Fame, recognition, retirement. India's biggest actor introspects ahead of his birthday

Au00a0couple of years more, two or three perhaps." And then, says India's biggest ever superstar, he will stop going to work.

The raffish, unshaven, angry, young man of Deewar who even now stares you down from a hundred city billboards completes 67 today.

Sitting in his Juhu office in a maroon tracksuit and slippers, Amitabh Bachchan spoke to MiD DAY at length just ahead of his birthday. He spoke on the first tremors of recognition he had felt in 1971, his favourite Bachchan movies, the gentlemen who rejected him after a couple of rounds of interview at the All India Radio, his directors, wife, films, Rekha, retirement and Eminem.

Getting Amitabh Bachchan to speak about himself can be daunting. Here is clearly a man who wants to be remembered for modesty. And modesty, like his thickset glasses, cannot be easily dislodged from him without causing affront.

Yet, it was worth a try. How often does one get Amitabh Bachchan to analyse a phenomenon called Amitabh Bachchan, even if reluctantly?