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AB, See Hell". That's what the letters ABCL seem to spell now for Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited, in the face of the twin demons of financial bankruptcy and career ruin that threaten to confront the country's most legendary film star.

It's an apocryphal story in Bollywood, one of those gossipy anecdotes that become instant legends. The only thing that gives credence to this one is the fact that it's true.

A well-known scriptwriter was working on the script to a Bachchan film sometime in 1997. The story centred around a rich industrialist widower with a beautiful but spoilt daughter. The film was to be about the father's relationship with the daughter and the young penniless mechanic she falls in love with. The daughter gets kidnapped and the father and the mechanic are forced to put aside their differences as they try to save her from the clutches of the kidnappers. The film ends with the father heroically fighting the kidnappers, killing their leader, saving his daughter and receiving a fatal wound in the process. He dies in a traumatic climax reminiscent of the death scene in Sholay, after uniting his daughter and the mechanic and blessing their union.
As you have probably guessed, Bachchan was to play the father. In fact, the script was conceived and developed purely with him in mind.

On the Friday that Bachchan's long-awaited comeback film Mrityudaata was released, the writer was hard at work on the script. He was interrupted by a phone call from the producer, a veteran of the industry. The producer told the writer that Mrityudaata had had a bad opening and Bachchan's equity had dropped substantially. The producer told the writer to rewrite the script, reducing Bachchan's role. He would still be the father, but the film would focus more on the daughter (to be played by Karisma Kapoor) and the mechanic (to be played by a newcomer).
The next day, Saturday, the writer got another call from the producer. He sounded very harassed this time. He said that distributors were very alarmed at the response to Mrityudaata and felt a Bachchan film wouldn't be worth a premium anymore. The producer told the writer to make the film centre completely around the daughter and the mechanic (who would now be played by a saleable young star). Bachchan would still be the father, but the role would be a supporting one.

Finally, on Sunday, the writer received the third and last call. The producer said that Bachchan was a complete write off and that nobody would touch him with a barge pole again. Mrityudaata was a total flop. He told the writer to rewrite the film completely, cutting Bachchan out altogether. He even suggested that they cast veteran character actor Pran (in Hindi, pran means life) as the father instead of Bachchan. The writer chose to shelve the script rather than make this final change. The punchline was his quip to the producer: "Pran jaaye par Bachchan na jaaye!" (''Even life can cease but Bachchan can't''.)

Recently, Bachchan's newest release Sooryavansham brought back shocks of déjà vu to the same writer. Because, despite the debacle of Mrityudaata and the subsequent sinking of Bachchan's career graph, there was still a great deal of hope that the superstar would rise again phoenix-like from his own ashes.

Sooryavansham put the torch to the funeral pyre of that last hope. The writer, a blueblood Bachchan fan and well versed in the ways of the industry, destroyed the script, convinced that it could now never be produced.

This loss of faith wasn't just the result of Sooryavansham's box-office failure. After all, Sooryavansham was not an ABCL release, so the loss would hit the distributors much harder than the Big B himself. Also, two of his earlier releases, Bade Miya Chotte Miya and Lal Badshah, had performed reasonably well at the turnstiles. It was possible that there was some running still left in the old horse. And even in Sooryavansham, Bachchan's performance was superb, reminiscent of his heyday 15 years ago, which was high praise indeed.

But what brought the last tear to Bachchan sympathisers and fans was not his films at all, but the recent reports in the financial pages of the press. Reports that detailed the Bachchan family's financial crisis. News that the famed landmark in Bombay's suburb of Vile Parle, the original Bachchan residence Pratikshaa, had been attached by a court order and was to be sold to help recover debts owed by Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited.

And the further news that ABCL had applied to the Bureau for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction, proof that the Bachchans felt their financial morass was beyond resolution.
The Bachchan era, thought by some to have declined years ago, had finally, officially, come to an end.