New Delhi – ‘This weekend’s Couching with Koel features Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. Mr. Bachchan and his team, wanted to do something other than a straight interview and asked Koel to plan a different kind of interaction with a live audience of students. A special intimate set was created featuring the couch, 150 students, a drummer and even a “piddly pot”.

The atmosphere was electric and the students could hardly believe that they were getting to interact in such close quarters with their icon.

What came as a surprise is that Mr. Bachchan loved the interaction as much as the students and he refused to leave long after the slotted time was over. So instead of a 30-45 mins session Mr. Bachchan stayed for close to 2 hours, shouting out from stage to his frantic PR team for Shamitabh “Don’t worry I will make up for time. I’m enjoying this, please lets continue Koel. I very rarely get to share and chat like this with youngsters.”

And share he did – from romances in his early school days at Sherwood and going to the lovers “Wall” to meet and catch glimpses of the girls at All Saints sister school.  To not understanding a word at his first ever science lecture at KMC and thus never learning the meaning of Aum’s law. Mr. Bachchan did a mock audition for OYE Radio like he had done for AIR in his youth and got rejected. He explained the process of playing drunk as a teetotaller and how different each drunk must be. He then acted out the drunken lines from Shamitabh as if a drunk Anthony Gonsalves was saying it instead. He sang the piddly song, he inspired the youth with his life lessons, he made a warm connect with them by being so open, he answered questions from the audience honestly and with humour, he even good-naturedly told off Koel for “Putting me to the test after 45 years in this industry” and for embarrassing him by asking cheeky questions. In the end Mr. Bachchan left every single person after 2 enthralling hours gasping for more. Then Mr. Bachchan went a step further and clicked a selfie with each and every group of student present and promised to tweet it.

Mr. Bachchan blushed, smiled and lit up sharing anecdotes and reminiscing about his school and college life, his early films… Then he talked about accepting old age and altering your career path accordingly.

This episode of Couching with Koel will air this Saturday 31st Jan 9.30pm and Sun 1st February at 11.30am and 11.30pm”

Excerpts:

Koel: You have played a student a few times in your career and most memorably in kabhi – kabhi , sanjog and paa. All three of them have very little to do with studying but more to do with romance and I am sure it might be true for the characters but was it true for your real life when you were student?

Amitabh Bachchan: (smiles and blushes) You are young , in college , independent…of course.

Amitabh Bachchan: This is embarrassing, even in school actually. It started in Sherwood, we had a sister school which was called all saints, our main building up here where all the class rooms were and then you walk down to a playing field which was lower on the hill below that there was a tennis court and below that all the prospective … lovers .. we would break bounds from there, jump across the valley climb the other hill and go to “the wall”. It was call ‘the wall’ because All Saints school had a huge wall which protected the girls from … predators like us.

The wall was the most significant thing in school. ‘Have you been to the wall?’ that kind of conversation use to happen. We use to crawl up the wall. And the wall use to be the edge of their playing field, so just show  up then perhaps one of the girls will come in the games period and then u say “can you call that one please.” Then the girl will very casually walk across.

And it was really beautiful because you know; I don’t know what romance is like now, at that time it was- “how are you doing? or I made a little card for you… will you come to annual concert and may be you can put our programme into this card  and that’s it bye,  thank you ” and get back. That’s all that used to happen.

We had a vice principal, that had a pair of binoculars which were really powerful and from Nainital he could see Bareilly almost. You know that far and we would get caught and once you get caught with these things the option is six cuts of the cane or you won’t be allowed to go to the annual function where All Saints are going to come, so we would opt for cuts. Those were just wonderful days.

Koel Puri: Before asking the next question, I have actually got written permission from Jaya ji that you must answer it. If you were a 30 year old unmarried super star in 2015 who out of current actresses would you have wanted for a girlfriend, wife or both?

Amitabh Bachchan: Give me that list… Give me that list now… (laughs). You know looking at modern trends where everyone is very librated these days I wouldn’t choose to get married at all because then I would have the opportunity to be with all of them.