Salim Khan with Bachchan and Dilip Kumar

A: Cinema mirrors society. The youth of 1970s were disillusioned with corruption, nepotism. Amitabh became the hero who took on the forces that polluted the system. Disenchanted with pervasive hopelessness, the masses identified with Amitabh’s characters--the common man who wanted to right the wrongs and didn’t mind if he broke a few rules in the process.

A: Before Zanjeer (1973), Amitabh had several flops and just two hits — Bombay To Goa and Anand. It was an era when films were made around stories of love and betrayal punctuated with melodrama and songs. Rajesh Khanna ruled. When we wrote Zanjeer, initially no one would touch it because it was so devoid of romance that the hero doesn’t hold the heroine’s hand even once. Dharmendra, Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raaj Kumar — they all refused, they found the plot dry and not much for themselves in it. Once Dilip saab told me that he regretted refusing three films—Pyaasa, Baiju Bawra and Zanjeer.

A: Amitabh was immensely talented and needed a breakthrough script. When we created the character of police inspector Vijay Khanna, it suited the lanky figure with a booming baritone. I remember telling producer-director Prakash Mehra during the first day first show that the film would create history.

We were watching the scene where Sher Khan (Pran) visits the inspector and tries to sit. Vijay fumes: “Jab tak baithne ko na kaha jaaye, sharafat se khade raho, yeh police station hai, tumhere baap ka ghar nahin.” 

Watching that scene, I told Prakash Mehra the film would be a hit. The intensity with which Amitabh delivered this line told us he had a lot of fire that needed to be tapped. We did it in subsequent films (Deewar, Trishul, Sholay...).

A: Amitabh was an untapped dynamo before we paired. He was educated and hugely talented but had not got the scripts to use his potential. Our scripts gave him ample opportunities.

A: Today writers don’t read. When I came from Indore (Akhtar came from Bhopal) to Bombay to become an actor, I soon realized that acting would not take me to the peak. I turned to scriptwriting. A public library in Mahim became my second home. I read books and watched films voraciously.