Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan tied the knot on June 3, 1973, in an intimate wedding ceremony held in Mumbai. Over the years, their wedding photos have frequently gone viral, capturing the public’s fascination with the iconic Bollywood couple. However, many might not know that Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh’s father and a legendary Hindi poet, shared some jaw-dropping insights about his son’s wedding in his autobiography, In the Afternoon of Time: An Autobiography by Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
As reported by Rediff, Harivansh Rai Bachchan revealed that the wedding was an intimate affair, with only a handful of guests present at the ceremony. He revealed the wedding took place at one of the couple’s friend’s place on the top floor of the Skylark building in Malabar Hills. He added the baraatis consisted only five people, two of which were the poet himself and political leader, Sanjay Gandhi. He added that Jaya’s family did not seem upbeat about the wedding.
“Jaya’s parents wanted the marriage to be conducted in the Bengali manner, to which we had no objection. The first stage was the var-puja, the veneration of the groom, which involved Jaya’s father coming to Mangal (Amitabh’s residence) with gifts and conducting a small ceremony; I then reciprocated by doing the same for the bride at Beach House. I noticed something quite unexpected at Beach House: nobody in the family, apart from Jaya, showed even the slightest trace of pleasure,” he wrote in the book.
He recalled that Amitabh’s Haldi, which would traditionally be a chirpy affair, was done in a hushed quiet. “The joy that was so confined by this constriction spilled out in a tingling of the spine and a tearful glimmering of the eye, especially in Teji’s case,” referring to Amitabh’s mother, Teji Bachchan. He added that even the neighbours were unaware about Amitabh’s wedding, revealing that the family had lied to them about the decoration in the house. “When the neighbours asked what the long decorative strings of light bulbs signified, we explained that Amitabh would be shooting a film here the next night,” he said.