**TORONTO - Amitabh, Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan may not be household names in Canada, but in India their lives are obsessively followed - ranking up there with the fascination with Brad and Angelina in the West. **
**And for at least some Canadians, money is no object when it comes to seeing the Bachchans live on stage. **
**Along with stars including Preity Zinta and Ritiesh Deshmukh, the Bachchans are part of “The Unforgettable Tour,” a million-dollar Bollywood stage production - that’s the budget per show - which is preparing to launch its 40-date world tour in Toronto on Friday. **
**The show is billed as a “best of” Indian cinema - known for its elaborate costume and musical numbers - with 70 songs from different films reproduced on stage. **
**Bollywood patriarch Amitabh Bachchan, who at 66 has more than 150 films to his credit, said the fact his luggage got lost en route to Toronto is now huge news back home. **
**“It’s on national news in India because I mentioned it in my blog,” Bachchan said Thursday at a news conference in Toronto, which was packed with members of ethnic press outlets as well all the major dailies and broadcasters. **
**“Just before coming here we were delayed because I had to answer about 15 media questions on what the nature of my baggage was, and whether I was going to sue British Airways, and that I really should come on to the phone and talk to the media in India on national television.” **
**He said the fact that Bollywood’s hot, young power couple - his son Abhishek and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan - are part of the tour persuaded him to take on the ambitious project. **
**“I’m 66 now and it looks a bit ridiculous for me to be wanting to come on stage again, but I think the enthusiasm of the entire team and the fact that we’re about to bring out our Indian entertainment to foreign shows has inspired me and provoked me to come up here again,” he said. **
**“It feels good to be able to bring an entertainment quality that matches with anything else in the rest of the world and do it for basically an expatriate audience that misses this kind of entertainment.” **
**Abhishek Bachchan said Toronto was chosen to kick off the tour because he was always overwhelmed by the reaction he has received in Canada. He said he was amazed when fans stood in the cold for hours on a previous visit just to see him and his wife, and on Wednesday fans were waiting at the airport when they touched down in Toronto. **
**“We made the promise that we would kick off the tour in Toronto because it’s a city which is very close to our heart and we’re very happy that that worked out,” he said. **
**“(It’s) the city that has always given us a lot of love and affection.” **
**Fans in Toronto have eagerly parted with as much as $300 to get a highly coveted ticket, which may seem like a bargain compared to ticket prices as high as $750 in Atlantic City, N.J. **
**When a reporter questioned the high prices and dubbed the show the “Unaffordable Tour” he was drowned out by heckling fans who were allowed to sit in the audience during the press conference. **
**“I don’t price the tickets - the promoters and the organizers of the show, they price them,” the elder Bachchan said. **
**The tour will touch six continents with stops in the likes of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Rotterdam and Trinidad. Vancouver is the only other Canadian city on the tour. **
**Zinta - who stars in Deepa Mehta’s new film “Heaven on Earth” which will be screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival - said she believes the tour is just the start of the Bollywood industry expanding around the world. **
**“I think the sky’s the limit. There was a time when there were very few shows, only Indians would watch our films,” she said. **
**“Today our films are being screened all across the world. It’s not just people from India originally who are watching these films, it’s people from everywhere all across the globe that are now watching our films.” **
**Both Abhishek Bachchan and wife Aishwarya Rai Bachchan said they weren’t using the tour as a way to raise their profile in North America and do a Hollywood movie. **
**“If the script or the character appeals to you and the film inspires you to be part of it, then you be part of it,” Abhishek Bachchan said in an interview. “But there’s no concerted effort to try to break into another industry.” **
so who is going???
