Amitabh Bachchan once recalled the generosity of ‘elegant, handsome’ superstar who took him to a disco: ‘I was smuggled…'

Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna were once onscreen rivals, even though they appeared in many films, such as Amar Akbar Anthony, Hera Pheri, Muqaddar Ka Sikander, and Parvarish. However, offscreen, the two silver screen legends shared a warm camaraderie. After Khanna breathed his last in 2017, the original ‘Don’ of Bollywood took to his blog to reminisce about their bond and talk about how their paths first crossed in the late 1960s and how Khanna, then a star, took him to a discotheque. According to the blog post, he and Khanna started their journey around roughly the same time, despite Khanna being four years younger.

Bachchan, who later became the top superstar of his time, and Khanna, who was more experienced in the industry even though he was four years younger than Bachchan, started their careers around the same time. Their careers eventually met, which led to several successful working together projects.

The first movie they worked on together was Reshma Aur Shera, and it was directed by Sunil Dutt. The project was especially important for Bachchan because it gave him an early look at how tough and hard to predict the Hindi film industry can be. Many years later, he still thought about those days with a lot of love and warmth.


Bachchan and Khanna later worked together in many well-known movies, such as Amar Akbar Anthony, Hera Pheri, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, and Parvarish. Their teamwork became well-known to viewers, and their different styles on screen made their joint projects really enjoyable to watch.

When He Was Taken To Disco

Bachchan recalled how he first saw Khanna at the Ajanta Arts office in Bandra in 1969. At that time, he was yet to make a mark as a leading man, and Khanna was already associated with Sunil Dutt’s film Man Ka Meet. Bachchan described Khanna as “A most good-looking, handsome young man .. a body in an elegant frame .. a swagger in his walk .. and a gentle smile as he looked towards me..” The duo met again on the sets of Reshma Aur Shera and became closer.

Bachchan also fondly remembered Khanna’s generosity. By then, Khanna had become a major star, yet Bachchan remembered him as exceptionally modest and considerate toward others.

Khanna would take Bachchan for drives in his luxurious golden-hued Volkswagen Beetle. One particularly memorable gesture involved Khanna helping Bachchan enter an elite disco club at the Taj, where Khanna was a member, and Bachchan was not considered being high enough in status to gain entry.

"He's a big star... but always most humble with selfless concern for others .. the rides he would take me on, in his recently acquired yellow Beetle Volkswagen, yellow in colour... his generosity in smuggling me into the only disco club in the city at the Taj, where he was a member, and I not even remotely in any state to become one..” he recalled.

While Amitabh was taken to an elite disco club sometimes in the 1970s, in the 1980s, he appeared in several disco-themed songs in several iconic films such as Yaarana (Sara Zamana Haseeno Ka Diwana), Khud Dar (Disco 82), Inquilaab (Disco 84), Kaalia and Ganga Jamuna Saraswathi. Although Mithun Chakraborty popularised disco tracks and dance numbers through the 1982 blockbuster Disco Dancer, it has to be noted that Big B had some iconic disco dance numbers under his belt - Sara Zamana Haseeno Ka Diwana and Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai, a year before that.