Sooraj Barjatya: The family man | Sit With Hitlist

Before I sit down with Sooraj Barjatya 61mdashthe director rightly deemed the father of the great Indian family drama ever since the blockbuster success of his Hum Aapke Hain Koun HAHK 1994mdashI entertain an unusual thought in my headFor decades the gentle reticent Sooraj has maintained a stoic quiet public imageWhat if the actual man behind those conservative movies dipped in shudh desi ghee espousing love for mamaji chachiji samdhan devar is actually a wayward chiller himselfmdashgiven to slasher flicks at home for his private pastimeI playfully poke him with these fantasies for this profilemdashasking him what he does for fun Hersquos sweetly measured as usualFor his hobby he says ldquoI am right now into Puranas reading the Gita Tulsidasrsquos Ramcharitmanas thatrsquos my time for fun when I am actually by myselfrdquoWith Sooraj what you see is what you get There is no fakeness We can see thatIn fact back circa 2001 he recalls he had once gone over to Fire lsquonrsquo Ice a popular nightclub in Mumbairsquos Lower Parel Director Farah Khan spotted him there She instantly called up Karan Johar wholly shocked ldquoLook whorsquos hererdquoSooraj was with his wife Vineeta They retreated to a nightclub corner where another partygoer simply asked him to please leave bellowing ldquoYeh jagah hum paapi logon ke liye hai This place is for sinnersrdquo Sooraj laughsThe filmmaker was actually at a discotheque in a sense researching for his forthcoming film then Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon MPKDH 2003Which he wished to make feeling the need to reflect something more trendyhip This is soon after Hum Saath Saath Hain 1999 an adaptation of the Ramayan set in an Indian joint familySooraj was in his ldquoearly thirtiesrdquo looking for a reset He sacked his traditional music composer Raam Laxman brought onboard Anu Malik For the lead cast he had Hrithik Roshan Abhishek Bachchan Kareena Kapoor instantly ready for the rosterHe says ldquoI feel so guilty towards all of them Because they gave me everything But while making that film I realised I am not there This is not me I was asking others if theyrsquod like what Irsquom makingrdquoA big feedback came to him from Bollywoodrsquos resident popphilosopher actor Govinda Sooraj says ldquoGovinda Ji sweetly met me after MPKDH to say that hits flops come to everyone Thatrsquos not the pointldquoBut he told me everyone has a purposemdashghode ka apna kaam hota hai sheep ka apna kaam hota hai sabka apna kaam hota haildquoThese words of wisdom stayed with me so much that I then made Vivah 2006 From that film onwards I stopped wanting to be someone else Then I can go to a night club to observe and thatrsquos good enoughmdashbut not try and become that person Itrsquos a liberating thoughtrdquoMPKDH bombed in the theatres Vivah had a ldquosilverjubilee 25week run in 125 cinemas across the countryrdquo Perhaps the last such film To the point that the term lsquosilver jubileersquo itself may be lost on the present generation of filmgoersBut thatrsquos how family films workmdashSooraj whorsquos also the bossman of Rajshri Pictures the fountainhead of desi family entertainers for over 75plus years explains its footfall mathFor one he confesses his core audience are women Theyrsquore the ones who bring the family into theatres in the first place Sooraj says hersquos deeply conscious of their tastesmdasheven literallyFor instance ldquoObserve the food in our films I make it a point that theyrsquore carefully shot like advertising In Maine Pyar Kiya MPK 1989 when Laxmikant Berde has to carry a tokri of puris we kept reshooting it because the puris had to be properly fullblown on every takerdquoSecondly Sooraj distinguishes the mainstream family film from a massy actioner The latter gets the excited audiences right from Day One for the first dibFor example ldquoOne would go to see a Dhoom 2 first Which is what happened at Jaipurrsquos Raj Mandir theatre where it replaced VivahldquoBut after eight weeks once the audiences had seen Dhoom 2 Vivah was back for a 35week run People keep telling others about a family entertainer and people coming slowly slowlyrdquoThatrsquos the Rajshri