Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; February 4, 2020)

Mahesh Bhatt created a flutter in December when he announced his foray into digital entertainment with a web series that revolved around the relationship between a struggling filmmaker and a top female actor of the '70s. It didn't take long for fans to speculate that the show's premise was inspired by Bhatt's real-life relationship with the late Parveen Babi. Now, mid-day has learnt that the noted director has zeroed in on the cast for the drama that will mark the advent of Jio Studios in the web world — while Tahir Raj Bhasin will play the upcoming filmmaker, South sensation Amala Paul will essay the role of the superstar.

A source reveals, "The show will mark the Hindi debut of Amala Paul, who has been picking up the language over the past three months. Bhatt saab loved Tahir's act in Chhichhore [2019]. Amrita Puri too is part of the cast."

Ready to take on the new role of a showrunner at 71, Bhatt says, "I trust the magic of a new beginning in the digital world. Our first web show goes on floors with Amala, Tahir and Amrita, and our talented director Pushpdeep Bhardwaj."

Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 19, 2018)

Actor Purab Kohli and longtime girlfriend, yoga instructor Lucy Payton, exchanged vows by the pool, under a Frangipani tree of a heritage bungalow dating back to 1804 in North Goa last weekend. The hush-hush wedding was attended only by family and a few close friends. Among the guests were Purab’s co-stars from his debut TV show, Hip Hip Hurray, Rushad Rana and Shabbir Ahluwalia who was accompanied by wife Kanchi Kaul.

Also spotted was Amrita Puri, Purab’s co-star and on-screen wife from his latest TV show, the Nikkhil Advani directed, P.O.W.: Bandi Yuddh Ke. For the sangeet, Lucy opted for a bright pink sari, while Purab wore a blue suit. The wedding was a mix of traditional Punjabi meets contemporary, with the groom in a sherwani and pagri and the bride in a traditional red lehenga.

After the couple exchanged vows, the band played Punjabi folk and electronica tunes. The couple also had a white wedding-theme party with the actor dashing in a tuxedo and his better half in a gown. Purab told Mirror on Sunday, “The wedding was a two-day affair, we always wanted to keep it private. Both Lucy and I knew that we would get married a long time ago and only wanted blessings from people who love us. We were fortunate to get the blessing of a friend who does some spiritual work with us. That was perhaps the most special moment from our wedding.”

The couple is now planning a honeymoon but is yet to decide where to take off. “We’ve been busy organizing the wedding and inviting people from all over the world that we have not given this much thought. We will be leaving for a vacation in the first week of March and now just need to fix the location,” he said. The couple has been in a live-in relationship for a while. Speaking to Mirror earlier (December 5, 2015) Purab had said, “ We will get married when the time is right and our little angel at the altar with us.” Their daughter Inaya was born in 2016.

The couple reportedly had a court marriage in 2016 but wanted to have a proper celebration in the presence of loved ones. In April 2016, the 38-year-old actor had bought his dream holiday home in Goa, revealing that ever since his father, Harsh Kohli, filmed Love in Goa there, in 1981, summer vacations were usually spent on the beach. Purab first purchased a small apartment in Candolim in 2001 before moving to a nicer flat in Arpora. The bungalow was the perfect getaway.

Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 10, 2016)

Nikkhil Advani's finite TV series is an adaptation of the Israeli drama Hatufim which inspired the American hit, Homeland
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 7, 2016)

Back in 2007, one of the tracks of Nikkhil Advani's romantic anthology, Salaam-e-Ishq, was the love story of Ashutosh Raina (John Abraham) and Tehzeeb Hussain (Vidya Balan) who overcome religious differences to tie the knot. But soon after, Tehzeeb, a TV reporter, is involved in a train accident and loses her memory. She forgets her husband but he can't forget her. And their life together hits a pause...

Nikkhil reveals that this story is rooted in the reality of a wife who believes her husband died in an air crash despite the assurance of a Japanese tourist sitting besides him on the plane that he'd got them both out of the wreckage, alive. After a long search which doesn't even yield a corpse, she performed his last rites...

