Looking back at Amitabh Bachchan-Jaya Bachchan's 50 years of togetherness

As Hindi cinema’s most high-profile couple (with due respects to Dharmendra-Hema Malini) celebrates its 50th wedding anniversary, someone close to the family suggested a big bash. “Pachaas saal aur ho jaane do, tab dekhenge (let fifty more years of marriage pass, then we will see),” Amitabh Bachchan deadpanned.
No doubt even fifty years hence Jaya would still be lording over the Bachchan household. Not that she admits to being the core of the Bachchan family. “The home is run by our very efficient, loyal and diligent staff. Some of them have been with us for decades,” Jaya Bachchan says in that dismissive tone that she has about all her achievements, her stunning career included.
The truth is, the Bachchan home Jalsa would fall apart if it were not for the matriarch. “Maa is the driving force of the family. We don’t discuss our careers with her. But for everything else, all of us go to her,” says Abhishek Bachchan.
Recently when Jayaji decided to bring in her birthday with friends abroad, Amitabh Bachchan protested saying he was recovering from an injury. The matriarch left for her celebratory vacation arguing firmly that there is sufficient care for her husband in her absence.
Never a walkover nor a martyr, Jayaji knows when and where to draw the line between her domestic responsibilities and her own happiness independent of the family.
Forever practical, even the Jaya-Amitabh wedding happened for very practical reasons. The couple who were seeing each other for some years, had decided they would go on a holiday together if Prakash Mehra’s Zanjeer in 1973 was a hit. Zanjeer became a blockbuster and the couple was all set to take off on their promised holiday together.
There was only one hitch: Amitabh Bachchan’s parents wouldn’t let their son and future daughter-in-law take off without getting married. Technically the two made their relationship legal only for that holiday together.
At the time when they tied the knot, Jaya was the biggest female star of Hindi cinema. Many think she sacrificed her career to be Mrs Amitabh Bachchan. But she insists this narrative about her absence from screen is fallacious. “Aisa kuch nahin hai. When we got married one of us had to be home for the children. I volunteered to do the needful,” she had said.
As a screen pair, Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan were last seen together in Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham in 2001, not counting the couple’s guest appearance in R Balki’s Ki Aur Kaa. In 2012, Shoojit Sircar planned a film entitled Garden House with the golden couple. It never took off. Now Karan Johar plans to cast the Abhimaan pair together again. Fingers crossed.