Back when Farhan Akhtar was a kid, a common visitor to his home used to be family friend, ace photographer, late Gautam Rajadhyaksha. Gautam was once assigned a photo-shoot for a pressure cooker ad, in which a child is supposed to look excitedly at the contents of a cooker — “Like, this is the best matar pulav I have eaten in my life; that expression!” 

Gautam asked Farhan’s mother, Honey Irani (a child actor once herself), if her little boy could pose for the ad. She agreed, and he did. For the longest, Farhan’s face had remained associated with the pressure cooker. “I’m talking about the ’80s,” he recalls. This is, in fact, the first story he also recalled to his childhood friend and later his producer-partner, Ritesh Sidhwani, when he first learnt about Ritesh’s family business.