When Big B was a comic book hero and the world was a safer place

My first Amitabh Bachchan film was Ajooba. Growing up in a small mining colliery town, where the movie theatre was at least 40 minutes away and public transport not so common, films were a rare luxury. The concept of superheroes was also quite alien to me.

I am guessing that must be why I was so taken with the film (IMDB rating 5/10), enacting random action sequences from the film for hours through sweltering afternoons.

I had little memory of those days. I only remembered it yesterday, on a similar sweltering afternoon, when boredom and a sheer lack of anything to read drove me to the husband’s old comic book collection. It was there, amidst Tintins, Asterix and old Indrajals did I find this rare gem. A superhero comic book starring Amitabh Bachchan.

Here Bachchan plays Amitabh Bachchan the Bollywood actor who’s secret identity was Supremo, the superhero. Whoa! Mind blown. This comic book even had a personal message from the actor on what looks like personalised stationery.

Published by India Book House, written by Gulzar and illustrated by Amar Chitra Katha’s Pratap Mullick the series had a basic simple story. The first scene would often show Bachchan the actor. Or as we used to say, Bachchan, the "hero" (as kids we never called them actors, but heroes or heroines, as if being a one was a full time job).

It was a lot later, after many more English language assignments writing essays on “your childhood heroes” that the distinction between celluloid action heroes and those in real life became clear to me.

In The Hijack, Bachchan gets a visit from a group of kids from across the world, who were on their way to Disneyland. They happened to be in Mumbai and came to visit him as two children in the group were of Indian origin and were fans of his. They are on their way after a short interaction and Bachchan goes about his own routine when he hears the plane carrying the children is hijacked.

Bachchan gets into Supremo mode in red spandex, a gold pendant and weird toga like over skirt and lands up at the scene of the crime with a little help of one of his heroic sidekicks, Sonali, the talking dolphin.

Supremo arrives calms down the harried police officers and saves the day. Of course, with some help from another sidekick – the impossibly smart falcon, Shaheen. The bad guys are soon beaten up and handed over to the police and the children are thrilled and all is well with the world.

I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia for the innocence of those times. When we really believed our heroes to be, well… heroes.