This was Yash Chopra's second directorial film with Shashi Kapoor and Bachchan in the lead roles after Deewaar (1975), and was particularly noted for its soundtrack compositions by Khayyam.

Amit Malhotra (Amitabh Bachchan), a budding poet, recites his poetry at his college campus in Kashmir, where he meets fellow student, Pooja (Raakhee Gulzar), and they fall in love.

While the couple is blessed with a son, Vikram, also known as Vicky, a heartbroken Amit gives up poetry and takes over the quarry company of his elderly father (Iftekhar).

20 years later, spanning over to the next generation, Pooja is shown to have become the host of a television show, where she surprisingly introduces Amit as a famous poet to the audience.

A shattered Pinky severs ties with Dr. Kapoor and Shobha and decides to track down her biological single mother and investigate the truth about her birth and abandonment.

Pinky's search takes her to Kashmir and is finally able to meet with her mother, Anjali (Waheeda Rehman), who, as fate would have it, turns out to be none other than the wife of Amit.

The situation further backfires when Sweety falls in love with Vicky, due to which Anjali and Amit decide to arrange their marriage.

At home, after a drink, Vijay tells Amit that a man degrades himself by thinking about the past affairs of a woman who gave birth to his children and spent 20 years of her life with him.

After the near-death experience, Amit realises his mistake and that he loves Pinky, and rushes back home to stop Anjali from leaving him.

The movie was shot in Kashmir, and Yash Chopra has claimed this to be one of his happiest experiences and he described the production as a "honeymoon", since the entire cast worked together as a family.

[4] The film also led to the reinvention of Amitabh Bachchan as a romantic poet who loses his love, which was a major departure from his earlier "angry-young-man" roles such as Zanjeer (1973), Sholay (1975) and Deewaar (1975).

The film had been written with Raakhee in mind, and she had agreed to do it during the making of Daag: A Poem of Love (1973) but before production started she married lyricist Gulzar, who wanted her to retire from acting.