43 SAALO KE BAAD MUKTA ARTS KA NAYA DAUR EK BAAR PHIR NAYE ANDAAZ MEIN... By Ali Peter John

Sometimes one man's achievements can put all the power that be like God, destiny, luck and other power which they say decide the destiny of man - Ali Peter John

There must be some confusion and even a conflict between them on taking credit for a man's success. Or is it the man's will power and determination to make the impossible possible ?

Subhash Ghai was a young man who came to the FTII from Delhi with the ambition to make it as an actor.

He was one of the bright students of his batch and one of the major achievements was his writing a kind of thesis on Devdas, the most popular and powerful film of Dilip Kumar.

Like many other students in FTII , he too landed in the city of dreams and was successful in finding some brief roles and finally made it as a hero but none of the nine films, he had worked in were successful and he decided to give up, but before taking the drastic step, he took to writing scripts.

One of his scripts was liked by N.N. Sippy who asked him to direct his own script and the result was his doing two films for Sippy, "Kalicharan" and "Vishwanath", both of them with Shatrughan Sinha, his best friend at the FTII and Reena Roy who were supposed to be having another affair but the reality was that the two films were huge hits and Subhash Ghai was established as a director.

He directed other big films for well known producers and among them were "Krodhi" for Ranjeet Virk the brother in law of Dharmendra, "Vidhata" for Gulshan Rai and "Meri Jung'" again for N.N Sippy.

He had now grown very successful and decided to found his own production company and launched his own banner Mukta arts named after his beautiful wife Mukta, whose original name was Rehana which she had changed to Mukta.

It was a grand new beginning on October 24th 1978, which also happen to be his Birthday.

It is staggering to know the kind of work he has done in the last forty one years. He started with "Hero" and then went on to make one film bigger than the other like "karz" , " Ram Lakhan" " Saudagar" , "Khalnayak", " Pardes" , "Taal"," Trimurti", "Yaadein", "Kisna", "Yuvraj" ,"Aitraz" ,"Iqbal" "Jogger Park" , "Apna Sapna Money", Kanchi and so on .

He started with a very small staff which consisted of very experienced Sudesh Gupta as the General Manager, Shaumik Majumdar as his Chartered accountant, his brother Ashok Ghai as his right hand man and Tolu Bajaj who was not only a friend, but the distributor of all his films for the Nizam territory and he had his wife, Mukta as his pillar of support.

He had a team of writer's which included the "hit maker " Sachin bhaumick and Ram Kelkar and was later joined by Kamlesh Pandey.

They had a special working place to themselves. Incidentally, my daughter, Swati Ali also worked with these writers for a while.

He had a permanent team of lyricist and music directors in Anand Bakshi and Laxmikant Pyarelal but he also mad changes when he had other lyricist and A.R Rahman to score music for his films.

He played a very vital role in the grooming of young stars like Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan and Vivek Oberoi. He did two films with his idol, Dilip Kumar, Karma and Saudagar.

He was the first to cast Dilip Kumar and Raj Kumar in Saudagar after they had worked in Paigam. Thirty years before Saudagar.

Among the young actresses he groomed Madhuri Dixit ,Meenakshi Seshadri, Mahima Chaudhary and Manisha Koirala.

Among the senior actors he worked with were Pran, Shammi Kapoor, Prem Nath, Simi Grewal, Durga khote and Amrish Puri.

Subhash Ghai

He had only one choreographer who had been working with him since the beginning of Mukta Arts, Saroj Khan and among the cinematographer who have worked with him are Kamlakar Rao,Pramod Mittal and late Ashok Mehta.

It was sometime in 2000, that some of his films didn't do well. He could have used the opportunity to spend all the money, Mukta Arts had made to invest in some business , but his mind worked in entirely different direction.

He decided to start an Acting school in some of his best friends and advisors asked him not to take the risk, but he went ahead and got land in the vicinity of film City and then began the shaping of his most ambitious dream,Whistling Woods International.

Which is now considered one of the top ten acting schools in the world. He had a bad time for nine years when the land on which Whistling Woods was built got into litigation and the government of Maharashtra threatened to demolish his dream.

He fought in all kinds of courts for over nine years till he saw his dream safe. This was also the time when the corporates had started taking interest in making films and he was against the way they were going around throwing money and buying stars and entire film only on the strength of their money.

He vowed that he would not make films under conditions decided by other and so he concentrated on his new role as the founder of the WWI , with his daughter, Meghna Ghai Puri as the president.

Mukta Arts is now run by Rahul Puri, the husband of Meghna and the support of Ghai's brother in law, Raju Farooqui and Parvez Farooqui and some of his own associates.

The most recent development in his career in his taking interest in having digital theatre all over the country and releasing some of his old films in them and the response has inspired him to think of other ways of making a bigger and better contribution to Indian Cinema.

His family life has been a very smooth story with Mukta looking after all matters related to family matters. They have besides Meghna, a daughter called Muskaan.

It is not that Subhash Ghai has not faced controversies in his life and career, but he has mastered the art of overcoming them.

The latest is his being involved in the metoo scandal , but he was the first to get out of it as the woman who had charged him with the offence withdrew her complaint.

The man who once was determined to be an actor is now an educationist who is invited by institutions, colleges , universities and even by religious and government organisations to speak about the contributions made by Indian Cinema.

What I find as some kind of a surprise is the showman slowly but surely taking his role as a modern day Bhakt of Osho.

He keeps talking and writing about Osho and when I read what he writes , I on the places of the reality I have seen with men like Vijay Anand , Mahesh Bhatt , Vinod Khanna and Kamlesh Pandey among many others and how they escaped from what Vijay Anand called the clutches of a fraud godman .

I don't want to hurt the new found belief of the showman, but on the occasion of the 43rd Anniversary of Mukta Arts I as his follower in terms of his career and a man would not like to see him go waivered and will not like to see him disillusioned like all the previous followers of Osho.

Keep going, Showman , keep well and do well because I still see so much of hope in you.