Bollywood Star Aishwarya Rai Discharged from Virus Ward

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
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Bollywood Star Aishwarya Rai Discharged from Virus Ward

Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)
Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. (AFP)

Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and her daughter have been discharged from a Mumbai hospital where they were being treated for coronavirus, her actor husband Abhishek Bachchan said Monday.

The pair were admitted to hospital a week ago, several days after Abhishek and his superstar father Amitabh Bachchan, making the family the highest-profile people to contract the virus in India, which has recorded more than 1.4 million cases.

"Aishwarya and Aaradhya have thankfully tested negative and have been discharged from the hospital. They will now be at home," her husband tweeted, thanking fans for "continued prayers and good wishes".

"My father and I remain in hospital under the care of the medical staff," he added.

The actress and her eight-year-old daughter Aaradhya were initially quarantining at home before being moved to the same hospital where her 77-year-old father-in-law and his son are being treated for the illness.

She won the Miss World crown in 1994 and has since become one of the most famous faces in Bollywood and a regular on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.

The elder Bachchan and 44-year-old Abhishek are both in the hospital's isolation ward.

No health update has been issued since they were admitted more than two weeks ago but Amitabh, an avid social media user, has been dispensing regular messages to his millions of fans on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

A blog entry posted on Saturday touched on the mental trauma and stigma suffered by coronavirus patients, referring to "the stark reality that the COVID patient, put in hospitalized isolation, never gets to see another human".

Recovered patients "are afraid to be in public for fear or apprehension of being treated differently .. treated as one that has carried the disease .. a pariah syndrome .. driving them into deeper depression", he wrote.

The elder Bachchan, idolized in India and affectionately known as "Big B", has worked for more than half a century in the film industry.

He was voted "actor of the millennium" in a BBC online poll in 1999 and became the first Indian actor to be showcased at London's Madame Tussauds waxworks museum.

Mumbai, India's financial and film capital, has now recorded over 100,000 cases, with more than 6,000 deaths attributed to the virus.



George Harrison's Early Beatles Guitar Could Fetch $800,000 at Auction

George Harrison (R) jokes with Rolling Stones' Ron Wood during a tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York in this October 16, 1992 REUTERS/Jeff Christensen JC/MMR/AA/File Photo
George Harrison (R) jokes with Rolling Stones' Ron Wood during a tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York in this October 16, 1992 REUTERS/Jeff Christensen JC/MMR/AA/File Photo
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George Harrison's Early Beatles Guitar Could Fetch $800,000 at Auction

George Harrison (R) jokes with Rolling Stones' Ron Wood during a tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York in this October 16, 1992 REUTERS/Jeff Christensen JC/MMR/AA/File Photo
George Harrison (R) jokes with Rolling Stones' Ron Wood during a tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York in this October 16, 1992 REUTERS/Jeff Christensen JC/MMR/AA/File Photo

An electric guitar played by the late guitarist George Harrison in the early days of the Beatles will go up for sale at an auction next month where it could be sold for more than $800,000.
Bought from a music store in the band's birth city of Liverpool, Harrison played the Futurama guitar in the early 1960s when the band performed at the Cavern Club, toured Germany and made their first official records for Polydor.
The auctioneers say the Futurama guitar, with its sunburst finish, was one of his most played. They call it "one of the holy grails of historic Beatles guitars" and said it is expected to exceed its estimate price tag of $600,000-$800,000.
Harrison said the guitar was "very difficult" to play but he liked what he called its "futuristic" look.
"It had a great sound," he later told a journalist.
In 1964, he donated the instrument to a rock magazine as a competition prize, but it remained with the publication's editor when the winner opted for a cash prize instead of owning a piece of rock and roll history.
The guitar will be on display at The Beatles Story in Liverpool for the next fortnight before being shown at other museums across Europe. It is due to be auctioned from Nov. 20-22 in the United States.