experience Sooraj recalls ldquoIrsquom going back to 1969 Two films released that year One was Jigri Dost and the other Jeene Ki Raah from LV Prasad Jirsquos bannerldquoBoth were with Jeetu Ji Jeetendra who was a big star Jigri Dost had a housefull whereas Jeene Ki Raah barely had collections in its fourth weekldquoLV Prasad Ji called up my grandfather Tarachand Barjatya to ask lsquoWhere did I go wrongrsquo He calmed him down lsquoYou did no wrong Thatrsquos Jigri Dost and people will watch it first itrsquos glamorous Yours is Jeene Ki Raah that audiences will visit aaram se in due course of time Thatrsquos exactly what happenedrdquoThe analogy Sooraj uses sort of settles the debate ldquoOne is the new McDonaldrsquos in your neighbourhood But then you have to come down to Maharaja Bhog eventuallyrdquoMadhuri DixitNene and Salman Khan in Hum Aapke Hain KounThis is the theatrical thumbrule from those whorsquove known them better I suspect the same theory might apply to content on OTT platforms as wellWherein a new flashy movieshow on a streamer catches fullon attention as the talking point on the first weekend As if itrsquoll disappear after Only that sustainable content stays to be discovered or rediscovered foreverConsider the Gen ZYoung Adult family romantic drama Bada Naam Karenge BNK on SonyLIV Thatrsquos the web series that Sooraj has turned showrunner withIt bears the Rajshri stamp like nothing yoursquove watched on a streamer so farmdashlarge network of families a sense of innocence among the young flavour of small towns Ratlam Ujjain IndorehellipShailesh Kapoor from the content tracking agency Ormax I noticed called the series a potential ldquogamechangerrdquo for the homeviewing ecosystem I can see whyFor years the Rajshris werenrsquot entertained in the OTT scene as Sooraj recalls ldquoThey were looking for something edgierrdquoBNK is a family series quite separate from the overthetop overlong swishpan saasbahu serials of Star Plus that dominated Indian TV 2000 onwards Itrsquos about subtle real young love in the times of CoronaWhat I was struck by is its unpretentious simplicity Itrsquos possible that you havenrsquot seen the series Itrsquos more possible that families will chance upon it at some point while the word spreadsThe show features two lovely debuting lead actors Ayesha Kaduskar Ritik Ghanshanimdashpart of families that are loving but conservative And as it happens with the latter extrapossessive of their youngTheir transgression is that they once lived together in a big city out of a circumstance given COVID19 Their graver transgression to me for a Rajshri product is they even drink at a party togetherAyesha Kaduskar and Ritik Ghanshani in Sooraj Barjatyarsquos debut OTT show Bada Naam KarengeSooraj laughs ldquoWell there is only one partyscene And even there I kept telling director Palash Vaswani if we can set it during Holi and therefore thandai being passed aroundrdquoItrsquos a world that Sooraj knows because he spent a lot of time at his maternal grandparentsrsquo home in Agra growing up Also he says his own Mumbai home mirrors that same joint family setupculture including the youngest generationsIn the sense more particularly of the Marwari community that the protagonists of BNK belong to As does SoorajWho I find to be a fascinating lotmdashoriginally from a 50odd kilometre radius in Rajasthan spread across the country broadening their business empires locally retaining their filial and commercial connections globallySooraj argues ldquoMarwaris are an amalgamation of the entire Bharat We love to have a lot of money But there are very few of us in the film business Because we want to be safeldquoBefore we invest anything we must know how much we are going to get back This is very difficult in this profession Especially creativity doesnrsquot come first to us We know how to make money out of money But I think Barjatyas had to be here And we had to tell some storiesrdquoBefore there was fake news there were quiz masters who made up facts for questions at interschoolcollege competitions And since Internet hadnrsquot deepened enough to verify the supposedly right answer we just wonlost points from our guesses and moved onOne such question asked to my team I