Jaya Bachchan was certain that her husband, Amitabh Bachchan, wouldn’t tolerate director Vidhu Vinod Chopra for even a week when he left for the shoot of Eklavya: The Royal Guard. The filmmaker was surprised to see Bachchan traveling light, and when he asked Big B why he didn’t have more luggage with him, the actor said, “Jaya told me that I wouldn’t be able to stand you for more than a week.” Her prediction came true, and Chopra confessed in an interview with Siddharth Kannan that they ended up having arguments shortly afterwards.
“We actually started fighting after a week or 10 days. But he stayed on, and completed the film. I gifted him a car worth Rs 4.5 crore because he tolerated me. It was really humbling for a star of his stature to have to tolerate me, it was big of him,” he said. In a previous interview from 2021, Chopra had recalled the story of presenting Bachchan with the car, and his mother’s reaction to the grand gesture.
“I will never forget this incident. I took my mother with me when I was gifting the car to Amitabh. She handed him the keys. She came back, sat in my car, which was a blue Maruti van. She called Big B ‘Lamboo.’ I didn’t have a driver at the time, so I was driving. She told me, ‘Tu Lamboo nu gaadi dedi?‘ I said, ‘Haan.’ She replied, ‘Tu khud kyun nahi leta gaadi? I told her I would buy a car; when it was time. She responded, saying, ’11 lakh ki toh hogi.’ And I laughed because she didn’t know that it was Rs 4.5 crore. I told her the cost, and she slapped me, calling me ‘bewakoof.’ I will never forget that, because what is money if it can’t give you joy,” he said.
Eklavya wasn’t a major hit, but the period drama was selected as India’s official entry to the Academy Awards. Chopra’s last film was 12th Fail, which became a sleeper hit on the strength of solid word-of-mouth. He has also directed the films Parinda, 1942: A Love Story, and Shikara. But his biggest success stories are Munna Bhai MBBS, PK, and 3 Idiots, all of which were directed by Rajkumar Hirani.
