The old Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan recently made a post on his blog about how far India and its film industry have evolved, and how he had an interesting and memorable experience in the past. His post was both inspired by the fact that India had won the Under-19 Cricket World Cup by a very large margin and it also brought into the limelight something very personal.

Amitabh was invited to a movie festival in a foreign nation (he did not specify the country) some years ago. During the flight in, he saw a local newspaper on which one of his posters was the movie poster on the first page. Curiosity struck him and he enquired of a flight attendant what it said, and she told him that it was to announce that the actor of Indian film was coming to their country.

However, upon the plane landing, things spared naught. The airport was filled with large numbers of people and fans so thronged around that it was almost impossible to get out of the aircraft to the immigration desk. Things got out of control to the point where local law enforcement was forced to drag him through the crowd, conduct him out of the airport and directly to his hotel. It was such an unusual day, that he had to go through his immigration formalities in his hotel room, which he claimed it had never occurred to him.

What hurt more than the mayhem however was the reaction of one of the senior journalists in that country. He was told a newspaper head dismissed him as a third-rate actor in a third world country. Amitabh replied that he would laugh over the third-rate actor role, but it hurt to refer to India as a third-world country.

He took the occasion to applaud Indian accomplishments in the world, including numerous cricket world championships to cultural dominance, as India is not third world, but the first in most places.