As the nation comes alive today with celebrations of Dahi Handi 2025, with human pyramids, matkis, and festive cheer filling the air, it’s the perfect time to revisit a memorable Bollywood moment forever tied to this tradition. Long before Govindas became a staple of Janmashtami visuals, megastar Amitabh Bachchan immortalized the festive spirit on screen with the chartbuster song “Mach Gaya Shor” from his 1982 hit Khud-Daar.
What makes this song even more iconic is not just its enduring popularity but the fact that Bachchan was left badly injured during its shoot. In a blog post years later, the superstar recalled how the Dahi Handi sequence turned unexpectedly dangerous.
Big B wrote, “The handi is generally broken by the hand of the climber that reaches the top, but the dance director wanted to add a bit of bravado to my character and instructed that I smash it with my head! Urged and egged on by all those participating I went ahead and in the most dramatic fashion smashed my head against the matki, succeeding in breaking it with all its contents, the milk and curds, flowing out amidst great applause by the unit when… along with the white liquid splashed all over my face, assistants noticed a sharp trace of red!! I had smashed my head too. My forehead had split open and blood was oozing out from a large gash on my forehead!”
The incident left everyone on set shocked. But instead of halting the shoot for medical attention, Bachchan decided otherwise. “Stunned, everyone decided to wrap the shoot and wanted to rush me to hospital. I asked them to stay. Got into my car and drove off to Dr ‘Quick Fix’ Shah, the industry’s family doctor and asked him to repair me. He stitched me up in his clinic rapidly, taped me and I got back to the studio and resumed shooting. Greater applause.”
His determination didn’t stop there. At the time, Bachchan was working in double shifts — Khud-Daar during the morning, and Manmohan Desai’s Desh Premee in the afternoon. Despite his injury, he managed to continue filming for the latter. “Luckily I was in disguise as the son for the song – a black man. I was being painted dark all over, so I told makeup to cover the white tape with the paint, pulled the curly haired wig over the stitches and went ahead… If you will notice in the film I have quite deliberately pulled the wig a little more than necessary over my forehead, to conceal the stitches! God! I love this profession!!”
On this Dahi Handi 2025, as the echoes of “Mach Gaya Shor” once again ring out in celebration, it’s worth remembering that behind the festive energy of that song lies a true story of grit and passion — a reminder of why Amitabh Bachchan is, and will always remain, the legend of Indian cinema.
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