Ten years later, their daughter is married, she is in a relationship and suddenly, someone from Kerala sends her a wallet a man left behind. "She knows instantly that it belongs to her husband and is still waiting for him to return, unable to bring a closure to this chapter which was left dangling in mid-sentence," informs the director who is halfway through a 126-episode finite series, P.O.W.: Bandi Yuddh Ke, which airs from October for five months on Star Plus six days a week and deals with the same emotions of separation, loss, confusion, secrets and angst.

Featuring Purab Kohli, Sandhya Mridul, Satyadeep Misra, Amrita Puri and Manish Chaudhari, the family drama traces the journey of two Indian prisoners of war (P.O.W.s), Sartaj and Imaan, who're rescued from the Indo-Pak border after they escape from a Pakistani jail. Missing in action after the 1999 Kargil War, the two war heroes return home after 17 years to an interrupted family life. "One of the wives is set to marry his brother and doesn't know how to tell him she's moved on, knowing that only the desire to return to her kept him alive all these years. So she creates a surreal world for him and immerses herself in it, waiting for the right moment to break the news without breaking him," reveals Nikkhil.

The series explores the reintegration of the duo into a society which had revered them as national icons but has now begun to question their patriotism...To partners who've waited or moved and children who've grown up without them... To a world that has changed so much in the last 17 years that one of the men can't find the water dispenser in the refrigerator till it's pointed out to him. It also deals with trauma and its after effects stemming from years of imprisonment in enemy country.

"Three years ago, after seeing my film, D-Day, the channel approached me to direct a show on he same lines. We tossed around a few ideas before they told me about Hatufim (Prisoners of War), an Israeli TV drama which had been acquired by 20th Century Fox and adapted into the acclaimed series Homeland," says Nikkhil.

He wasn't interested in an Indianised adaption of Homeland as our desi CID is still going strong but Hatufim with its fictionlised reality and emotional turbulence appealed to him. He realised it would be difficult to condense it into a two-hour movie but it could be capsulated into 22-minute episodes and stretched over five months. So Nikkhil who began his career assisting Kundan Shah and Saeed Mirza on Nukkad, gave the nod to the official adaptation of Hatufim and returned to TV.

High on the success of the evacuation drama, Airlift, he admits that P.O.W. was as big a challenge as any film as he has to keep the audience hooked through six days and also ensure that the last episode is as riveting as the first. He has already shot 61 episodes, and the biggest high was when Israeli producer-director-writer Gideon Raff, creator of the original show and Homeland, watched the pilot of his series and moved, wrote him a letter.

"It is so sensitive, so suspenseful, I thought your choices were brilliant, I found myself with tears in my eyes many many times," Gideon wrote, thanking him for being respectful to the source material while making it your own and expressed a desire to meet him.

They have yet to meet but skype once a week and Nikkhil even got Gideon to reveal what he had in mind for the third season of Hatufim so he could end his own series on a similar note as he has no intention of carrying it forward. "It's so radical that I knew I could not bring it to Indian television even though the channel has given me a lot of leeway. So Gideon and I have worked out a more suitable, yet outof-the-box end for P.O.W. in India," he smiles, admitting that midway through his TV journey he's happy and content with the series he is directing with three others.

So, what went wrong with his last two directorials, Katti Batti and Hero? "I was dishonest," he admits candidly, insisting he's been completely honest with P.O.W.. "I grew up on BR Chopra's Mahabharat. My grandmother would make us bathe and sit down in front of the TV every Sunday for our epic viewing," he reminisces. "Ramesh Sippy's post-Partition drama, Buniyaad, was another favourite for the way it integrated history and fiction. I want to bring that era of TV viewing back with P.O.W.."

Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 18, 2016)

Neha Maheshwri Bhagat (BOMBAY TIMES; December 17, 2015)

Neha Maheshwri Bhagat (BOMBAY TIMES; April 19, 2015)