Forty years after Mahesh Bhatt immortalised Parveen Babi’s fragile mental state on celluloid, he’s still at it. In one way or the other, the Bhatts and extended family like nephew Mohit Suri and Vikram Bhatt (not a blood relative) have all mined Mahesh’s story of the illegitimate kid, the absentee father, the mother who was a closet Muslim and the married filmmaker ensnared by a schizophrenic actress. They have recycled, repackaged and resold chapters from the Bhatt family story as Janam (1985), Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayee (1993), Zakhm (a 1998 National Award winner), Woh Lamhe (2006) and Ankahee (2006).

Parveen’s best, as in Deewaar, Amar Akbar Anthony and Namak Halaal, were long behind her, and her schizoid paranoia was well-known to all. But she was around when Mahesh made Arth (1981) and cast Smita Patil as the emotionally unhinged actress. Parveen died only in 2005. For years after Arth, she could still read, watch and react to her private moments being put out there.

But, like a goldmine that must yield its tiniest nugget, the Bhatts have once again exhumed and retreaded the story as Ranjish Hi Sahi, an eight-episode series on Voot. The absentee father the filmmaker despised only to find himself tread the same extramarital territory, and his tumultuous drama with an unbalanced actress are painfully retold in the new series. The main thrust is the effort to make the family man come across as the good soul who cheated on his wife only because it was nobility and not infidelity that made him stand by a seriously ill celebrity. In the show, the man is even cheered by his doormat-wife, who says, “I trust you, I know you’ll do the right thing.”

The “you’ll do the right thing” line is a cliché that we just saw Anushka Sharma also use in her open letter to Virat Kohli.

But in the case of Mahesh’s semi-biographical pieces of cinema, if the catchphrase is “the right thing”, why does it selectively stop with Parveen? How about going further and telling the story of the filmmaker with two kids who went into a relationship with Soni Razdan, who was acting in his film Saraansh? To the best of my knowledge, Soni was only a young girl in love, not an unhinged actress who leaned weakly on him. So, in the interests of “the right thing”, why not a full celluloid narration of the man who converted to Islam and became Ashraf only to take Soni as his second spouse and had two daughters, Shaheen and Alia from that nikah?

This is not a judgemental critique of Mahesh Bhatt but a question on why the defence of his infidelity does not go beyond the vulnerable and helpless Parveen Babi.

Talking of truth in the retelling of a celebrity’s life story, will Farah Khan be able to make the film on Rajesh Khanna, as has been announced? From the rumblings on the ground, one gathers that legalities don’t end with buying the rights to Khanna’s published biography.

Farah has always been frank that she makes only glossy, big-budget mega movies. The colourful life of Khanna, the first celebrity who had an open live-in relationship with his girlfriend Anju Mahendru even when he was a much-written-about superstar, will be an extravaganza with chartbusters, dance and glitter. Right up Farah’s street.

But accused of abuse and cross-dressing by the wife who walked out on him several times, his well-known relationship with an actress who had the gumption to dump him and marry a big-time industrialist, the wife who’s been Sunny Deol’s partner for a longer time than most marriages, the wife who returned to his bedside only when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness are all stories that would have to be told if Farah is to tell Khanna’s incredible life the way he had lived it.

But ethics and emotions would require a green signal from people who matter like Dimple, Akshay Kumar, Twinkle, Rinke and the industrialist’s wife. That will be the tricky part, they’re not Parveen Babi.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author