This was Friday the 5th of August. A friend called me on my mobile. Among other things, he asked me whether I was going to watch Kaun Banega Crorepati-2 that evening. I was emphatic: ?Of course I will see it.? He laughed and said: ?Is it because you are a die-hard Amitabh Bachchan fan?? My reply was categorical: ?Of course, I am a big fan of Mr Bachchan. But a more important reason is that KBC gives me an opportunity to learn without embarrassment.? He challenged: ?Do you watch all quiz shows?? I said, slightly on the back foot: ?No. Amitabh Bachchan and the format of KBC make the learning more enjoyable.? He sensed victory and said: ?You see, it all boils down to brand Amitabh Bachchan.?

This set me thinking. It struck me that there has been more than one brand with the label Amitabh Bachchan. The original was the now famous angry young man created by Deewar, Sholay, Lawaris, etc. The brand had its successful run and then its life cycle reached the concluding slope. An important reason was that the physical product was no longer able to support the promised image of the brand. Mr Bachchan was ageing. During the years that this original Amitabh Bachchan brand (AB I) was reigning supreme, the second Amitabh Bachchan brand (AB II) was taking shape.

Thanks to the success of AB I, all of us got to know about the person. He was the son of a great poet. His mother was a friend of Indira Gandhi. He went to an elite English-medium public school and was a close friend of Rajiv Gandhi. He spoke English and Hindi with equal ?lan. This person, Amitabh Bachchan, was at the core of the brand AB II. The film Silsila first gave a whiff of this brand.

Consciously or otherwise, the original KBC had actually launched this brand AB II. It presented Amitabh Bachchan in classy suits and elegant ties or in traditional Indian attires. He carried both personalities majestically in the show. He spoke in aristocratic Hindi punctuated by sentences in Queen?s English. We all fell in love with brand AB II. The Hindi film industry very quickly caught on.

In brand AB II, they had a proven success in terms of public acceptance, yet it was an unused property in the Hindi film arena. As this was happening, two other important developments took place. The NRI market for Hindi films grew and back home multiplex audiences started expanding. So the film industry had a new brand and a new market for it. In came a spate of movies, from K3G to Black, Mohabbatein to Viruddh, all exploiting brand AB II in some way or the other.

KBC-2, we have been told, was always intended. It took them five years to reappear. The producers feared that the new viewers who joined the TV audience in the interim may not be as enamoured by AB II. To them, the anxiety was, Amitabh Bachchan may just be that old actor in Black or Viruddh.

The real issue was that brand AB II may have become pass?. So the inevitable has happened. Brand AB III has been launched by KBC-2. It unavoidably retains all the physical characteristics. They could do very little about the grey hair, white beard and the wrinkled face. They did the next best thing. They changed the packaging. Gone are the suave suits and ties, AB now appears in leather jackets and open necked shirts in KBC-2. He now speaks Hinglish, the lingo of the modern generation. The million-dollar question is ? would brand AB III have enough takers? As they say, where angels fear to tread, people like me rush in. My prediction is that brand AB III will be a winner. Sadly, some of us will be the losers.