MUMBAI MEIN EK AUR BADI HASTI JO PATRKAARON KO INTERVIEW BILKUL NAHI DETA

It was in the 80s when a boy who must have been hardly out of school walked around the streets of Juhu all alone with a sling bag around his neck and his young eyes fixed on no destination or goal - ALI PETER JOHN

Sometimes he looked at the road and sometimes at the sky and rarely looked at the people around him .

I used to often follow him while on my way to my office which was also the office of my guru, K.A.Abbas .

It was only after months of following him that I discovered that he was Aditya Chopra , the eldest son of Yash Chopra who had his bungalow somewhere near the house of Amitabh Bachchan and closer to the bungalow of Dharmendra.

My curiosity in knowing more about him kept growing , but I had to wait for my opportunity for a very long time.

I had joined 'Screen' and one of the first best things that happened to me was that I came to know Mr. Yash Chopra, the renowned director who I first met in his small office at the Raj Kamal's Studios which was gifted to him by the well known filmmaker, Dr. V. Shantaram and later at his Vikas Park office which was his own first office from where he launched some of his most successful films.

It was in this office that I had a meeting with Yash Chopra almost every week and he told me interesting stories about his career , the films he made and his relationships with people.

I normally kept my tuesday mornings free for him and it had become my regular schedule to visit him on tuesday mornings and then spend the rest of tuesday afternoon with Dev Anand.

It was while I was sitting with Yash Chopra on one tuesday morning that I suddenly saw that boy Aditya Chopra looking into Yash Chopra's room and then running up to another floor.

I asked Yash ji as I called him who that boy was and he said," Aditya hai, mera bada ladka hai, filmon ka deewana hai, har friday ko chaar nayi filmein dekhta hai, har film dekhta hai, koi bhi film dekhta hai, Dara Singh ki film ho, Raj Kapoor ki film ho, Dev Anand ki film ho ya Dilip Kumar ki film ho".

But Yash ji told me that his son had still not told him whether he wanted to take to making films as a career .

And Yash ji told me that the most difficult thing was that, "Adi didn't talk to anyone about what he had in mind and ran away miles from any kind of journalist".

However Adi kept assisting his father on the quiet on many of his films but still didn't tell his father about whether he wanted to direct his own films someday.

But one morning when I was sitting with Yash ji the otherwise shy and silent Adi barged into Yash Ji's cabin and placed a file before him and told him that it was the script of his first film which he wanted him to produce.

Yash ji looked baffled and Adi walked out of the cabin. A few days later , Adi came back to his father's cabin and asked him what he thought about his script and his father told him, " Agar tune script likhi hai toh achi hi hogi , mujhe kyun padhna hai? Meri Company teri hai, tujhe poori support karegi, tu film bana jaise tujhe banaani hai".

That film Adi made was DDLJ which is still running at Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai even after twenty five years.

That film made Adi a super director, it made Shahrukh Khan a mega star and created the kind of box office history no other film not even Mughal-e-Azam has created.

Incidentally Karan Johar , the son of Yash Johar who is the cousin of Yash Chopra and a leading producer was the associate producer of Adi and played a parallel role in DDLJ from where Shahrukh recognized his talent to direct and recommended him to his father and he made Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and another grand career began.

Adi however continued to be the shy and silent man and it must be said that he created some kind of a record that he never gave a single interview to any journalist anywhere in the world ever since his film was released.

It was another tuesday morning and I was as usual sitting with Yash ji when Adi who was now a major celebrity came into Yash Ji's cabin and gave him another file.

Yash ji felt it was another script, but it was another story altogether. Adi showed his father a dream. It was a plan to build a Studio somewhere in Andheri which he told his father would be the kind of studio that was not there anywhere in India.

He further told his father that he would now not have to go to any other Studio to work on any of his films for his banner because he had planned to build a massive Studio under which every possible facility would be found to take in a script and bring out a film.

It was another moment a father must have cherished in his mind, but the grateful son had one more surprise for his father.

He showed him the total collections of DDLJ till then and Yash ji closed his eyes in disbelief and Adi went away to his office.

When Yash ji opened his eyes and saw me as the only person in his office he said," Itne paise toh maine poori zindagi kaam karke bhi nahi dekhe.

Maine toh socha tha ki yeh ladka aise hi koi chote mote filmein banaega , lekin yeh toh ek hi film bana ke mere se aage nikal gaya aur naa jaane aage kahaan tak jaaega."

It was the Screen awards and Vijay Anand wa the Chairman of the jury. The entire industry was sure that the DDLJ would sweep all the awards but when Vijay Anand saw the film with his team of the jury, he asked the jury to give him one day before passing any judgement on the film.

The next evening, he brought a video of hollywood film titled 'Love on the Orient Express' and screened it for the jury and the jury saw the film with rapt attention and at the end of the screening the jury clapped not for the film but for Vijay Anand's sense of honesty and sincerity towards his job as the Chairman of the jury.

The jury unanimously disqualified DDLJ and Yash Chopra who was one of the best friends of Vijay Anand was never the same man again.

Adi Chopra had not married for a long time and finally had an arranged marriage with Payal who was a renowned architect and it was Payal who planned most of the building of Yash Raj studios and especially the office of Yash ji on the fourth floor.

Yash ji was very fond of Payal and was extremely heartbroken when the Adi and Payal marriage broke up.

Adi has now taken over from his father and has faced some of the most tough times, especially during the Nepotism war and the onslaughts launched by Kangana Ranaut and others like her.

He has also faced huge financial losses because of the pandemic and the lockdown and the recent problems over Shahrukh Khan and the halting of the expensive shooting of Pathan.

We hope that his new film Bunty aur Babli 2 brings in some light at Yash Raj Studios where there has been so much of darkness for such a long time for no fault of Aditya Chopra, the mind behind the Company.

Yash Raj Films had planned a regular line-up of releases and was so confident that it had even announced the release dates of the new films all through 2021 - 22

WILL THE BLESSINGS OF YASH CHOPRA AND THE COMING IN OF ADIRA CHOPRA THE DAUGHTER OF ADITYA AND RANI BRING IN THE GRACE AND LIGHT OF SUCCESS WHICH YRF NEEDS , ESPECIALLY AT THIS CRITICAL JUNCTURE OF THE PRESTIGIOUS COMPANY?