Big B on the art of gate-crashing

MUMBAI: He might be flying in private jets but there was a time when Amitabh Bachchan used to gatecrash weddings and travel in trains without a ticket.

Big B, who is shooting for ‘Aarakshan’ and is becoming quite nostalgic about his college days.

“We were talking on set about college and university days and how in the hostel, when food was scarce or our pockets had run dry, we would find novel ways of feeding ourselves at times. Look for a wedding, borrow an ill-fitting suit from an affluent colleague and gatecrash the ‘baraat’ as guests and feed ourselves to our limits best, posing as ‘men from the boy’s side’,” he posted on his blog.

“They are the ones that get the most looked after!! They were mad days of our youth and when you look back on them you wonder how on earth did we ever pull those utterly stupid pranks and succeed,” he added.

Big B, who is 68 now, studied at Allahabad’s Jnana Prabodhini and Boys’ High School (BHS) followed by Nainital’s Sherwood College, before graduating from Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College, remembered how he and his friends would board a train without tickets because they didn’t have enough money.

“Like paying a visit to our Alma Mater, Sherwood College the very next year of passing out, spending Founder’s Week there among colleagues and then finding ourselves out of money, not sufficient to buy back a train ticket to Delhi. So what do you do? You get on to the train from Kathgodam in any case, just as it’s pulling out of the station so no one can stop you, cling on to the doors and spend the rest of the journey on the steps outside of the moving compartment until some kind-hearted ticket holder takes pity on your condition and pulls you in to share his berth with you,” he posted.

Leave a Comment