Amitabh Bachchan sighs, “Tough. Life isn’t easy.”

For Abhishek Bachchan, life has always been tough.

There was a time when Abhishek would tell me that he felt a bond with Rohan Gavaskar. Sunil Gavaskar’s son had a legacy to live up to. Just as the bar was set high for the son of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan.

But there was a difference. Rohan dropped out of the limelight. Abhishek has bashed on regardless and, however tempestuous the ride, he has worked out a separate identity. They are vastly different personalities anyway. Amitabh, more inclined towards classical music even in his early years, is a self-made man of non-film origins, eloquent in Hindi and English, like his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Junior was born with a headstart miles ahead of his peers, he thinks in English and speaks it with an accent that came naturally with schooling in Switzerland.

Jaya used to say she felt bad for Abhishek when Amitabh would make him sit down and read the Hindi dailies to gain fluency in the medium in which he made films. Call it the stern support of a parent who deeply cared.

At all other times, the closeness of the two six-foot Bachchan men made them almost an extension of each other. You may think Abhishek is, like half the country, an unabashed Amitabh Bachchan fan. He is. But Amitabh Bachchan is equally Abhishek’s biggest cheerleader, an open admirer of his son.

Apart from their obvious love for the movies and for all forms of sports, manifest in Abhishek’s ownership of a franchise or two, father and son also have a common personal quality — they take responsibility very seriously. Teji Bachchan would talk of how at the age of nine, Amitabh would be by her side as the older son, ready to face whatever challenge came their way. Abhishek is the younger sibling; Shweta is 50. He was born after Sholay in 1976. But he has his dad’s fine sense of responsibility. In fact, when Aaradhya was born and routine “Now you’ll have to be more responsible” comments were being made, Abhishek had wondered, “Why do people say that? I’ve always been a very responsible man.”

In his career, Abhishek had a turbulent start. While Juhu buddy Hrithik Roshan, also launched in 2000, took off like a rocket, Abhishek’s debut Refugee was the beginning of J.P. Dutta’s decline. Others that followed like Dhai Akshar Prem Ke were rank bad choices until Mani Ratnam’s Yuva (2004) put him back in the reckoning. But those four intervening years were a heartbreak. 70-plus films and 24 years later, with some like Guru (2007) working and others like Raavan (2010) taking him many paces back, highs and sighs have always been a part of his acting life.

A few months ago, an actor’s sibling had observed that if his brother had got as many opportunities as Abhishek Bachchan, he would’ve been a superstar. There’s no going away from it — however complicated the obstacle course, Abhishek will always be seen as an actor born to a privilege unavailable to others. Abhishek has, however, seized the privilege, been unafraid to ration his appearances on screen, and created an exclusivity around him where he’s not available to anyone with an acting offer. You’ve got to credit Abhishek for choices that reflect variety and a willingness to step into the unfamiliar. The anpadh politician of Dasvi (2022), for example. Today, playing the antagonist to SRK in Sujoy Ghosh’s King fits neatly into that self-written resume.

And there is the personal too. Married to a spouse as famous as Aishwarya Rai and having been a red-carpet couple for years, any departure from that togetherness will go under a microscope. Every pose and post by any Bachchan family member, will spark off speculations of “Is there trouble in paradise?” But Abhishek takes that too in his long stride, he can’t be bewildered by the attention. He was, after all, born under the spotlight.