Coolie is a Bollywood India comedy film directed by Manmohan Desai and written by Kader Khan that was released in 1983. Rishi Kapoor, Rati Agnihotri, Shoma Anand, Kader Khan, Waheeda Rehman, Suresh Oberoi, and Puneet Issar play supporting parts in the film, which stars Amitabh Bachchan as railway coolie Iqbal Aslam Khan.
The picture grossed over $10 million in each area, which was a great success at the time. The Coolie film is remembered for a fight sequence with co-star Puneet Issar in which Amitabh Bachchan suffered a near-fatal injury as a result of a misjudged leap.
Kader Khan, who also plays the antagonist in the movie, wrote the script. Khan included aspects of Islamic Sufi mysticism into the narrative, including the many Sufi motifs and allusions, in addition to getting Bachchan to portray a Muslim protagonist.
Even before the movie began, Bachchan requested that famous Kannada actor Rajkumar appears in it. Amitabh and Rajkumar used to have mutual regard for one another and both were admirers of another.
Well before the movie production, Amitabh Bachchan was seriously hurt inside the intestines during shooting a fight scene alongside co-star Puneet Issar upon that Bangalore University campus on July 26, 1982, nearly costing him his life.
Bachchan was meant to fall into a table inside the battle scene, however, he misjudged his jump. Internal abdominal damage developed as a result of this. He was taken to a Mumbai hospital, wherein he slipped into a “haze as well as coma-like condition,” and also was “clinically dead for just a couple of minutes,” according to the actor.
There have been reports of widespread grief when he was inside the hospital, and many Indians across the country and abroad sent prayers.
Rajiv Gandhi reportedly postponed a trip to the United States to be with him, according to sources.
Bachchan was given 60 blood bottles from 200 donors, one of whom had the Hepatitis B virus. Bachchan recovered from the injury, but it was revealed in 2000 that the virus had caused liver cirrhosis, which had destroyed roughly 75% of his liver. Later, Bachchan came out about his experience to promote the Hepatitis B vaccination.
Despite the serious injuries, Bachchan made a remarkable recovery and started filming on January 7, 1983. The battle sequence in which he was hurt was frozen in the final edit of the film, and a note appears identifying the moment as the one in which he was injured.
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