On the first Sunday of a new year, instead of looking forward, Hrithik Roshan’s silver jubilee nudges me to rewind to 25 years ago.

Father Rakesh Roshan had made Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai out of his Filmkraft office near Santa Cruz station. After Khudgarz (1987), Khoon Bhari Maang (1988) and Karan Arjun (1995), his Koyla (1997) with SRK and Madhuri Dixit hadn’t gone down too well with the audience, and the fear of failure always loomed before RR. Here he was, now putting his all into a film to launch son Hrithik as a hero.

RR had just turned 51 but film trade whispers wondered if he was getting outdated. “You’d be surprised,” Hrithik had quietly told me. “Dad has made a very slick, youthful film. It’s a very modern film.”

RR had taken me to an edit room and shown me snatches of Kaho Naa... He also told me that Hrithik played a double role in it. Dad was gambling with everything he had.

2000 was also when Amitabh Bachchan’s only son Abhishek was poised to make his debut and filmmakers were tripping over themselves to be first in queue. Abhishek was what they called a bandh mutthi, a closed fist that carried the hope of a diamond inside.

Hrithik faced the challenges that came the way of every underdog.

One of the more publicised setbacks was Kareena Kapoor’s unexpected walkout after she’d begun shooting for Kaho Naa... As a Kapoor girl and as Karisma’s good-looking younger sister, she too was a bandh mutthi. When JP Dutta made her an offer, Kareena weighed her options and jumped ship. She signed Refugee opposite Abhishek who was also dating her sister Karisma at that time.

For RR, it was a low blow. Kareena carried more commercial value than an unknown girl called Ameesha Patel, who was brought in as a last-minute replacement. Before the dawn of 2000, Abhishek was the winner even before the race had begun.

To give you an idea of how it looked,
I’d put pictures of Hrithik and Abhi-
shek before a face reader for a forecast. Probably guided more by perception than clairvoyance, she’d looked at Hrithik’s jawline and light eyes and ruled him out. “He’ll at best make it as a villain,” she predicted, while foreseeing Amitabh Bachchan’s son as the inheritor of superstardom.

Meanwhile, RR invited me to a private screening of Kaho Naa... at Film City and Hrithik’s handsomeness had jumped out of the screen alongside the freshness of New Zealand with a good old Indian revenge story at the core.

Watching the film was also Jaya Bachchan, Hrithik’s mother in Fiza. I did a cover story on Hrithik and Abhishek, analysing their respective strengths. Seeing her son on a magazine cover for the first time, mother Pinkie Roshan had exclaimed, “What have you done? You’ve put him right up there.” Hrithik was embarrassed. “Hey, we’re all friends,” he’d protested. “There’s no rivalry between us.”

It was the philosophical, monk-like Hrithik we’ve all seen in the last 25 years. But it was a January fraught with tension. Topping the negatives was also the film industry superstition that films released in early January were doomed. Surprisingly, RR who had flirted with numerology by adding an extra “a” to his name for a while (it didn’t work) and making films with “K” titles (King Uncle, Khel, Koyla didn’t benefit from it), swam against the beliefs and didn’t budge from January 14, his release date, four days after Hrithik turned 26.

RR showed the same rare courage when the underworld sent two shooters to put bullets into him a week after the release of Kaho Naa… He calmly drove to the police station before checking into Nanavati Hospital.

There are reams of stories to tell on how that January changed the Roshans for ever. But for now, happy 51st to Hrithik and may silver turn to gold.