I have just received a letter from Amitabh Bachchan. Correction-I am among several journalists who have received a letter from Amitabh Bachchan. It is a copy of a long letter he has sent to the Times of India in response to an article by Jug Suraiya. Suraiya, in a column on March 1, took many potshots at Bachchan for the latter's alleged critical comments on Slumdog Millionare.

While running down Bachchan for making those comments, Suraiya's column also brought in many other charges against Bachchan, invoking earlier reports about the star having conducted religious ceremonies to get rid of the "Manglik" curse on his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai.

A month after the column appeared, Bachchan responded with a long - 6 pages - point by point rebuttal of Suraiya's views and has shared that missive with other journalists.

Publishing or not publishing that rebuttal, in part or full, is really the decision of the Times of India, but some points in the letter are of wider interest.

To begin with, the fact of the letter itself. Filmstars, when they are upset or angry with the media (which is quite often) tend to either sulk, stay quiet or just cut that particular journalist or newspaper from their world-no interviews, no access, no invitations to shoots. They rarely, if ever, write back. And if they do, it is never done so cogently and in such detail.

Not so with Bachchan. His reply is robustly written, even if overwrought and well argued. He points out that the negative opinions on his blog about the film were not his but came from others; it was only when a couple of Guardian journalists (he calls them purported journalists) "brazenly cut and pasted passages from my Blog into unrecognizable gutter-press filth" that the "hoo-ha" began. He then goes on to inform us that he spoke to Danny Boyle to clear up the matter and this was reported in the media, including in the Times of India.

On the "Manglik" issue he is even more trenchant, pointing out that he had come to the Times office and discussed the matter and yet this misperception had been reported in the same paper.

The message that comes through this long explanation, tirade if you will, is that Bachchan thinks that he has become some kind of totem upon which people in the media hang their own prejudices. "I refuse to be considered by his ilk as a specimen of 'dirty laundry' that must be ritually beaten clean," he writes.

As a star and therefore public figure, there is a certain amount of objectification that goes with the territory. The stars become symbols and markers of our own emotions and feelings. We want them to be larger than life figures and judge them with higher standards; but we are delighted to pull them down and feel happy at their fall. The public has an interesting relationship with such figures. We know their worlds are one of artifice and make believe, but we do want to believe.

Bachchan, for example has often said that he was never an Angry Young Man-they were just roles for him. But for us he was the man who fought the system and therefore when we saw him doing anything that did not conform to that image, we were disappointed, even critical.

As for Slumdog, we were ready to believe that as India's biggest star he was envious of another film getting the Oscar and therefore the comments he made, or reportedly made, on his Blog, were reflective of that envy.

Bachchan is no novice on the block; he is a well educated, erudite and thinking man. In my encounters with him, I have been impressed by his breath of knowledge, perception and acute observation. The letter therefore comes as no surprise. One can call it an over-reaction, but it shows that he will not take things lying down. Will other stars follow his example?