After battling health issues for the last few years, Rajya Sabha member and an eminent political figure, Amar Singh breathed his last today. He was 64.
Down the Memory Lane
Apart from being one of the prominent faces of the Samajwadi Party, Amar Singh was also known for his once thick friendship with Amitabh Bachchan and the subsequent fall-out. The equation between Amar Singh and the Bachchan family has been through a roller-coaster ride. From being the thickest of friends, standing rock-solid behind each-other in times of crisis, being much more than family at one point to not be willing to see each other eye-to-eye; their friendship turned bitter as the years passed by.
The change in equation
What exactly led to the change of equations would always remain a mystery, but excerpts from Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India's Most Famous by Sunetra Choudhury, gives an insight into how the friendship turned sour between the two, once Amar Singh went to Tihar jail. Citing excerpts of the book, an NDTV report revealed that Amar Singh had expected the Bachchans to visit him at the hospital. But Amitabh's absence during his time at the jail hurt him the most.
Bachchan's 'politically correct' stance
Amar Singh had revealed in the book that Amitabh Bachchan came to see him only after he got bail and was released from the jail. Amar Singh was in the hospital after getting bail when Amitabh visited him. Amar Singh revealed that he remained quite cold and formal towards Bachchan, adding that Amitabh has always been a 'politically correct' and 'suave' person.
"When he came to meet me I didn't feel like talking to him because the feelings I had for him, the friendship had gone. They had got filtered from my mind and the realization had dawned that mostly people are weathercocks," he had said.
Amar Singh's jibes at the Bachchan family
Amar Singh had taken to Twitter to lambast the Bachchan family recently. Singh criticised Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan over their "indecent scenes" in movies and called them hypocrites. Attacking Jaya Bachchan's speech in the parliament, which was about the condition of the women in the country, Amar Singh tweeted a two-minute long video.
"My old friend, who is no longer a friend, expressed grief in Rajya Sabha yesterday about the condition of women in the country. You are a mother and a wife. The remote to control the society is in the hands of a mother and a wife. Why don't you ask your husband to not dance on 'jumma-chumma' or embrace the actress in a rain dance sequence," Amit Shah said in the video.
Singh did not stop there. He also asked Jaya Bachchan why she did not tell her daughter-in-law (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) to not do what she did in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. He also targeted her son Abhishek and asked Jaya to tell her son to not dance with semi-naked actresses in Dhoom.
Amar Singh's video has garnered both positive and negative comments. While few have supported Singh, many have lashed out at him for targeting the Bachchan family.
