Later, Abhishek and wife Aishwarya Rai joined Amitabh when a book on Harivansh Rai Bachchan by family friend and writer Pushpa Bharati was released.

Amitabh, who read quite a few passages from his father's most famous work Madhushala, recalled some people asking the senior Rai how he could write on drinking and the world of intoxication when he (the poet) was a himself a teetotaler.

The senior Bachchan would then talk about how the Kayastha community is known for their drinking. "Seventy five percent of my blood has alcohol in it," he would say, adding that he was afraid to touch alcohol.

"That is the reason I don't drink," Amitabh said laughing. "And I have asked Abhishek not to." (Some accounts have it that in his later years, he drank a little and that too occasionally)

The actor, who received an honorary doctorate from a British university, said that the doctorate his father earned was the real thing!

In between the course work at Cambridge, Dr Bachchan, religiously wrote diaries and observations that were used later in his four-volume autobiography.

The poems Amitabh chose to read ranged from satirical ones (one was called Snakes of India) to instructional.

Amitabh often paused between the passages and offered a summary. Much of the reading was done without looking at the text. At one time when he faltered for a second, he looked at the audience with a wan smile, saying in Hindi: "My Hindi is not as good as you think."