12 Kolkata: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has invited Amitabh Bachchan to the Kolkata International Film Festival scheduled in Dec and urged him to recite a poem if he does not wish to make a speech.
Banerjee, who met a number of luminaries at the marriage ceremony of Anant Ambani in Mumbai, including Big B, said: “I have asked Amitji to come to KIFF.He asked what he would do at the KIFF since he had exhausted all he had to say when he delivered the keynote addresses in the past editions of the festival. I told him that is fine, you can recite a poem this time. What is important is your presence. So I invited him to read out his poems at KIFF.”
The CM felt it would be a new experience for the audience to hear Big B, son of poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, recite poems. Bachchan loves to recite his father’s poems, particularly from the book ‘Madhushala’.
Banerjee also said she had met several people at the gathering in Mumbai, including Sachin Tendulkar, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar. “I met Shabana and Javed Akhtar after a long time and spoke to them. But I did not meet SRK,” she said.
Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan have often been present at the KIFF since 2012. Bachchan’s speeches at the opening ceremony have been widely appreciated. His first speech at the 2012 inauguration was a well-researched discourse on 100 years of Indian cinema. Two years later, he followed it up with another memorable account on the history of Bengali cinema.
It was at the end of one of his speeches, Bachchan had requested the CM not to invite him any more since he and his team of researchers had run out of subjects for his speeches.