Amitabh Bachchan says he feels nervous when Jaya Bachchan calls: ‘I’m anxious, what will happen?’

Last update:December 10, 2024, 3:46 p.m. IST

Amitabh Bachchan shared a funny incident with his wife Jaya Bachchan on KBC.

Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan has revealed that he is not very good at understanding Bangla. His wife, actress Jaya Bachchan, often communicates with him in Bengali for personal reasons, especially when she is around other people. However, Amitabh struggles with the language due to his limited knowledge.

He shared this during Kaun Banega Crorepati 16, his popular quiz show, where contestant Saurav Choudhary from Kolkata was in the hot seat. During the episode, Amitabh shared a memory from his early days when his office was near the Bengal Chamber of Commerce in Dalhousie. He recalled a company program that paid Rs 3,000 to employees to learn Bengali in order to connect with workers, with an exam to test their learning after three months. Despite this, Amitabh admits that his attempts to learn the language were never successful.

Amitabh Bachchan revealed that his monthly salary was only Rs 500 and after expenses, he was left with only Rs 150. The Rs 3,000 paid to him for Bengali lessons was spent in three days. To compensate for this, he practiced Bengali with two friends after office hours. When the exam came, he managed to pass it.

Amitabh also shared a funny incident with his wife Jaya Bachchan. He had to speak Bengali in a recent situation, but admitted that his fluency faded over time, causing some confusion.

He recalls, “When a guest comes and you need to speak privately in front of others, Jaya always speaks in Bengali and I pretend to understand, but I really don’t. Recently, she was shooting a film in Goa and I received a phone call from her. Normally we talk through messages, but this time she called and I got nervous. When my wife calls, I’m anxious, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I hesitated, I answered the call, not knowing what had happened. She started speaking in Bengali because there were people around and I couldn’t understand a word.”

“I kept saying ‘ha ha,’ but after a while I told her I didn’t understand what she was saying. So sometimes I have to do things like that. If you ask me today to speak Bengali, I don’t know. I only know two words: Besi jane na, ektu ektu jaane (I don’t know much, I understand very little),” he added.