remember was the visual of a female actor in a song perhaps from Janwar 1965 lsquoTum se accha kaun hairsquoQuestion Whorsquos the actor and whatrsquos her relevance to Bollywood history Answer Rajshree V Shantaramrsquos daughter on whom Rajshri Pictures is namedThis was during collegeschool Although I wonrsquot find that phony quizmaster again itrsquos taken me years to prove this as fake factnewsSooraj tells me Rajshri Productions is named after his paternal aunt Rajshri Saraogi nee Barjatya who was born the same year the film company was founded by his grandfather TarachandMain Prem Ki Diwani HoonThat date being August 15 1947mdashmaking Rajshri exactly as old as independent IndiaThe company was founded in Kolkata which is where young Tarachand moved to from ldquoKuchaman a small estate in RajasthanrdquoThe only thing Tarachand ever wanted Sooraj says was to earn well for his mother ldquoShe came from a poor background she couldnrsquot eatwell in her sasural And he wanted to provide for her That ambition drew him to CalcuttardquoTarachand found a job as a manager in a Bengali film company Chamaria Pictures where he performed rather well Except as his family grew he wished to expand and go his ownThe company allowed him to pursue his sidegigs alongside Which is how Tarachand started a small arm distributing films for Central ProvincesBerar a tiny province of British India But what films could he start withSooraj says ldquoMy grandfather would get tears in his eyes when hersquod tell me about Gemini Pictures and Shri SS Vasan in MadrasrdquoBasically VasanGemini Pictures had made a huge blockbuster Chandralekha 1948 Tarachand urged them to dub it in Hindi Vasan was unsuremdashwho would watch a nonstar cast pic across IndiaTarachand persuaded him nonetheless including shooting portions of the film with actors originally mouthing some lines in Hindi Once done Vasan offered ldquoall India distribution rights of Chandralekhardquo to TarachandItrsquos something the young entrepreneur couldnrsquot believeldquoChandralekha was the Baahubali of its times or what Pushpa would be todayrdquo Sooraj recalls Such is how Rajshri entered the big league subsequently setting up distribution offices across North IndiaStills from Maine Pyar KiyaSimilarly acquiring films from the South for nationwide releases with Hindi dubs Essentially whatrsquos now called the panIndia releaseAnd then of course they combined it with distributing popular Hindi titles having established a deep tradenetworkRajshri entered film production only in the early 1960s Thatrsquos the business Soorajrsquos father Raj Kumar Barjatya oversaw Their breakthrough was Dosti 1964 starring two unknown male leads Sudhir Kumar Sushil Kumar with a phenomenal soundtrack that continues to resonateSooraj says ldquoDosti took everyone by surprise People first said who would watch Itrsquos a black and white film Langde andhe ki picture hai itrsquos about a blind and lame man But my grandfather was spiritually inclined and he was convincedrdquoThroughout his career Tarachand would visit The Mother at her ashram in Pondicherry with his film ideas She had decreed that he only make films that ldquoelevate the consciousness of humanssocietyrdquoDosti was one of them He never looked back afterSooraj remembers ldquoAs a child Irsquod be on story sessions with my grandfather listening to all the top commercial pictures and hersquod say lsquoItrsquos a superhit film but of no use to usrsquo I used to wonder if itrsquos superhit why is it of no use to usldquoSo then he took me over to our company emblem that is Goddess Saraswati And he told me lsquoJo yahan banega usmein Saraswati ka vaas hona zaroori hai Saraswati must reside in whatever gets made herersquordquoThe script of Rajshri mainly drew from Indian literature The directors were relatively lesser known Also since as Sooraj puts it the celebrated ones would want to produce their own filmsBut more importantly as he says the lead actors in those films couldnrsquot be the popular heroheroines of the times The subjects were such The superstars could simply not slip inHe says ldquoFor example if you see Uphaar 1971 Therersquos a crazy girl Now you canrsquot just put any star in there You need someone