K Asif halted shoot of Mughal-E-Azam for three days as he wanted pond with ‘ittar’ for Madhubala, recalls Karan Johar

K Asif's Mughal-e-Azam is considered as one of the finest Indian films of all time. It took him 16 years to complete the film.

Mughal-E-Azam was released in 1960. (Photo: Express Archive)

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Filmmaker Karan Johar has a lot of information about everything that was happening on the film sets back in the 1960s and 1970s, courtesy, his late father Yash Johar. He recently revealed that his father was present on the sets of various films, including K Asif’s monumental film Mughal-E-Azam (1960). The senior Johar told his son about one of the days when Mughal-E-Azam was being shot and suddenly K Asif announced pack-up and didn’t resume shooting for the next three days.

During an interaction with Film Companion, KJo said, “My father was on the sets of Mughal-E-Azam. I have voluminous information of the things that were happening on the set at that time, the dynamic between actor and director, actress and director.”

He added, “My father told me about a moment how K Asif announced pack-up because they didn’t have real ‘ittar’ and he wanted real ‘ittar’ in the pond so that Madhubala could give up that close-up as a result of that whiff that she would get. She had to give that whiff to give that beauteous expression.”

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Karan shared that though the production team had filled the pond with water “like anybody would do”, K Asif was not happy and didn’t agree to shoot until ‘ittar’ was arranged. “It’s a production requirement, you can’t fill in a pond full of real ittar. They said they would take three days to fill it with ‘ittar’. He packed up and didn’t shoot for three days until that pond was full of ‘ittar’,” Karan shared.

K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam is considered as one of the best Indian films of all time. The timeless love story of Salim-Anarkali and the tale of a son rebelling against his emperor father Akbar continues to be a representative of Indian cinema internationally. It starred Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala in the lead roles.

K Asif started the process of making this film in 1944 and took 16 years to complete it.

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