Description
While filming Coolie in 1982, Bachchan nearly fatally injured his intestines during the filming of a fight scene with co-actor Puneet Issar. Bachchan had taken the liberty to perform his own stunts in the film and one scene required him to fall onto a table and then on the ground. However as he jumped towards the table, the corner of the table struck his abdomen resulting in a splenic rupture that saw him lose a significant amount of blood. He was flown out and needed urgent operation (splenectomy) and remained critically ill in hospital for many months, and at times was close to death. A rumor spread that he had died from the accident and a remarkable outpouring of support and concern by his fans and the nation in general followed. The accident received wider world coverage and hit the headlines in the UK something unheard of at the time. Many Indians prayed in temples or offered to sacrifice their own limbs to save him and later there were mile-long queues of well-wishing fans outside the hospital where he was recuperating. Nevertheless he spent many months recovering and resumed filming later that year after a long period of recuperation. The film was released in 1983 and partly due to the huge publicity of Bachchan's accident the film was a box office success..
The director, Manmohan Desai altered the ending for Coolie after Bachchan's accident. Bachchan's character was originally intended to have been killed off but after the change of script, the character lived in the end. It would have been inappropriate, said Desai, for the man who had just fended off death in real life to be killed on screen. Also, in the released film the footage of the fight scene is frozen at the critical moment, and a caption appears onscreen marking this as the instant of the actor's injury and the ensuing publicity of the accident.
Later, he was struck with Myasthenia gravis which occurred either because of the heavy medication that he took during his Coolie accident or because of the blood transfusion that he had received. His illness made him feel weak both mentally and physically and he decided to quit films and venture into politics. At this time he had developed a pessimistic view of his film career, and was concerned with how a new film would be received every Friday. Before every release he would negatively state, "Yeh film to flop hogi!" ("This film will flop").
Following a near fatal accident while shooting Coolie (1983/I), during which he suffered internal bleeding and required 17 bottles of blood, he became a champion for the cause of encouraging more people to donate blood.
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