without a screen imageldquoOr a film like Geet Gaata Chal 1975 about a teenager How can you put lsquoShah Rukh Khanrsquo in a teenage role It has to be a newcomer Those were the subjects we pickedrdquoMayank Shekhar and Sooraj BarjatyaFor instance Amitabh Bachchan did star in a Rajshri film Saudagar 1973 But this is right before Zanjeer 1973 Which made his lsquoangry young manrsquo stardom too big to fit into a Barjatya vehicleIt took Bachchan almost 50 years to feature again in a Rajshri production aged 79 with Uunchai 2022 directed by Sooraj about friends who are familyWhat Rajshri mastered was essentially ldquothe nonstar filmrdquo that in turn gave debutants breaks into an industry that has perennially faced the insideroutsider divideAs Sooraj says ldquoI can go on listing the breaks from Rajshri first film of Sanjay Khan Jaya Bachchan Ji Rakhee Jihellip We can go down to Mithun Chakraborty Darsquos first commercial picture Raj Babbar Jirsquos first film was signed with us Naseeruddin Shah sirrsquos first commercial filmhelliprdquoItrsquos astounding alright Whatrsquos equally astounding about Rajshri that I had heard years ago is theyrsquove had a rather precise rulebook of sorts detailing stuff you cancanrsquot do in a Rajshri film This is besides that the whole family should be able to watch the film togetherFor instance Commandment 1 You canrsquot have a villain in a Rajshri film The lsquocircumstancersquo is the villain Commandment 2 There should be no action And if there is a required action sequence the number of punches cannot exceed 14Not 13 not 15 14 to be sure No wait is this really true Guess what Sooraj says ldquoYes it isrdquo and asks me how I know Actually I have no clue how I knowSooraj smiles ldquoMy grandfather and fatherrsquos point was that since the villain is a mustmdashitrsquos best if it can be a circumstance We donrsquot need to have too much of violence henceldquoHAHK Bhabhi Renuka Shahane dies Thatrsquos all there is to it She slips Itrsquos a circumstanceldquoMPK Currency notes get destroyed by water Poor boy so that is a circumstance Now Uunchai The heroes want to climb up a mountain There age is the circumstance for an antagonistldquoAs for 14 punches in an action sequencemdashthat was told to me while making MPK because I was a young man and the action director can go on with a fight sequence if you donrsquot put a cap to it So 14 punches Thatrsquos itrdquoAnd itrsquos not that the rules have always been followed though Sooraj admits ldquoWhenever we have deviated it hasnrsquot quite gone down wellrdquo I bring up his last film with Salman Khan Prem Ratan Dhan Payo 2015 for instanceHe says ldquoSalman and I can see through each other The first draft of Prem Ratan that I took to him he said why are we complicating things go for simpleldquoYet I put some action into it because I wanted to serve his audience I tried to play it safe I should have just made a straight emotional affair The film did well But when I look at it now I donrsquot like to see the climaxrdquoWhile Rajshri has been around since 1947 Sooraj was the first member from his family firm to actually direct films His late father Rajmdashbetter known as Raj Babu in filmindustry circlesmdashhe says ldquohad modelled himself on Irving Thalberg of MGM StudiosrdquoBut he had the eyeear for great stories And what Raj Babu left behind for Sooraj is actually a detailed file with plotpoints from movies hersquos likedmdashwhether from Rajshri or other productionsKnowing his sonrsquos natural inclinations as director Raj Babu felt the file would serve as the North Star for subjects to pick One of the notings for instance is where Uunchai came fromI never got a chance to interact with Raj Babu I do remember observing him once from a distance at a talk by Hollywoodrsquos top screenwriting guru Syd FieldEverybody was listening I noticed Raj Babu sitting down like a student taking copious notes insteadWhich is ironic only for the fact that if Syd Field a stickler for the threeact screenplay structure ever watched Raj Babursquos idea for Sooraj HAHKmdashhe could still flip in his graveNow thatrsquos a film without a conflict up until its final 30 minutes that defied all logic of screenwritingSooraj