"When Arnab Goswami gets at you ... its time not to duck, but to get out of the way as fast as possible !!" tweeted Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan after a wide ranging interview with the editor-in-chief of Times Now. Bachchan had sent out a series of tweets on Friday, almost fore-warning his fans ahead of the scheduled telecast of the interview on Saturday afternoon.
T 1880 - When you face a journalist, you shall never come out a winner ! So lie back and bear it ! Good hard blows are delights to the mind.
Goswami's show Frankly Speaking has put more than a fair share of personalities on the spot and he had the 72-year-old in a fix on more than one occasion. From Bofors to his relationship with the Gandhi family and Amar Singh, Goswami brought up all the issues that Bachchan has not addressed widely in an interview before.
Known to be close to the Gandhi family, the actor in the tete-a-tete says that "I never spoke to Rajiv Gandhi regarding the 1984 Sikh riots," adding that the incident was "terrible" but to say that he (Bachchan) was responsible for it is "rubbish". A Sikh rights group had filed a complaint in the US last year, alleging that Bachchan had instigated people after the riots. The actor mentioned that he never discussed politics with the Gandhi's during emergency but he says that he wasn't for the idea as there were limitations on basic freedoms.
Bachchan also responded to his name being drawn into the Bofors case saying that he exercised caution since. "The misery that we went through during the Bofors scam, has taught me a lesson for life," he added, mentioning why he liked to stay away from controversies.
The pointed questions had not been thrown at him before, Bachchan admitted towards the end of their interaction. "Pasted left right and center" in his own words, the actor was left looking very edgy on some of the questions. At one point, while answering a question about the buzz surrounding his political career, the actor wryly retorted to Goswami, "There's always a buzz about you joining the film industry as well."
In his later tweets though, the actor says that he does not "possess adequate knowledge to comment on all the issues that plague society, on politics, on controversies et al." He then requested the media to refrain from drawing him into controversies.
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