Abhishek Bachchan ‘Doesn’t Remember Seeing’ Jaya Bachchan Cry After Amitabh Bachchan’s Coolie Accident

Amitabh Bachchan had a major accident on the Coolie set. The actor was severely injured while performing a stunt with actor Puneet Issar. Now, years after the traumatic chapter has passed, Abhishek Bachchan has opened up about how the family dealt with it and credited his mom, Jaya Bachchan, for helping the family get through it all.

Speaking in an interview with PeepingMoon,Abhishek revealed that while he was just six years old at the time, he remembered that night “vividly.” “That night when he returned, he had a lot of people with him, helping him walk. I went to give him a hug, and he pushed me away. I didn’t know that he was hurt, and I was angry with him all night. I don’t remember emotionally too much after that,” he recalled.

He further

continued and said, “Whenever we used to go to the hospital to visit Dad, Mom and he used to make it into a game. I didn’t know how serious it was. If you keep going to the hospital, you realise something is wrong. We would be more excited for the masks and playing doctor. He had all those drips, and he would say these are ‘kites’.”

Speaking about how the family managed to survive the phase, Abhishek credited Jaya Bachchan and said, “All credit goes to my mom. I don’t remember seeing her cry or even be in a bad mood. She tried to normalise it as much as she could. She didn’t make it a traumatic experience at all. I can only imagine what she must have been going through. To hold the family together in such a situation must be a difficult task. She wasn’t that old; she must have been in her mid-30s, and with two young children. I don’t remember it being a traumatic time, but that’s because our parents never allowed it.”

In a past interview with Stardust,Amitabh Bachchan talked about the accident and what he felt afterward. He said he never realised he was close to dying. He knew something was seriously wrong but didn’t know how bad it was. “See, I never knew that I was going to die. I knew that there was something very wrong with me, but I never knew that I was going to die. And the entire period when I was seemingly gone, when I was struggling for life, I was in a state of coma. I was unconscious. That was a difficult period for my family. It was easy for me because I was oblivious. The difficult period for me started after I got okay—when you’re told what you’ve been through. And it’s not enough that you’ve been told,” he had said.