The whole of India came to pray together, hundreds lined up in front of the hospital to donate blood and organs, politicians cancelled foreign visits, shootings were stopped and celebrations were put on hold – the accident that changed everything for Amitabh Bachchan and his fans all over the world!

Actor Amitabh Bachchan on Monday announced he met with an accident on the sets of his upcoming film ‘Project K‘. While he didn’t reveal the details of the accident, in a blog, he mentioned that he has been advised to take complete rest and put all work commitments on hold. Bachchan, who’s more fondly called the megastar of Indian cinema, wrote a big note asking fans to stay calm and wish for his speedy recovery as he battles with injured ribs.
The incident on the sets of Project K takes many fans, especially the ones who saw Bachchan’s rise as the big angry young man of Bollywood, to the unfortunate incident that took place in the July of 1982. On the sets of Manmohan Desai’s Coolie, which eventually turned out to be Big B’s most successful movie of the time, the actor met with a terrible accident, the kind of which is termed ‘fatal’. While shooting an action scene with the baddie and then a newbie, Puneet Issar, he got punched so hard (a human error) that it hit his intestines badly and he had to immediately undergo surgery.
The scene was set at Bangalore University and Puneet had to ‘pretend’ to punch Bachchan really hard in the lower abdomen area. As it was written in his destiny, it turned out to be a mistimed punch that ended up rupturing his intestines. The actor was taken to St. Philomena’s Hospital in Bengaluru where he was given the initial treatment before he was flown to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai where he underwent multiple surgeries.
The incident took place on July 26 and it was on August 2nd that Bachchan finally came back to his consciousness, not really but at least clinically. In an interview later, he recalled, “I went into almost a haze and a coma-like situation. Within five days of coming into Breach Candy, I had another surgery and didn’t come out of that one for a very, very long time and I was clinically dead for a couple of minutes. Then Dr Wadia, who looked after me and is an absolute life-saver, just said “I’m going to take a last chance” and he started pumping cortisone/ adrenaline (no surety about the real name of the drug used at that time) injections into me one after another almost, 40 ampules of it, with the hope that something would happen and then I got revived.”
It was his wife, Jaya Bachchan, who never left his side at the hospital, who first saw the slight movement of his toe and immediately declared ‘he is alive’, the only wish people were carrying in their hearts during those crucial days.
On January 7, 1983, almost six months after the dreadful incident took place, Amitabh Bachchan resumed the shooting of the film. To commemorate the entire phase, Desai, who was a thoughtful and emotional filmmaker, inserted a message for the viewers in the scene that made Bachchan believe in the power of stars and prayers. Right when the action happened and the punch appeared, Desai froze the screen and wrote it was the scene that changed Bachchan’s life forever.
Interestingly, the director also changed the climax of Coolie in which Bachchan’s character was supposed to die earlier. However, after closely seeing the actor fighting for his life in reality, Desai thought it was only symbolic for the character to also come back to life after battling his injuries. In the new modified ending, the hero – Iqbal Aslam Khan – comes back to his senses and recovers successfully after his surgery. Even the funeral scene, which was shot before his real-life accident, was shelved from Coolie. Not to mention that the film broke many records at the Box Office and became memorable for Bachchan and his lovers for reasons more than one.
$(document).ready(function(){ $('#commentbtn').on("click",function(){ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=178196885542208"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
$(".cmntbox").toggle(); }); });
Source link
from https://www.thetimesofbengal.com/entertainment/when-amitabh-bachchan-was-declared-nearly-dead/
via The Times of Bengal | An exclusive 24*7 daily news portal RSS Feed