Contemplating a future in crime — to be more specific, smuggling — Vijay, an Angry Young Man character played by Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar (1975), sips slowly from a green bottle of whiskey. To anyone acquainted with popular Hindi cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, the bottle is too familiar: VAT 69. The brand was almost synonymous with Bollywood baddies. Bachchan’s character in Don, an underworld boss, finds comfort in the amber liquid. It is almost as if the villainy of the characters in these two films — as well as those played by Pran, Prem Chopra or Ajit —
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