786, thus has been used in a number of Bollywood films as the call-sign for the leading men of the respective movies... One of the first I remember is in Yash Chopra's "Deewar" (1975), wherein Amitabh Bachchan, in one of his iconic roles as the 'angry young man' wears the Billa no. 786 on his arm as a license to unload goods at the docks... A fellow worker (Rahim kaka a.k.a. Yunus Parvez) explains the significance of the number to Amitabh in one of the first scens on the docks...
In 1983, Amitabh used the number again in his role as Iqbal Khan, in 'Coolie'... Once again, his Billa no. is 786 as a Coolie in a Mumbai train station...
Amitabh has said that he finds the number 'auspiscious' for him since Deewar was one of the huge hits that catapulted him into superstardom and also because he survived a near fatal accident during the shooting of Coolie...
In later years, Mithun-da starred in a movie called 'Billa No. 786', but I confess I only just found out about this while Googling the words right now...
The most recent recurrence however is again attributed to Yash Chopra in Veer Zaara for Shahrukh Khan's character, Veer Pratap Singh.... "Kaidi no. saat sau chhayaasi... allah ka nek banda"... There was even an entire poem starting with the line "Main, kadi no. 786....." that SRK narrated about his experience in prison in the movie ... Skeptics may point out that this was another way in which SRK tried to one-up the Big B, but I don't think that's ever been the case ... Anyhow, who am I to argue on this...
As I wind up the post, I must give credit to SET Max which prompted the idea in my mind as Deewar was airing today.... I started Googling on the roots, and voila.... you have your dose of bollywood gyaan....
Until next time.... cheerio !
