Amit Malhotra recites one of his Urdu poems at a college/university where he meets fellow student Pooja, and they fall in love. But Pooja's parents arrange for her to marry an architect, Vijay Khanna. A heartbroken Amit returns home and joins his father's business – a construction company – and later marries Anjali, who secretly has a daughter named Pinky from a pre-marital relationship. Amit and Anjali have a daughter, Sweetie. In the meantime, Pinky is adopted by childless couple Dr. and Mrs. R.P. Kapoor. Spanning over to the next generation, Pooja and Vijay have a son, Vikram, also known as "Vicky", who falls in love with Pinky while they are at a party, and the two plan to get married. When Pinky learns of her adoption and the identity of her real mother, she tries to get close to Anjali. While Anjali eventually acknowledges her existence and secretly showers her love on her reunited daughter, she does not reveal the relationship to her husband, fearing for her marriage. The situation is further complicated by Vicky's attempts to stay close to Pinky and Sweetie's romantic interest in Vicky. This sets in motion a chain of events that unites old flames as friends.
The film's concept came to Yash Chopra while he was reading a poem by his longtime friend Sahir Ludhianvi. 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. 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 Deewaar and Zanjeer. The film had been written with Raakhee in mind, and she had agreed to do it during the making of but before production started she married lyricist Gulzar, who wanted her to retire from acting. However, after some persuasion from Yash Chopra, Gulzar let her do the film.
The soundtrack includes the following tracks, composed by Khayyam, and with lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi, both of whom won the Filmfare Award for the year. The Kabhi Kabhie Mere Dil Mein duet version, with Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar, topped the year end Annual list 1976 of Radio Ceylonradio show, Binaca Geetmala. The soundtrack was listed by Planet Bollywood as number 7 on their list of100 Greatest Bollywood Soundtracks. Rakesh Budhu of Planet Bollywood gave 9.5 stars stating, "Kabhi Kabhie will remain an ode to brilliant melody".
