Amitabh Bachchan's stomach ailment brings back strange memories of 1982 when the actor's on-set accident and subsequent hospitalisation was treated as a national crisis. Melancholy hung over the country as Bachchan struggled in Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital. Doctors spoke in whispers inside the hospital while fans wept volubly outside. It was a nation bereaved even though there was no death involved.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, a family friend of the Bachchans, paid a midnight visit to the hospital even as the actor's many millions of fans prayed frenziedly across the country. I happened to be at the hospital waiting for the prime minister. An attempt to get Mrs. Gandhi to say something about Bachchan after she emerged from the hospital prompted nothing more than mild irritation and her famous twitch of her right eye. "Theek ho jayenge (He will be fine). There is nothing to worry," she said on reflection lest her earlier response be construed as churlish and insensitive to a nation that had stopped breathing.

Some days later when Bachchan was discharged and sent to his bungalow 'Pratiksha' in Juhu, northwest Mumbai, a stunning ritual in abject devotion was enacted. A fan had set out from Baroda, a city some 350 km north of Mumbai, on a mission "to reverse time." He was running backwards all the way to Bachchan's bungalow from Baroda. The rationale of his act being that if he ran backwards he would push back time to a time when he was well. That was quite like Superman swirling around the earth in the direction opposite to its rotation to reverse time. I was at hand to report the story. Interestingly, I was the only reporter waiting at Bachchan's residence at 7.30 in the morning.

The man from Baroda showed up around 8 a.m. With blisters in his feet but devotion in his eyes he waited patiently as an ailing Bachchan was being prepared for the blessing. In the meanwhile, the actor's illustrious poet father Harivanshrai Bachchan, who was in his 70s then, came out to meet the fan. I could see that Bachchan Sr. was in tears. Since I was standing next to him he said to me sobbing, "This is what saved my son".

About half an hour later Bachchan, looking shockingly haggard and in pain, was brought out by two of his aides. The fan froze for a few moments. He was not sure if he was looking at a celluloid god that he had perhaps worshipped for a decade or his ghost. Bachchan's frailty seemed to prove to the fan that the actor was after all human contrary to what he had heard and believed. He just stood there and cried. Bachchan looked awkward and overwhelmed. The whole meeting lasted nothing more than five minutes but seemed like a lifetime to the fan.

As I left Pratiksha I came across some 200 people waiting outside, some of them carrying Bachchan's portraits. Most eyes were moist. Some distance away lay a waif, evidently chronically hungry and precariously close to death. I went to ask him what he thought of what was going on in front of him. "Give me something to eat," is all that he could say. I bought him some food and gave him whatever I could muster on a reporter's niggardly salary. Just as I was about to hail an auto-rickshaw, the waif said, "No one runs backward or forward for me."