‘How many directors will there be in this film?’: Dharmesh Darshan recalls telling Aamir Khan, ‘You will not interfere’

He said that Aamir’s core audience was still in the metropolitan cities back then, and that he reminded Aamir that as Nasir Hussain’s nephew, he had ‘no business ignoring’ the masses. “But I asked him one thing, and I give him credit for answering me. I can be very soft, but also very forthright. I asked him, ‘Aamir, how many directors will be there in this film?’ He looked at me. I told him, ‘People say (certain things), and I’m concerned, but I know people don’t always say the right things, everyone has their own experience’. He said, ‘Of course, Dharmesh, there will be only one director’.”

Aamir told him that he believed a filmmaker’s instinct is of utmost importance, and should be preserved, but he also asked Dharmesh if he’d allow him to ‘participate’ in the creative process. Dharmesh said that he was more than willing. “But you will not interfere,” he told Aamir. “I’ll take the heroine I want to take, I’ll take the song I want to take, I’ll take Archana Puran Singh, I’ll shoot the kissing scene I want to shoot.”

He said that the ‘kissing sequence’ was presented to both Aamir and Karisma in the form of a shot list, and that Karisma’s mother, Babita, was present on all three days on set, while the sequence was being shot. He also confirmed that Aamir accompanied him to a screening of Raja Hindustani arranged for members of the CBFC. He felt that it could soften them up in case they were thinking of being too harsh on the film, since they were all expecting pushback on the kissing scene.

Asked what contributions Aamir ended up making to the film after assuring him that there would only be ‘one director’, Dharmesh said, “He contributed by supporting me so much on all my vulnerabilities. I had this big hit film behind me, and I was very young. I was 28 when Raja Hindustani was released. I was working with a very big actor, and I had supposedly taken a non-actor opposite him. (Karisma) wasn’t Juhi or Madhuri…”

Raja Hindustani emerged as a hit, but the director-star duo couldn’t repeat the magic with Mela, which Dharmesh said he didn’t want to do at all. He said that Aamir was more concerned with resurrecting his brother Faisal Khan’s career, and that he found his commitment lacking on the project, which remains the most-derided film of Aamir’s career.