On an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati 13, Rajkummar Rao told Amitabh Bachchan a story that has stayed with him for years. It concerns a video Bachchan recorded for Rao’s mother after her death in 2016, and the mystery of what happened to the file after it was played once.
Rao appeared on the quiz show with his Hum Do Humare Do co-star Kriti Sanon. The conversation turned to his mother, who was a devoted Bachchan fan and had often said she wanted to meet him. When she died, Rao said, he felt guilty that he had never been able to arrange that meeting.
A private request, answered at once
That night, Rao said, he contacted Bachchan with an unusual request. He asked whether Bachchan would record a short video for his mother. Rao promised he would not show the clip to anyone else; he wanted to play it once, in front of her photograph.
Bachchan sent the video immediately. Rao played it before his mother’s picture. Then, he recalled, the clip disappeared from the pen drive. The source offers no further detail about the clip’s format, storage, or disappearance.
“The video was supposed to be only between you and her,” Rao told Bachchan on the show. He did not offer a technical explanation for the disappearance, and the source does not provide one. In the telling, the vanishing itself became the point: a moment that was never intended to circulate.
The one film they share
The encounter has a small but meaningful place in Hindi film history. Bachchan and Rao have appeared together only once, in the 2010 release Rann. Bachchan led the film as media baron Vijay Harshvardhan Malik, while Rao had a cameo as a newsreader.
That thin shared screen history makes the KBC exchange feel more personal than professional. The story is not about a film announcement or a reunion; it is about a fan’s wish and a colleague’s private gesture.
For readers who follow Hindi cinema closely, the details matter:
- 2010: Bachchan and Rao share the screen in Rann, their only film together.
- 2016: Rao’s mother dies; he asks Bachchan for a private video the same night.
- KBC 13: Rao recounts the story to Bachchan, with Kriti Sanon as a co-guest.
Why the memory endures
Bollywood produces endless public tributes—posts, montages, paid obituary ads. This story is different because Rao describes a tribute that was meant to be invisible. Bachchan’s response was fast and private, and the only audience was a photograph.
That is why the anecdote has outlasted the episode. It is a reminder that, for all the machinery of celebrity, some exchanges still happen outside the record. The missing file is now part of that memory: unexplained, and perhaps better for it. For the audience, it reframes a familiar equation: not every significant gesture needs a public stage.
Source: The Times of India
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