Saira Banu recalls ‘Hera Pheri’ days; reveals her favourite scene with Big B, Vinod Khanna

Mumbai, Oct 1 Taking a stroll down memory lane, veteran actress Saira Banu on Sunday reminisced about the 1976 masala movie ‘Hera Pheri’, which has recently marked 47 years of its release, and shared her favorite scene from the flick.

Directed by Prakash Mehra, the movie stars Saira as Kiran, Amitabh Bachchan as Vijay, and Vinod Khanna as Ajay. It also features Asrani, P Jayaraj, Mac Mohan, and Urmila Bhatt in pivotal roles.

Saira, who is an avid social media user, took to Instagram and shared a black-and-white still from the movie. She also attached two video clips from the movie.

Recalling the joyful ‘Hera Pheri’ days with Big B and Vinod Khanna, Saira wrote: “It was a very happy and enjoyable time to have done “HERA PHERI”. Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna played crafty tricksters in the movie and I played a cunning female swindler.”

“Director Prakash Mehra let the three of us have a free hand at all the outrageously funny scenes. I had already done a lot of work with Vinod in films such as ‘PURAB AUR PASCHIM’, ‘AAROP’, and ‘NEHLE PE DEHLA’ and with Amitabh in ‘ZAMEER’,” she said.

She further said: “We had a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere and the Three of us would work at suggestions and improvisations to make the scenes riotously funny especially in the scenes where Vinod is constantly trying to tone down Amitabh from being overly romantic to the heroine.”

“My own favorite scene is where I am rattling off in Marathi and Vinod is trying to curb Amitabh’s zealous attempts to sit next to me. Please see and enjoy these scenes,” added Saira.

Fans wrote in the comment section: “How beautiful you were and are”, “Your acting in funny scenes is wonderful, how effortlessly you do scenes from ‘Hera Pheri’ and ‘Padosan’, “memorable”.

This is one of six films that Vinod and Amitabh Bachchan starred together in. The plot revolves around Vijay and Ajay, two small-time crooks, who loot other rich ‘respected’ but criminal-minded people for a living.

The movie was also an inspiration for the 1978 Telugu movie ‘Rama Krishnulu’. The film’s music is by Kalyanji Anandji and the lyrics were by Anjaan, Indeevar.