Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has now started writing his highly popular blog in English and Hindi. The change came after his hospitalisation for abdominal pain.

Big B had stayed a week in Mumbai's posh Leelavati Hospital by the Mahim bay to get the recurring pain examined and treated.

Convent-educated Bachchan, who is known for speaking chaste Hindi and with proper diction, otherwise is not known for writing in his mother tongue, Hindi, with equal felicity.

Whatever major writing he has done so far is all in English.

Big B's father, poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, played with Hindi words all his life and he himself made a career out of Hindi language Bollywood movies, but never in the past has he given a hint of affection towards his mother tongue more than necessary, at least in public.

So, what prompted the most creative of the present Bollywood actors to write his immensely popular blog in Hindi after his hospitalisation instead of English in which he till then was writing it?

Did he ruminate too much over the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray's broadside against Jaya Bachchan's impromptu comment, "Hum to UP-wale hai, hame Hindi mein hi bolna chhahiye, " made during her speech at the music release function of "Drona" in Mumbai early last month, to make him turn to Hindi with a vengeance?

When a reader of his blog made his displeasure known to the actor and urged him to revert to writing it in English, Big B in his characteristic matter-of-fact way wrote in his next blog last Saturday that nobody on earth could stop him from writing or speaking in Hindi.

And, he made it sound a tad too provincial, as if in a subdued retort to the MNS' odious provincialism.

Anyway, quite unintentionally, perhaps, Big B is now writing his blog both in Hindi and English.

Bachchan had to apologise last month after Raj Thackeray threatened to stall the release of "The Last Lear" in the wake of alleged anti-Marathi comments of Jaya Bachchan.