'Even today, though my hair looks different, people recognise me wherever I go. They come up and say 'Aap Maine Pyar Kiya mein thi, na?' I think it's going to follow me to the grave.'
Today's Hindi film mothers are younger, trendier, more mischievous. But, truth be told, says Dinesh Raheja, I still do miss sometimes the comforting presence of the trad mother.
'K Asifsaab was very definite that 'woh Hindustan ka honewala Badshah hai -- woh gana nahin gayega.'
'Alaya has kept her career disconnected from me in every way.' 'She wanted to achieve success by herself without any help or interference.'
'I didn't like doing jhatak-mataks. I would subconsciously start feeling, 'Oh my God, my makeup man and my driver will be watching this.''
'Shreya (Ghoshal) ma'am said she hasn't heard a voice like mine before, and added that even in the future, there won't be another voice like mine.'
'Dharmendra, Shashi Kapoor and I were inseparable while we struggled together.' 'When a disillusioned Dharmendra was packing his bags to return home, I prevailed upon him to give himself two months.' 'Five days later, he was signed for Shola Aur Shabnam and I signed Picnic.'
Dinesh Raheja looks back at Manoj Kumar's brilliant 1964 thriller Woh Kaun Thi, and explains just what made it an audio-visual treat.
Shaheed was Manoj Kumar's first patriotic success. This small-budget black-and-white film had enormous impact, besides laying the foundation for Manoj's famous flag-waving Mr Bharat image that was strengthened by a string of subsequent films like Upkar, Purab Aur Paschim and Kranti.
'My mom had told me a great deal about Meena Kumari and how she could make a tear drop at the right moment. A legend who was in total control. But when I finally met her, I saw a frail, shrivelled and petite woman -- just a bag of bones. Very tiny. She was dying.'
The Bachchan family have this knack of going out of their way to make you feel extremely comfortable.
'Reena stayed in the next building. We fell in love but had to meet secretly because her parents didn't approve of me.' 'I would always be afraid that her parents would get her married off to somebody else.'
Somehow no producer found the right project that would justify casting these two selective stars with each other.
'If I'm playing Shah Rukh Khan's role, then of course, I would have loved to do it.'
These six male megastars have formed popular pairs with two starkly different leading ladies. Dinesh Raheja compares and contrasts the chemistry between the onscreen couples, and asks you, dear reader, to vote for your favourite jodi.
'At the age of 68, I am in the best phase of my life.' 'What I have left of my life, I want to live with dignity.'
'Everything in life is about timing.' 'I came to films when the disco craze had started.' Everything just fell into place: The shorts, the slimness, the songs, and my combination with Usha Uthup and Bappi Lahiri.'
'Being signed on as the leading man of Hero came to me like a bolt out of the blue.'
'I stood in the line for potty. So there was no extraordinary feeling that I had become a hero.'
Though Zanjeer is credited as Amitabh's breakthrough film, it didn't immediately enthrone him. Rajesh Khanna countered with a huge hit in Daag that year. But Deewar upended audience's cinematic taste and filmland hierarchies at the very start of 1975. Bachchan emerged as a one man industry, the angry young man who could regulate the thermostat of the entire film industry, recalls Dinesh Raheja.
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