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Love after divorce

S B Mirza

A still from Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rahte Hain. Click for bigger pic!

D Rama Naidu moves inexorably towards being declared the only producer to have made a 100 movies in the Guinness Book of Records,and the weak performance of Sataan and Taqdeerwala have not affected his resolve the slightest. He has at least the success of Anari to look back to, Anari being the film in which he launched his son Venkatesh in Hindi cinema.

Naidu's latest film, Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rehte Hain, is a remake of a super-hit Telugu film, Pavitra Bandham. The film will be completed soon, going by its stiff shooting in and around Hyderabad.

Over a lunch at such a shoot, Rama Naidu spoke about the film to scribes. He said he wanted to prove with this film that he was a top producer in Hindi too.

A still from Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rahte Hain. Click for bigger pic!

"As far as Telugu films are concerned, I have achieved whatever I wanted to. I want to hit the jackpot in Bollywood with this film," he said. Also present were Anil Kapoor, the hero, Anupam Kher who plays Anil's father and Satish Kaushik, the film's director.

Anil, who plays a role with negative shades, said, "I've succeeded whenever I have tried to change my image and experimented. I've never catered to a particular image because I feel that typecasting is a cardinal sin."

He said he played a groom who has returned from foreign parts and has little respect for the institution of marriage. He marries Kajol on a one-year contract, and opts for a divorce after the contract period. The actual romance begins after the divorce, he says.

Satish Kaushik is all praise for Naidu and says it was Anil Kapoor who actually suggested his name to Naidu. He said it was a pleasure to work with Naidu who was known as a director's producer.

Anil Kapoor on the sets of Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rahte Hain. Click for bigger pic!

The film itself emphasised feelings, he said, adding that film emphasised feelings and that the accent here was on treatment, unlike in his earlier films, Prem and Roop Ki Rani Choron Ki Raja. He added that while the former was based on reincarnation the latter was a costume drama.

"I do not resort to any gimmicks in this film. I'm not playing with camera angles or juggling shots. You will not find 50 dances here.... My film has been set against a contemporary backdrop."

Anupam Kher, who plays the hero's father, is all praise for Kaushik. When Kaushik's earlier failures were highlighted, he said it was incorrect to judge the capacity and talent of a director by the box office returns alone. "Satish is a great combination of aesthetic sense and mass appeal. I am sure he will be able to prove his critics wrong with this film."

When a scribe asked him if he was banking on this film, Anupam answered, "I don't bank on any film at all. The success of any film gives me happiness, you see. I don't have this fear of failure because my background as an actor is very sound -- I'm not a fluke. I'm like a bank for producers.

A still from Hum Aapke Dil Mein Rahte Hain. Click for bigger pic!

If a brilliant director casts me, my performance will also be brilliant and if an ordinary director extracts work from me, my performance will also be just ordinary. If you see me doing bad work in one film and good work in another, the fault is not entirely in my hands."

Speaking about the kind of roles he was looking forward to play, Anil Kapoor said, "As an actor I am thirsting for roles that I can get my teeth into. Today I am ready for offers from every producer, be it Rama Naidu, Shyam Benegal, Prakash Jha or Subash Ghai. There are different kinds of film-makers today. I've worked in 281 films in my career spanning 15 years.

HADMRH, with music set by Anu Malik and lyrics by Sameer, is to be completed this month. After post-production, it is tentatively set for a Sankranti release. The focus, of course, will be on Kaushik, who has huge failures behind. Rama Naidu's goal, of course, is unlikely to be affected, regardless of the film's fate at the box office.