade epithet much to my dislike, the Big B… To entertain – it is a rich and complex act – ‘to amuse, divert, attract, to consider, contemplate, hold in mind, to receive, to harbour others in generosity of spirit’. Entertain: inter – among, tenere – to hold. And we hold among ourselves, blessed with a story – ‘storytelling conveys meaning without committing the error of defining it’. True entertainers aren’t denotative or didactic – we don’t give you answers. We certainly don’t give lectures….

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