Before Shirin Mohammed Ali passed away, she asked for two promises from her older son. One was that she, a Gujarati Muslim woman, had lived a life of pretense as a Hindu man’s wife. She told her son, “Bury me according to my faith.” The second promise she wanted from him was that he’d take care of his younger brother.
Mahesh Bhatt did both. In her lifetime, he told the world about her true, unwed relationship with his father, then retold it emphatically on film too.
So, in a way, he strangely gave legitimacy to her bond with his father. By the time she died, her identity was no longer a whisper, her burial as a Muslim woman a fitting finale.
He also turned paternal about brother Mukesh Bhatt, younger by four years. Looking at the success of Vishesh Films (Raaz, Gangster, Murder, Aashiqui et al), the filmmaking banner owned by Mukesh, it’s tough to imagine that at one time he was the secretary to stars like Vinod Khanna.
One isn’t sure how good a businessman Mahesh has been, although he learnt very early in life the importance of money, fame and success, and earned all three in heaps. But it was his creativity that created the brand that earned so handsomely for both brothers — it wasn’t the Gujarati business genes that gave the surname its currency value. Perhaps that’s why Mahesh functioned as the creative head of Vishesh Films.
And thus did big brother Bhatt fulfil his second promise too, to his mother. By forging his brand with his brother’s banner, he sent out the unmistakable message that when you deal with Vishesh Films, you’re dealing with Mahesh Bhatt. But today, Mukesh, aged 68, and Vishesh (his son), can stand on their own feet.
And so it is with a heavy heart that we see the two brothers, Mahesh and Mukesh go their different ways, after over three decades of making movies and money as one united entity.
It is “me and my kids” time as that large and sprawling office that the brothers once shared in Khar no longer houses their cabins side by side. Creatively energetic, Mahesh does not even step into the Khar office anymore. It’s the trinity of Mahesh, Pooja and Alia that works together as one and the 72-year-old filmmaker holds his meetings in a pretty Juhu apartment.
It’s the apartment that Alia bought herself — a stone’s throw from her parents’ home — when she grew up, made her own money and shifted out.
An amusing aside about this apartment and Alia’s “bestest” friend Kanchi (filmmaker Shashi Ranjan’s daughter Akansha, who starred in the Netflix film Guilty and in a recent fairness cream ad with Yami Gautam): one day, Kanchi seriously told her father that Alia and she had decided to take their friendship “to the next level”. Shashi had tumbled out of his chair. But visions of a gay relationship were dispelled when Shashi learnt, to his relief, that “the next level” meant Alia was giving Kanchi a set of keys to her new apartment.
It’s a large but cosy apartment that has Alia’s stamp all over it. Crazy about soft, purring, feline creatures, she got a natty black cat painted on every beam and wall. Recently, her sister Shaheen — who lives one floor above — brought a canine in, so now it’s raining cats and dogs for the Bhatts brigade.
While the apartment with cat figures has turned into a homely venue for this Bhatt branch to hold its meetings, Alia herself moved out and into Ranbir Kapoor’s building by buying the apartment below his during the making of Brahmastra. It’s only a matter of an official piece of paper for his floor and hers to merge into one legitimate household, a matter that’s been around the corner but had to be on hold because of the recent sorrows that visited Ranbir’s family.
Interestingly, as everybody knows, Ranbir is a dog lover — he has a special room reserved for his pets. How will the twain, the cat lover and the dog lover, meet?
The bridegroom-in-waiting pertly said, “We’re both animal lovers, so it works.” We give it a wag of approval.
