Bachchan

May 17: Amitabh Bachchan today appeared to call a truce with Shah Rukh Khan, saying he was ready to apologise if certain comments in his blog had offended the younger actor.

Bachchan’s remarks about how Shah Rukh’s latest TV show has had a weak start had been seen as a slight, but the veteran star said all such talk was “a load of rubbish”.

“I will apologise to Shah Rukh a hundred times if there is an iota of doubt in his mind about my conduct and behaviour towards him,” Bachchan wrote in his blog from France, where he attended the opening of the Cannes film festival.

A hint of mockery, however, hung in the air even as he praised Shah Rukh as a friend and a wonderful colleague. Bachchan wrote that despite SRK’s “exalted position and authority”, he had always acknowledged Bachchan’s existence, however diminished or insignificant it may now be.

“If any expression or opinion of mine, deemed or otherwise towards Shah Rukh, has been the cause for any grievance then I am sorry for it,” he continued.

In an earlier entry, Bachchan had cited how none of SRK’s trysts with TV — including the latest, Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hain? — had been able to match the first season of Kaun Banega Crorepati, which the older man had hosted.

Shah Rukh had fired back at the shooting of a Paanchvi Paas episode on Wednesday, threatening to “send” participant and friend Karan Johar to “Amitji” if he kept using the KBC catchphrase “lock kiya jaye” instead of “fix it”.

Later, however, Shah Rukh, seemed anxious not to create direct controversy. The actor, at the receiving end also from Aamir Khan’s blog — which joked about a dog named Shahrukh — was asked why he hadn’t started a blog himself.

“I’m not a bloggy kinda guy,” he shot back before adding: “It’s a personal point of view and please don’t splash this as, ‘Shah Rukh Khan has said Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan should not write such blogs’.”

Bachchan’s latest entry said of Shah Rukh: “He has never ever crossed that very delicate line between familiarity and respect. He has never failed to reciprocate affection that has come from me and hopefully neither have I.”

He spoke of Shah Rukh’s “great affection” for Abhishek, whom he often gave “elder brotherly advice voluntarily”. Stretching the analogy, Bachchan said his wife Jaya and SRK shared a mother-son relationship.

Bachchan insisted that his question about the ratings was a harmless way of testing the waters before he himself decided on several TV offers before him.

“With folded hands very humbly, I submit to those that desire to prolong mischief and anger and animosity. Please stop.”