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The countrys media has been charged with a somewhat improbable task by Amitabh Bachchan. The Bollywood superstar wants Indian newspapers and news channels to find the mangalik tree which Aishwarya Rai supposedly had to marry before doing the real thing with Abhishek Bachchan.

Issue number one, not surprisingly, was a tree that captured the nations imagination in the run-up to Bollywoods wedding number one. The media had repeatedly reported that Aishwarya had got hitched to a tree before her wedding with Abhishek to ward off the mangalik dosh that would supposedly bring doom on her new household. According to Amitabh, that was, well, only a story. Where is the tree? Please show it to me, he said. The only person shes married is my son. And adding with his famous deadpan deportment: Unless you think Abhishek is a tree.

The actor warmed to the topic and expressed amazement that the media had consistently carried such stories. I dont know what this mangalik-tangalik is. Our family is not like that and we have not even seen Aishwaryas janampatri, Big B declared.

Straight from a board meeting of his company ABCL, which is back in the black, Bachchan was in corporate mode with striped navy suit, blue silk tie and designer glasses. The actor was asked whether he was being overly defensive about media criticism, given that bad press is an inevitable part of celebrityhood and that he is no stranger to it. Bachchan has had a roller-coaster relationship with the presslong years of boycott followed by long years of palaver.

There was nothing new to this rough patch, Amitabh clarified, but what he was seeking was a sense of how the media-celebrity equation could be worked out to the benefit of both. Amitabh accepted that much of the bad blood over the marriage and the unseemly treatment of photographers could have been averted if the young couple had posed graciously for a few photo ops outside the house.

The wedding shindig over, harder issues were brought up: the land imbroglio and the alleged foreign exchange violation that became a court case on Thursday. Amitabh, however, refused to get drawn into either. The farmer issue was sub-judice and the media would get to know his side of the story as the case unfolded in court, he said. And he was yet to see the courts notice on the allegations of foreign exchange, he claimed. But I will follow the law of the land, my conscience and do what I think is morally right, Amitabh added.

Inevitably, questions about his friendships with the likes of Amar Singh came up. Again, he would not say much. Why should I discuss my personal friendship with you? How would you like it if someone asked you about one of your friends? he shot back when quizzed about his relationship with the Samajwadi Party politician.

Neither would Amitabh discuss the familys relations with Sonia Gandhi: These are private matters. Asked whether it was true that he was too stubborn to make that one call to Sonia Gandhi, which would have taken care of his problems with tax officials, he replied: I do not think so. The system is stronger than individuals. And death and I-T are things that stay with you as long as you live.

The one subject that kept cropping up during the three-hour marathon session was the wedding. Every day, some newspaper or channel says that this girl is a curse on her new family. How many clarifications do we issue? How many newspaper cuttings do we reply to? Amitabh asked, explaining why the family had not responded to date: Yeh sab badi tucchh baatein hai, badi chhoti baatein hai, socha dhyan nahin dena chahiye (These were very trivial issues which, we felt, should not be given importance). Repeatedly screening a baseless story, he said, was a sanctification of trivia and gave the example of how a visit to a temple in Benaras on the birth anniversary of his father, the late Harivanshrai Bachchan, was reported as an attempt to rid Aishwarya of her mangalik dosh.

The serious agenda did not come in the way of a few laughs. After the initial sobriety, when both parties had whiffed each other out, there was a relaxing of guard. The conversation veered to topics as diverse as British writer Jessica Hines recent book on him (dismissed out of hand), his alleged rivalry with Shah Rukh Khan (dismissed out of hand), and of course, the magical moment in his career when he hatched from a giant egg in a stovepipe and tails and warbled about the haemoglobin in the atmosphere. By this time the atmosphere in the room was quite sanguine.