E-Paper
Unlucky at thirteen
Akshay Kumar recalls being conned on a train after he had shopped for clothes on Mumbai’s Fashion Street when he was a teenager.
His con drama, Tees Maar Khan, is top of the mind right now. And for lead actor Akshay Kumar, it brings back an old memory of being robbed on a train.
The actor was in Mumbai at the time and had spent just all his savings, amounting to a princely sum of Rs 650 that had taken him months to hoard, shopping for clothes on Mumbai’s Fashion Street.
"I was just 13 at the time and stepped into the Frontier Mail that would take me back to Delhi with big bulging bags," he says, adding that he was unaware of what lay in store for him when he went to nodded off on the middle berth that night.
Suddenly, the train ground to a halt and armed dacoits barged into the compartments and started robbing the passengers. Master Rajeev Bhatia wasn’t spared. "I couldn’t fight them off so I just lay still, watching them take away all my new clothes," he sighs.
In this year’s Christmas attraction, Kumar turns the tables and pulls off a daring heist aboard a train. “It was fun. And I’ve enjoyed action, right from my first film. We had a blast,” he enthuses.
Considering that his last release, the retro musical Action Replayy set in the 1970s, didn’t live up to all the hype he created, it’s important for Kumar to score with Farah Khan’s film. And he’s hoping this time the audience is ‘conned’ into coming to the theatre in droves.
