30 years of Aamir Khan,Juhi Chawla and QSQT - Page 3

"It wasn't tough to fall in love with the way the story was written," muses Deohans, adding that he could sympathise with Raj. In fact, looking back, Deohans thinks of himself, a Hindu boy, dating a Parsi girl; of Mansoor with Tina, a Christian; and Aamir with Reena, a Hindu. All three of them could see themselves in Raj's position.

"I don't know how much it was for Mansoor or Aamir, but I was surely going through the same thing and there was also some angst in trying to balance career and personal life," says Deohans, who believes that what came on screen was truly from the heart.

Although Nasir sahab had worked out most of the premise as well as the characters in his first draft, it was Mansoor who interpreted the young lovers' mannerisms and helped define them. Most of the incidents surrounding Raj and Rashmi, and even the way the characters were interpreted, continue to look fresh even today as this was a departure from the usual manner in which protagonists were represented in Hindi cinema.

On the sets of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak.

Not having studied filmmaking in the traditional sense, Mansoor always relied on his ability to feel the motivation of his characters as a yardstick to gauge how good things were. "My filmmaking," says Mansoor, "doesn't have elaborate film language and I like to work on characters, retain their integrity and, if I can feel that, feel the story points, it's good enough."

Deohans recalls Mansoor saying, "Man, you institute guys," if he ever mentioned Akira Kurosawa or Federico Fellini during a shot, but still found him radical. "Mansoor is very modern in his outlook," insists Deohans and cites the disagreement between Mansoor and Nasir Husain over the sequence where Raj and Rashmi encounter Baba (Makarand Deshpande), as an example of Mansoor's attitude.

Originally, Mansoor had wanted Baba and his boys to walk away after bashing Raj, but Nasir sahab couldn't come around the "hero" being the way he was, although Mansoor's reasoning was based on the simple logic that if he were in Raj's place with his girlfriend in a similar situation, he would stay calm, as his taking on the opposition might worsen the situation. He had to give in to the framework of the mainstream romantic hero within which his "hero" had to exist. The scene was reshot.

Director Mansoor Khan explaining a scene to protagonists Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla.

However, in spite of the constraints of popular Hindi cinema, most things about Raj and Rashmi, and the core of the film, were credible. For their part, both Aamir and Juhi couldn't help but identify with their roles and even brought a bit of their own selves to the characters.

"Barring saying 'hum, hum', in my heart of hearts, I was a lot like Rashmi," says Chawla, who found Rashmi practically echoing her own conventional outlook. On the other hand, Aamir was able to mirror Raj thanks to his own real-life situation.

Unknown to anyone, Aamir had married his girlfriend, Reena Dutt, in April 1986, months before the film went on floor. Even during the initial portion of the shooting, no one knew he was already married.

Till he had left for the outdoor shoot, Aamir and Reena would spend the better part of the day together and, in the evenings, both would return to their respective parents' home. This arrangement would have continued a little longer had it not been for an incident that took place on the day the unit was to move to Bangalore for the Kolar Goldfields portion.

Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema; HarperCollins India; Rs 299.

There were reports of some local disturbance on the Ooty-Bangalore highway and the production manager, Dharamveer Verma, insisted that the entire unit went together once they packed up for the day. Aamir refused to leave Ooty till he got a call from Bombay. Reena had gone for a college picnic and, as she would return late, Aamir had asked a common friend to escort her home from the bus stop, and to call him at his hotel after she reached home.

With everyone ready to move, Aamir insisted on waiting for a phone call but couldn't come up with a reason to justify its importance. With each passing moment, everyone was getting restless to leave but Aamir simply refused to budge.

After waiting for over two hours for the call, a worried Aamir finally confided in Nuzhat, who took charge and kept everyone calm. By the time Aamir's friend called to inform Aamir that Reena's bus had broken down but that she was safely back home it was nine in the evening.

