Adhuri Kahaniyaan Are The Only Ones Worth Telling

Subhash K Jha engages in a conversation with Mahesh Bhatt, reliving the memories of one of his favourite productions, Hamari Adhuri Kahani and its decennial celebration.

- 

Q. It is 10 years of Hamari Adhuri Kahani featuring Emraan Hashmi, Vidya Balan and Rajkummar Rao.

It was Raj Kapoor who once said, "The child who loses the race is the one you remember. The world embraces the winner. The lights follow the victor. But your heart lingers where the pain did." And I've lived long enough to know how true that is. When I think of Hamari Adhuri Kahani, that's the film I return to—not because it triumphed, but because it bled.

Q. The beautiful love story was considered regressive by some?

People tell me it was regressive. That it wore the idiom of television. That the maker of Arth turned the clock back. And maybe they were right. But what they forget is that pain doesn't evolve. It remains archaic. And love, in its purest form, is always old-fashioned.

Q. You stand by the film?

Mohit Suri crafted something aching with vulnerability. It was about a woman caught between duty and desire. It wasn't fashionable love. It was love the way the old poets wrote about it: incomplete, inconvenient, irrevocable.