Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan have done a lot of two-hero movies in the 70s and 80s – right from ‘Kabhie Kabhie‘ to ‘Trishul’, ‘Deewar‘, ‘Silsila‘ and more. They were a hit pair when it came to heroes. No wonder, they also shared a great bond with one another. It’s Shashi’s birth anniversary today. Here’s recalling the time when the actor had once got a scene of Amitabh Bachchan deleted from his film, just because he thought that Bachchan was made for bigger things.
This incident was shared by Amitabh Bachchan on his blog in December 2017 when Shashi passed away. Bachchan dedicated his blog post to the late actor and recalled, “Ismail Merchant the producer of the film called us one fine day and said there some small parts which we could do and that he would pay us Rs 50 for it. I needed the money so desperately to feed myself, I readily agreed.”
Big B had agreed to be a junior artiste in a scene which was about Shashi’s death and he was one of the many people to carry his body for cremation. “I was asked to be among those that formed the pall bearers along with several other junior artists in the sequence, to carry the body,” he said.
Further he added, “Shashi ji was not at the shoot, obviously, but dropped by later at the location. When he saw what we had been asked to do, he walked up to me in the crowd of mourners where I was standing as a junior artist, or the ‘extra’ and asked me to move. ‘Don’t do these bit parts’ he advised, ‘you are made for better things’; and then spoke to the director to delete those portions of mine from the film.”
Once, even Shashi had spoken about this in an interview with Lata Khubchandani, “He once came on the sets of my film Bombay Talkies made by Ismail Merchant. I asked him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said he had to say this line and he would get Rs 50 for it. I said, ‘Don’t be silly. I am not going to allow you to do this. You are destined for better things.’ He didn’t like it. He wasn’t too happy to lose out on the money.”
