As Vishesh Films completes three decades on April 2, its lodestar, Mahesh Bhatt, talks about its latest offering and six intensely personal dramas that are cherished memories today
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 1, 2017)


BEGUM JAAN (2017)

This Partition drama is a new spring for Vishesh Films. After a few flops, a gloom had descended over the establishment which had the infrastructure and access to money, but the core from where my films had come had withered. That’s when I accidentally stumbled on this Bengali film, Rajkahini, whose director, Srijit Mukherji, was suggested to me by my writer Suhrita Sengupta.

I’d liked his work and when invited to see the film at a preview theatre, I dragged my reluctant brother, Mukesh Bhatt, along. I was devastated by it. The film shook me, my body and soul. I came out of the screening, hugged Srijit tightly and said, “As long as there are storytellers and filmmakers like you, the moral compass of the nation is intact.” In that embrace was born the narrative of Begum Jaan.

When Mukesh saw how overwhelmed I was by the film, he decided to remake it in Hindi. With all his caution and worldly wiseness, Mukesh Bhatt has taken many risks based on my gut instincts. He’s as much a gambler as me, without whom we would not have come this far.


ZAKHM (1998)

So many painful memories because this film was semiautobiographical, based on my proud origin of having a Hindu father, a Muslim mother and a Christian schooling. It was my last directorial and because it dealt with communal politics and the carnage post ’92-’93, my mother was concerned believing that by taking up for secular values, I’d upset the ultra right-wing forces. She died after the first schedule and I had to unmask her Muslim identity which she had hidden behind a sari, tika and mangalsutra when she was alive and had to tell the family that her last wish was to be buried.

She went into the grave as Shirin Mohammad Ali as she didn’t have her husband’s name attached to her. It was graceful of the man in charge of the burial ground in Byculla to let me perform the last rites after learning that I was a Hindu by the name of Mahesh Bhatt. When I stepped into the grave and turned her face towards Kaba, it was the most intimate time I spent with my mother who was no more. That became the defining image planted in the climax which touched the nation’s consciousness.


SADAK (1991)

I remember an enchanting night in Mysore’s Brindavan Gardens where we were shooting Nadeem-Shravan’s romantic track, “Tumhe Apna Banaane Ki Kasam” with a young Pooja Bhatt and the new star Sanjay Dutt. In between shots, I would be listening to a commentary on the Gulf War. Sanjay wondered why I was interested in something happening in Iraq. We had to finish the shoot before dawn becauses it was an expensive location but even though we stretched ourselves, one shot remained. I resigned myself to completing it elsewhere but Sanjay protested, saying, “We have to shoot it here.”

I told him it was impossible to carry the equipment to a distant location before daybreak. “I’ll do it,” he said, and lugging one of the huge archlights, turned to the lightboys and commanded, “Follow me.” They did and we got the shot before the sun came up.


DADDY (1989)

Not for nothing was I labelled the “autobiographical” filmmaker. I went through the attics of my life and shamelessly pulled out stuff others shudder to reveal to the world, including my battle with the bottle, to launch my 16-year-old daughter Pooja Bhatt as an actress in Daddy. It’s a film about an alcoholic struggling to reform for his daughter, part fiction-part real.

My wife Soni Razdan is away in Hong Kong with our newborn child and Pooja was staying with me in Juhu during the shoot. Every night she would rehearse her lines for the next day, perform them for me, then go to bed. One night, after she and the rest of the world had fallen asleep, I had a sudden craving to go to a bar and have a drink.

‘Who would know’, I asked myself. My wife was away and my daughter, asleep. A voice replied from deep within, “You can con the world, you can con your child, but how can you con yourself Mahesh Bhatt? You would know.”

I didn’t have that drink and it was a turning point for me in my struggle with alcoholism. The next morning, I rewrote the climax with Anupam Kher who played the alcoholic, being offered a drink by the baddie before going on stage and tossing the whiskey and the temptation away. What happened in life was transported to the movies. Celluoid has been my intimate diary and I’ve let the world into that space because there’s nothing to hide.


NAAM (1986)

After the critically acclaimed Saaransh and Arth, this was my first money-spinner. It enjoyed a golden jubilee run and brought back Sanjay Dutt after a string of disasters. It also put the spotlight back on Salim Khan after a split with his scriptwriter partner Javed Akhtar.

I have to thank Kumar Gaurav for making Naam possible for us. When I narrated the idea to his producer-father, Rajendra Kumar admitted it was good but then apprehensively turned to his son and pointed out that Sanjay Dutt’s role in this two-hero film was more powerful. “Why not do a film with you at the heart of it?” he suggested.

Without blinking an eye Kumar Gaurav replied, “If we’re going to make this movie, it has to be on this story.” Seeing his conviction his father agreed but ironically, Rajendra Kumar’s fears are confirmed because despite Kumar Gaurav’s brilliant performance, Naam is Sanjay’s show.


ARTH (1982)

The film was done and was the talk of the town. But there were no takers. The end —Shabana Azmi’s character Pooja choosing not to return to her philandering husband or jump into the arms of her lover who promises her the moon but opting to live alone as a single mother to her maid’s daughter—was too bold and unconventional for our Hindi film industry.

There was another problem. My narrative stood on the shoulders of two brilliant actresses, Shabana and Smita Patil, but the latter had moved out of the art house circuit into Bollywood’s A-list. She was convinced I’d been grossly unfair to her character, Kavita, pruning some of her best scenes to make her look like a lesser actress to build up Shabana. An uncomfortable silence stretched between us which I didn’t know how to bridge.

One day, I ran into her at Parkview Hotel. I’d gone to drop off playwright Vijay Tendulkar whom she’d come to meet. The staircase was too narrow to avoid a collision. She tried to walk away but I wouldn’t let her. “Smita, you can’t do this to me. You can accuse me of being a less talented director who could not do justice to your part, but to accuse me of being partial is unfair and you know it,” I entreated, looking into her eyes.

“How can you do this to me? Now I can’t even be angry with you. You’ve taken away all my anger,” she wailed. She went on to watch the film and liked it. And our almost-sour relationship had a happy ending.

SAARANSH (1984)

On the first day of the new year, when my colleagues, after a night of indulgence were still recovering from the hangover, I was at Mehboob Studio with my actors and technicians, and the entire Barjatya family, gearing up to take the first shot of my new film. I shouted, “Action” and in the foreground a telephone began to ring. A grainy image of Anupam Kher as BV Pradhan, a retired school teacher of 70, walked into the frame to pick up the receiver. A disembodied voice — mine — informed him that his only son was dead after being mugged while returning from an Independence Day celebration in New York. The shot was okayed in one take but instead of the usual claps and smiles I could see that my producers were uncomfortable.

Rajkumar Barjatya, speaking for his family, asked me respectfully if it was the right shot for the mahurat given that we were announcing an end. I pointed out that the essence of Saaransh was coming to terms with the finality of death and debunking the popular notion of immortality. With my words their concerns melted away as the true meaning of Saaransh asserted itself with the first shot.