First KBC winner Harshvardhan Nawathe: ‘Amitabh Bachchan spoke to me for one hour, asked me to take care of my parents’
Harshvardhan Nawathe, who became KBC’s first winner in 2010, remembers the sweet gestures of the game show host Amitabh Bachchan.
The first winner of Amitabh Bachchan’s game show Kaun Banega Crorepati, Harshvardhan Nawathe ,was a student when he won Rs 1 crore on the show in 2010. Now, at 47, he remembers the superstar’s sweet gesture while they were shooting the episode.
Harshvardhan told Times of India in an interview, “I don’t think I required anything from him (Amitabh) to make me comfortable. But what I remember and this I will always remember. When I finally answered the Rs 1 crore question, he took a commercial break. What practically happens in the shoot is that they take a very small break for 30 seconds or something and they bring you back. When that happened, I had already answered the final question. During the break, he called his makeup man Mr Deepak Sawant and asked him to do my touch up.”
“He said in saheb ka zara touch up kar do.... He started doing the touch up and then I somewhere knew that I have cracked the Rs 1 crore question. When Mr Deepak Sawant did my makeup it was a very special feeling because he was Big B’s personal makeup man and he has been around Mr Bachchan for 30-40 years. It was a special gesture from his side. This is during the show. After the show, there have been many instances where I have interacted with Mr Bachchan and I have several examples that I can quote. He treats you differently and has that human touch.”
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Talking about his subsequent interactions with the actor, he said, “Whenever I have met Big B after that, he has always asked me about my parents because he knew I was the only child. After the show, he interacted with me for an hour. The feeling of me having won the show had not sunk in. He called me and spent some time with me. He told me ‘Harshvardhan you don’t know what you have done, ab aap bahut sambhal ke rahiye aap apne parents ka khyal rakhiye and take care of yourself (You have to be very careful, take care of your parents and yourself),” Harshvardhan told the daily.
Talking about his victory on the show, Harshvardhan had told Hindustan Times in 2014, “For a year, I lived the life of a rock star. I lost my focus and didn’t take the civil services’ exam.”
Harshvardhan was 27 when he won the show. He used his prize money to complete an MBA from a university in Edinburgh (UK), bought his first car (a Maruti Esteem) and a house in Mumbai. He worked for Mahindra Group for a long time and was the head of Group Corporate Social Responsibility at the company till last year.
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