Anybody standing up for change has my support: Abhishek Bachchan

When you witness the trappings — the entourage, the bodyguards et al that herald a Bachchan Junior visit, it is natural to wonder about the attitude of the star. After all, he has been born into it, knows it from the beginning, the star machinery. But all trepidation was laid to rest in the presence of the person himself.

Down to earth, courteous in the manner of almost old-world-charm — young actor  Abhishek Bachchan, when he decided to drop in at After Hrs Friday afternoon, engaged and disarmed absolutely everyone with his politeness and candour.

Arriving as he did, in the midst of a national hue and cry over corruption and activist Anna Hazare’s fast-to-death protest, it seemed appropriate to ask about his views on the same. And we got a thoughtful answer…

“I tweeted this morning you know, ‘support in deed is more important than just in thought’. Being somebody who’s forever on a public platform and open to public scrutiny you get accosted by so many different conflicting points of view. I believe in change, I believe in standing up for rights. If you consider me worthy enough to talk about it to try and garner more support, I’ll try my best. But you know there’s always going be somebody who’s going have a problem with it. So it becomes a very difficult position to take a stand. But having said that I think anybody standing up for the change and for the betterment of the nation is worth supporting and has my whole hearted support.”

After a few serious and surprisingly close-to-confessional moments, Abhishek turned on the charm. His weapon of choice — a tongue-in-cheek, droll sense of humour that got the team enchanted and smiling and hoping for more. This was on display when we spoke of how it was coincidental, that his upcoming movie, where he’s sung a song, had anti-corruption lyrics, right at the time of this national movement against corruption. “…I know, I know!!” was AB’s baby’s frank answer. “And you get petrified ’coz yesterday we were doing a media tour to promote the song and suddenly everybody looked around saying ‘Yeah, you so planned that!’ (mimicking a stern expression).Well we didn’t!”

Amidst laughter, he elaborated: “When I did 'Right Here Right Now', (the earlier song he had sung) it was a very irreverent fun, just going with the flow kinda’ song. I wanted to do something different. Then the biggest obstacle was the character I play in the (new) film isn’t of the guy who sings and dances…it’s this serious, no-nonsense kind of a cop. So you don’t really see him breaking into a song. So I said, okay, we’ll find something that stays in the character and Jaideep (Sahni, the songwriter) came up with these fantastic lyrics and I felt the lyrics justify the song and let’s go and do it. We kept it in the attitude of the film and the character. It’s a whole coincidence that it’s come out when this whole uprising is happening.”

Later, as he strolled through the DNA premises, Bachchan Junior was happy to talk sport — afterall who can forget the pictures of his family, minus the star frills, exulting on the roads in a car, alongside the nation after Saturday’s historic World Cup win!