says ldquoThe HAHK structure originally belongs to Rajshrirsquos Nadiya Ke Paar 1982 We owe it to KP Mishrarsquos novel Kohbar Ki ShartldquoWhich was a textbook in Agra University My father had read the book And if you relate the novel to HAHK Madhuri Dixitrsquos character gets married to Mohnish Bahlrsquos characterldquoWhat follows is a massive drought in the village where everyone dies Thatrsquos the third act My father didnrsquot like that final part of the storyrdquoSo technically HAHK was without a third act Hardly ever has a film been loved more Madhuri Dixit was its superstar Incidentally she had also debuted in a Rajshri production Abodh 1984 where Sooraj was an assistantBack then Sooraj was given the charge of counting Madhurirsquos bangles on the sets of Abodh Which is when his mother had come to visitShe was dead against him turning into a director which she felt was a financially unsafe pursuit She wouldrsquove liked him to ownrun studiofloors insteadBack home she admonished Sooraj ldquoIs this what yoursquore going to do in lifemdashcount banglesrdquo Soorajrsquos dad with a filmmaking bone of his own fully betted on his sonThis was at a time when Rajshri were at their financial lowest Mad actioners had taken over Indian screens Middleclass audience stayed in to watch films on video players that made for a more comfortable home entertainment It was a noveltyThe 1980s being no different from 2025 with the cycle repeating And people hitting theatres only for spectacle as cinema and bingeing on OTT platforms at home for everything else Itrsquos a phase of courseThat said Raj Babu and Sooraj could see the revival of musicals with Saturday Night Fever and Grease and the like in Hollywood Thatrsquos the genre Sooraj picked for his first film a young romance while hersquod only just turned 20MPK became a sensation It revived Rajshri A condition that Soorajrsquos mother had laid before him turning director was that he must get married firstWhich is what he did at 21 HAHK followed I wonder if he put all that he saw at his own wedding into HAHK Sooraj says ldquoThat and so many other family weddings I had been tordquoHAHK is packed with songs and anecdotes as in kissa as against story or kahaani The beauty of the film is of course the space it accords the ensemble castYou have Salman back from MPK standing in a corner of scenes while the samdhi samdhan mama chacha etc take centrestageAnd this can only happen because the new superstar had already trusted the director Soorajrsquos conviction onceThey first met because a model Shabana Dutt who had also tested for a role in MPK didnrsquot land the part but recommended SalmanSooraj recalls ldquoSalman thought hersquod be given dhoti and bansuri for his role because those are the films Rajshri used to make He heard the script slouched on his seat and straightened up only once he heard the lsquoKabootar jaarsquo segment But his auditions didnrsquot go well His voice had no throwrdquoChoreographer Farah Khan Salmanrsquos friend came over to help him with the dance auditions That bombed too Itrsquos just that once Sooraj got him to pose to the Rishi Kapoor romantic song lsquoOh hansinirsquo he could see a debutant heartthrobOnly that Salman was already appearing as a secondlead in a midtier film Biwi Ho To Aisi Newcomer lead was a must All this while Salman kept sending Sooraj pictures of his friends he could cast insteadEven when Sooraj went over to an ad shoot to finally express regret to Salman for MPK the actor continued to introduce blokes on the set that he should have for the filmSooraj says he was floored by the ldquogenuineness of a human being firstrdquo It had to be Salman The rest is historyWhich I realise actually goes back to one more generation Sooraj says ldquoSalim Khan Saab Salmanrsquos father tells me he owes his move to Bombay also to Rajshri Productions He lived in Indore Thatrsquos where the wedding of my taujiuncle Kamal Kumar Barjatya was being heldldquoSalim Saab said he was a lsquostrugglerrsquo then He knew there would be lots of film dignitaries at the wedding So he came to see having gatecrashed There he met producer Mr K Amarnath who told him lsquoHero banega Aaja BombayrdquoAnd he came to Bombay