Mahesh Bhatt directed Shah Rukh Khan twice, first in Chaahat in 1996 and then in Duplicate in 1988.
Neither was a success.
Speaking on Chaahat which completes 29 today Mahesh Bhatt says. “I’ve made innumerable films. Some of them were terrible. But even when I was in a creative slump, I just couldn’t stop. I had moved away from alcoholism and become a workaholic. Work had become a painkiller, and I was spreading myself thin at that place. Sometimes you produce a dud. But that’s part of the process. I was going through an emotional wasteland where everything I touched turned into dust. Chahat belongs to that phase. I think it shows. The film was a financially mediocre success because of the star power of Shahrukh Khan. But there’s no denying that I was creatively spent.”
Bhatt Saab’s takeaway from the experience? “There are many films in my career that didn’t turn out the way I had intended to. And I learned from each one of them. Even when the critics tore them apart, every project, good or bad, is part of you. You can’t just embrace your hurrah and say no to the bricks that are being rightly hurled at you. That’s a part of evolution. Swinging to the other polarity is where the journey of life apparently concludes. Chahat has one gift: Shahrukh Khan. Irrespective of the box office outcome, he did not show the kind of contempt that stars normally show to their directors when they don’t deliver a box office winner. He saw in me the possibilities of what I still had. He saw beyond the role of a filmmaker and saw something which only he could see. That makes him what he is: a king of a man, a large heart. A man to embraces and laugh at failures exactly the way he celebrates success.
He adds, “Chaahat was made for my brother Robin Bhatt, my half-brother. Everybody did their best but the mediocrity at the box office, the lukewarm performance, should be attributed to me, and only me. That’s what Chaahat is for me. It had some great music from Anu Malik. Ramya Krishna, Pooja Bhatt and Naseeruddin Shah were outstanding. Anupam Kher, my friend, did his best. I failed them.”