It was only then that a relieved unit and a finally smiling Aamir left Ooty. Till he confessed about Reena to Nuzhat, Aamir was almost living an aspect of Raj's life and was, therefore, able to essay the role with conviction.

Being one of the most popular singers, Alka Yagnik started her musical journey at a young age and has given voices in films of debutants who are now megastars. Sharing one such anecdote about superstar Aamir Khan's debut film was the singer.

Let us remind you that Alka Yagnik lent the voice for one of the biggest chartbusters Ghazab Ka Hai Din' from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak which marked the debut of Aamir Khan. When she visited the recording studio for the same, she spotted a young boy sitting in the gallery. After the recording started, the actor continued stare at Alka which made her uncomfortable. She eventually asked him to leave since she found it extremely distracting and disturbing.

However, soon she realized that he is the lead actor of the film when the director of the film Mansoor Khan introduced him. Talking about it during a recent TV show called My Life My Story, Alka added that every time she meets Aamir he continues to tease her about the incident when she threw him out of the room.

The quintessential game changer @aamir_khan completes 30 years in the film industry. Which movie of the actor did you enjoy the most? #30YearsOfAamir

Bollywood dreamboat: Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak makes Aamir Khan a teenage sensation

Aamir is one of them. He wears the same blue jeans, he listens to the same music, he even looks a bit like the yuppie American hero Michael J. Fox. He is a little bundle of energy but with a soft, dreamy look that makes you want to ruffle his hair. Aamir Khan is in fact the cute guy next door who gives a blushing 14-year-old schoolgirl her first kiss.

It is the same sort of magic that Rishi Kapoor - with his innocent smile - once worked in Bobby. Several young girls have seen Qayamat over 50 times. One sees the film every night on the video and each time Aamir appears, she murmurs, "Sona baba". In another girl's room, the Disney posters disappeared overnight and life-size ones of Aamir Khan came up instead. "He's so sweet," she giggles. "Just like a baby."

And recently, when he was staying in a Delhi hotel, two dozen schoolgirls, all dressed up in sarees, spent the entire day roaming the floors of the hotel hoping to catch him somewhere. "He looks gentle," says Aditya Bhattacharya who has directed him in Raakh. "He's the kind of guy you'd like to take home to mother."

Life hasn't been easy for Aamir after stardom. While trying to take an auto-rickshaw once, he got abducted by a earful of excited kids. Another time a young girl wrote him a love letter in blood which had him in complete panic. And one morning, 70 ticket stubs of Qayamat arrived from a fan in Vilaspur who had created a local record by seeing the film so often. "All this is very heady," says Aamir. "But I feel bad that I can no longer take my wife for a walk on the beach."

Qayamat's success has surprised everyone, most of all director Mansoor Khan, an MIT engineering student, who made the film for a lark. "Indians are used to loud, overdone things, "he says. "Here I was giving them a souffle." But the souffle rose and rose - and turned into the biggest hit of the year, slated to gross Rs 5 crore.

It is a sweet enough film about two young lovers caught between warring families. It has an elfin charm but put against classics like Devadas and Pyaasa, Qayamat would pale. Still, in times when there are no hits, Qayamat is a big one. Film director Shekhar Kapur analyses its success: "Every 10 years, the audience says, 'Hey, I've changed.' Aamir has swept a whole new generation, just the way Zeenat Aman once did."

In a way Qayamat has become a cult film, with kids having seen certain scenes over 100 times. Like the cutely passionate one in the woods where Aamir is alone with Juhi Chawla: he is desperately attracted to her and yet has to keep away from her. By the end, he says, "to hell with it" and kisses her. In that sense, Qayamat is a real film: the hero fights with six guys and gets beaten, he is dead scared of his father and lies to him. Aamir is awkward but it is an awkwardness that works. "What's so nice about him," says Gauri Patel, 19, from Bombay, "is that he is so ordinary, like us."

