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Mahesh Bhatt was yet to establish himself as a successful director when he made the 1982 film Arth, with Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi and Kulbhushan Kharbanda in the lead roles. The film was based on the subject of extramarital affairs, and just a year before this, Yash Chopra had made his much-hyped and similarly themed Silsila, with Amitabh Bachchan, Rekha and Jaya Bachchan. In a recent interview, when Bhatt was asked about the film’s casting, he recalled how Shabana and Smita were eager to be a part of it.
Bhatt recalled narrating the film to Shabana, who did not even charge money for it. He said that Smita was surprised when Bhatt offered to pay her. “I narrated it to Smita and she said yes. The producer had given me money, and when I offered it to her, she asked, ‘You will pay me for it?’ Because she did art films, and in those days, art films wouldn’t give money, and actors had to even carry their own food and clothes on the set.”
When asked if he came up with the idea of Arth after watching Silsila, the director said that this wasn’t the case and added that he did not agree with Yash’s idea of infidelity. In a chat with Radio Nasha, Bhatt recalled that at the time, he had had four consecutive flops. “I made them in accordance to what the market wanted from me. Then I thought I have made what the world thought, now let me make something that I want,” he said. Bhatt said that he found a producer who had a “gambling streak” as he was ready to bet on Bhatt.
Bhatt recalled that when he was making the film, he was warned that he might get beaten to the punch by Yash Chopra. But he knew that he had something to offer that Chopra did not. “When I was making it, people would say you are a flop director and then you are making this. Yash Chopra has made it with Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Rekha and Sanjeev Kumar. I said that extramarital affairs don’t happen in tulip gardens, they happen away from everyone’s eyes. There is a lot of guilt in this, and I am saying all of this because I have lived through it,” he said.
Bhatt shared that a “maharathi” in the film industry even told him that Shabana should end up with Raj Kiran’s character, but Bhatt was adamant that she should come out of this by herself. “A senior maharathi in the industry said that at least let her end up with the other guy, I said, ‘No, this is not the story’. The story is ‘is the woman complete by herself?’ I said this film will work because of this,” he said.
Arth is still seen as one of the most mature films on extra-marital affairs ever made in Hindi cinema.
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