When Amitabh Bachchan recalled Rajesh Khanna's last words before death, ‘Time ho gaya hai, pack up...’

When Amitabh Bachchan recalled Rajesh Khanna's last words before death, ‘Time ho gaya hai, pack up...’

• Amitabh Bachchan shared memories of Rajesh Khanna after his passing in 2012
• Rajesh Khanna's final words were "Time ho gaya hai, pack up"
• Big B recalled how Anand and Khanna's stardom shaped his own film journey

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A day after the passing away of India’s first superstar Rajesh Khanna, Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan poured his grief into words on his personal blog, sharing a memory that felt both intimate and haunting.

A close associate of Rajesh Khanna had called him, his voice choked with emotion, to relay the superstar’s final words. “Time ho gaya hai, pack up,” Rajesh Khanna reportedly said, moments before breathing his last on July 18, 2012.

For Big B, the line felt uncannily familiar. It echoed not just the end of a life, but a shared cinematic history that had once blurred the line between reel and real.

In his blog, Amitabh Bachchan went back to the very beginning, recalling the first time he ever saw Rajesh Khanna.

Rajesh Khanna had just won the Filmfare–Madhuri Talent Contest, a moment that marked the arrival of Indian cinema’s first true superstar. Amitabh Bachchan revealed that he had applied for the same contest the following year, only to be rejected. Fate, it seemed, was already sketching two very different paths.

Their next encounter came not on a set, but in a theatre. Watching Rajesh Khanna’s Aradhana at Delhi’s Rivoli Theatre, Amitabh Bachchan was struck by what he witnessed. “The packed audience and their reactions to this young handsome man were overwhelming,” he wrote. The frenzy was unlike anything he had seen before.

At the time, Big B had left a steady job in Calcutta to chase an uncertain future in films. Seeing Rajesh Khanna’s stardom up close filled him with doubt. “But one look at Rajesh Khanna made me realise that with people like him around, there would be little chance of opportunity for me, in this new profession!” he confessed with striking honesty.

Then came 1971, and with it Anand. The film brought them together and quietly changed Amitabh Bachchan’s standing in the industry. “It was like a miracle, god’s own blessing,” he recalled, adding that simply being associated with Rajesh Khanna elevated his own importance. “And I basked in its wake.”

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Decades later, Rajesh Khanna’s real-life farewell seemed to mirror Anand’s most famous moment.

In the film, the eternally cheerful Anand tells his friend, “Babumoshai, zindagi aur maut upar wale ke haath hain…,” accepting life and death with grace.

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Forty years on, as Rajesh Khanna battled cancer in the last days of his life, that same indomitable spirit remained. Even days before his death, he stepped onto his balcony to wave at fans, flashing a victory sign despite visible frailty.

Amitabh Bachchan remembered him as a “simple and quiet man,” yet one surrounded by a frenzy few could command. “In his boyish simplicity, there was something regal in his demeanor,” he wrote, recalling fans who travelled from as far as Spain just to catch a glimpse of him.

Rajesh Khanna passed away at his home, Aashirwad, a day after being discharged from Lilavati Hospital. It was, as his final words suggested, time to pack up. And in those words, Amitabh Bachchan found not just an ending, but the quiet symmetry of a life lived larger than cinema.