Aamir is in fact an ordinary boy who went to school in Bombay Scottish, became a state level tennis champ and fell in love with the girl next door. He used to play the drums once and wanted to form a band. He also did a small but powerful role - with his head shaved - in Ketan Mehta's Holi. One day his uncle Nasir Husain noticed him. "I wanted to do a love story," says Nasir. Qayamat's producer. "Aamir was sweet-looking and so I gave him a screen test."

Now Aamir is stunned by his success and doesn't quite know what to do with his fans, mostly giddy schoolgirls who get dumbstruck when they see him. His servants have become the star servants in the colony and keep bringing autograph books for 'Aamir baba' to sign. He lives in a simple, non-filmi house - where little girls keep peeping in through the windows. "They don't know what to say to me, they're embarrassed," he says blushing. "And I don't know what to do with them. I'm embarrassed."

What makes him tick? The film industry is crawling with young heroes, all melting into each other against a backdrop of leather, mobikes and discotheques. Against this, Aamir stands out as an innocent. He is just what everyone else is not: simply, a nice kind of a guy. Says Bhattacharya: "In this world that is getting increasingly dumb macho, you can look into Aamir's eyes and feel good. His success is one of goodness."

In Raakh, Aamir has to hold Supriya Pathak in an adult, intimate scene. Bhattacharya remembers how Aamir was all flushed and red in the face. "It was both, funny and sweet at the same time," he says. "It was a very innocent way of reacting to holding a woman." Innocence is especially sensual when everyone is trying to be Rambo.

Another thing Aamir manages to convey is love. "For the first time, after Bobby, I sensed real love in a film," says Kapur. Aamir is cast not from the fiery mould of Vinod Khanna and Dharmendra but made of a soft, romantic clay with a particularly appealing dimple in his cheek. However, for the older viewer who has grown up with Bachchan and Khanna, brand loyalties don't change so fast. Ultimately Aamir will have to prove that he can act as well.

His next film Raakh is a surrealist, unglamorous film, where he plays a young boy who turns into a killer after his girl-friend gets raped. He is also working in Shekhar Kapur's Time Machine, a snappy, fantasy film based on Back to the Future. (Aamir apparently burst Into tears when he got the role). "He's a fresh wave in the industry," says Dev Anand who is directing him in Awwal Number, a film on cricket.

"But it takes a lot of hits to dig yourself in the hearts of the people." Today Aamir's life is the stuff dreams are made of. The offers are rolling in, he commands an amazing Rs 10 lakh per film-and in a world where love dies fast, he is completely obsessed by his wife Reena, a simple girl in a salwar kameez and plait who used to live next door. Theirs in fact was a window-to-window romance and Aamir proposed to her the day he turned 21.

Reena works in a travel agency where she commutes by bus and has not let on that she is the wife of Aamir Khan. "It's her decision," he says admiringly. "But I'd prefer her to work. If she's not financially independent, then the relationship is a little unfair."

During Qouamat, Juhi Chawla remembers that he would write to her every day. One night, he called her from Ooty and she wasn't at home. He couldn't find her anywhere. Outside, the unit was waiting in cars to leave for Bangalore. But Aamir Khan wouldn't go. "He was so worried, he had tears in his eyes." says Juhi.

He is, as another actress admitted, irritatingly immune to other girls' charms. Reena, in fact, has a bit role in Qayamat. "She wore a red dress." says Aamir adding softly. "She looked lovely." The ultimate image of the couple is that of two kids caught in a formal cocktail party when they'd rather be playing "What's the Good Word?"

Aamir Khan is really just a kid at heart, longing for the days when he played cricket in the neighbourhood. juhi, who is co-starring with him in four films, says working with him was like doing a school play. During rainy evenings in Ooty, the crew would huddle in cars where Aamir would keep them entertained for hours with stories of old films. "He was so good, he could comfort a little child to sleep," says Juhi.

But Aamir is not in an enviable position today. That is the problem with such quick success. "People's expectations have risen so high, that no matter what I do they will be disappointed, "he says. In a sense all he has to do is continue playing what the film industry so obviously lacks today: simply, a nice guy.