Aamir in a recent media interview panned director Sanjay Leela Bhansali for his handling of the film Black terming it ‘insensitive and manipulative.’ He also termed the performances of the actors ‘over the top’.

The criticism did not go down well with Amitabh Bachchan. In an interview with Mid Day he was asked what he thought about Aamir’s ‘over the top’ remark.

“I cannot comment whether my performance was towering or not, but Aamir may be right on the other maybe the performances did go ‘over the top’ of his head!” Amitabh responded.

In his response to Bachchan’s outburst, Aamir Khan posted a blog entry that was calm and matter of fact.

“I have the highest regard for Mr Bachchan and I am [a] very big fan of his work. Probably one of the biggest. I believe that he along with Mr Dilip Kumar are among my two favourite actors of Indian Cimema[sic]. I have no hesitation in saying that I don”t even feature on the same platform as an actor. He is also in my opinion THE biggest star that Indian Cinema has ever seen.”

Putting his comments on Black in perspective Aamir continues,

“My big exception towards Black is the fact that a child with severe difficulties is shown being ill treated instead of being treated with love, care and understanding. I simply cannot come to terms with that no matter what the writer and director say in defence.”

Aamir’s decision not to respond to Bachchan’s personal attack is commendable.

However, the timing of Aamir’s attack on Black, years after it was released and just when his own children’s film Taare Zameen Par is poised for release, is suspect.

It makes you wonder if he is trying to rake up a controversy to focus media attention on his film?

As he rambles on his blog entry, Aamir himself goes over the top with his criticism of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Black.

“I thought I was watching a rip off of Taming Of The Shrew!!! I take great exception to this kind of behaviour towards children being glorified and propagated through a popular mass medium as the way to deal with children with or without difficulties.”

Calling Black a rip off of Taming Of The Shrew in our opinion is far fetched. We would not go beyond saying it is loosely based on The Miracle Worker (1962) which itself was based on the life story of Helen Keelor.

Aamir’s repeated harping on the treatment of children within a single blog entry reinforces our suspicions that his intent is self serving.

Hopefully, we are wrong and will be happy if some reader tells us why?