When Mahesh Bhatt Showed The First Signs Of Selling His Soul

Ali Peter John

I knew I had a heart but I felt I had a heart when I heard the sound of it breaking when my first love failed and knocked me out of life .I didn't believe in my having a soul till I turned into an alcoholic and after getting drunk one evening walked towards a church , walked in after seventeen years and fell on my knees and asked god for forgiveness .I have been constantly seeing men and women selling their souls (I think the soul is only another name for a conscience ) their souls for a few rupees , for some comforts and luxuries which they don't realise are all very temporary , here today ,gone tomorrow and ultimately all that matters is how good or bad you have been in this life which can never come back again . And if there is one place where the conscience of  humanity being is always at stake , it is This world of films where I have had the good (and sometimes bad ) fortune of spending allmost all my life , but have absolutely no regrets .....

Mahesh Bhatt had made a place for himself as a director with films like "Arth"and "Saaransh". How I wish I could have seen the artistic and realistic director to make many more films like these !

 But , there was the demon of materialistic success lurking around in every corner where he was .

It was while he was battling with this demon that his younger brother Mukesh Bhatt who had been a secretary of stars like Vinod Khanna , Smita Patil and Deepti Naval , was having a meeting with Gulshan Kumar , the founder and owner of Super Cassettes who was interested in making films with known directors with stories revolving around the music he had in what  was called his bank of music . He told Mukesh Bhatt to tell Mukesh that he would never make money if he continued to make his kind of films . He told Mukesh that he would give him ten songs from his bank and he would have to make a film with those songs for which he would be paid ten lakhs of rupees as his fees, an amount the Bhatt brothers had not dreamt of .

Mukesh was more of a businessman than an artist or anything close to what was artistic had a meeting with Mahesh and told him about the plan Gulshan Kumar had for him . The demon had suddenly held the neck of Mahesh and he agreed to make a film according to the needs of the music baron .

The result was "Aashiqui" , a film which has recently completed thirty years of its making . It was a film way away from the earlier film of Mahesh . It was a normal Hindi film about the finding , losing and finding of young love with all the ten songs  Gulshan Kumar wanted to be incorporated into it , with all the songs written by Sameer and tuned by Nadeem-Shravan .

It introduced a new team of actress Rahul Roy, an actor who had not faced the camera before and Anu Agrawal an international model who happened to be in Bombay during those days . The film was a runaway hit and the music is still popular after so many years and so many changes in the trends of Hindi film music . Rahul Roy and Anu formed a team after the success of the film , they were first teamed in a commercial film ,"Gajab Tamaasha "the first film of the veteran actor Ranjeet as a director . Anu even went on to play leading roles in Rakesh Roshans "King Uncle" in which she was to be teamed with Amitabh , but had to be satisfied with Jackie Shroff as a replacement for Amitabh .

The film also had a new actor , Shahrukh Khan and Nagma . It however failed to make any impact and the last time Anu was seen was in Saawan Kumar's "Khalnayika " in which she played a negative role and when this film too flopped Anu decided to call it quits and left the industry . She travelled the world and met with a ghastly accident which completely deformed her face and she came back to Bombay almost like a stranger and wrote a great book about her many experiences and tilted it

"Anusual "which created ripples in some places and storms in other places . She now runs her own Anu Agrawal Foundation and works for the upliftment of the mentally challenged and for the development of Yoga .....

The success of "Aashiqui" took charge of Mahesh Bhatt and he continued making films like "Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahi" ,  "Hum Hai Rahi Pyaar Ke", both with Aamir Khan , "Sir ," with Nasserrudin Shah ,"Naazaayaz" , with Ajay Devgan and "Zakhm"also with Ajay , "Naam", the one sensible film he directed during this second and commercially successful season of his career . The other films he directed were "Sadak-2"and some other films which I seriously don't remember because I think they are not worth remembering . He directed one sensitive TV film called "Swayam"with Waheeda Rehman (there was a time when Mahesh was such a rage that even legends like Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand wanted to work with him ) The last film he wrote was "Hamaari Adhuri Kahani " made with Vidya Balan and then he made one more dramatic statement in which he said, "no more direction and no more drinking for me "

He could keep to his decision for some time but certainly not for all time . He decided to come back with "Sadak-2" which was destined to be a doomed film with Sanjay Dutt , both his daughters , Pooja and Alia and a new actor Aditya Roy Kapoor for the role for which Sushant Singh Rajput was approached and had turned down and that was what has perhaps been one of the prime reasons for all the mess and misery this industry is wallowing in today . The film was to be released on an OTT platform on August 28 , but the reaction to the trailer was so hostile that the film has faded into the background ....

Is all this some kind of a divine or otherwise justice for Mahesh Bhatt for selling his soul ?