Once Upon a Cinema is series which will illuminate the dark, unexplored crevices of Indian cinema. In it, the writer will showcase stories and faces long forgotten, share uncommon perspectives about stars and filmmakers, and recount tales that have never been told.
It was Aamir Khan who suggested that I include Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar in the book. Writing a book on cult films is no joking matter. One must be conscious of the various opinions on what constitutes “cult”. I used the powers vested on me as the author to say that only those films which didn’t do well commercially and later attained a cult following, will make the cut. And I made use of the same powers in deciding that Aamir’s early action film Raakh and Andaz Apna Apna (of course!) would be in the list. After a few months of hustling and cajoling and throwing up arms in despair, it was ultimately serendipity that led me to Aamir’s doorstep. We spoke about Raakh and Andaz at length, and I had found plenty more material than I had bargained for. And then the man tossed the idea at me. Jo Jeeta fits your definition, he said.
It seemed preposterous, initially. In my head, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was this behemoth of a film which stood the test of time. But Aamir had his notions about why it should be considered a cult film. It was a successful film, but it wasn’t as big a hit as they thought it would be. As compared to Mansoor’s colossal first film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, the second one had a tepid response. “But for me, it’s a better film than QSQT,” Aamir explained, “That’s what I personally feel. The roles of Sanjay Lal and Ratan Lal were well-written. So was the relationship of the two brothers, even Sanjay’s relationship with the two girls he falls in love with! One is the very glamorous girl he is smitten by, and the other who he feels for inside. He is not even aware that he likes her. It’s only in time that he realizes, this is the girl I really love. So it’s a story about growing up and coming of age. It has some amazing moments.”
This was early 2015, the Aamir I was talking to was portly and sported grey hair. He had been shooting for Dangal. The parts with the grown-up Gita and Babita, evidently. He spoke about Nitesh Tiwari’s relationship with Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar: “Even today when I speak to Nitesh Tiwari who is directing Dangal, he tells me that Jo Jeeta was their film, you know. They used to have inter-IIT competitions in dramatics and sports, so the whole concept of Rajput and Model school, the privileged and the underdog…they really connected with that.”
Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was Mansoor Khan’s pet project. But they had a rather torturous time making the film. Aamir set about telling me that story and helped me reach out to Mansoor as well. By this time, Mansoor had hung up his boots and had taken refuge in the hills. A phone conversation with him ensued. Mansoor Khan wrote Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar when he was a naive kid himself, trying to prove a point. He had studied engineering, realizing well in time that it was hardly his cup of tea; gadgets and cameras always fascinated him. Tinkering with video editing on a Sony recorder, he came upon the idea of making a film about redemption. He was aimless, just like the protagonist Sanjay Lal from Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. That’s when he started writing. Ostensibly to warm himself up, he made a short film called Umberto with his friend Amole Gupte acting in it, and it was this short that his father happened to see and asked him to helm QSQT. Mansoor Khan obeyed.
QSQT was a sensation. It broke a few records and swept the awards season. Despite such adulation in his very first film, Mansoor Khan refused to revel in it and turned his attention to his pet project. The reason he had written the elder brother in Jo Jeeta... as a father figure instead of there being an actual father in the story, was because he was sick of the cliched father-son routine in Hindi films. But QSQT had already explored newer aspects of the relationship, with Aamir Khan playing son and Dilip Tahil as the father whose relationship doesn’t follow the usual filmic pattern. Enter Ramlal Sharma (Khulbhushan Kharbanda), father to Ratanlal and Sanjay Lal Sharma. And then stepped in the great Farah Khan, but not as a choreographer. As Mansoor told me over the phone, “Farah had approached me to choreograph Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar. But I had already spoken to Saroj Ji (Khan)—I told her that, and said she can work as my assistant. She joined me as an assistant director and when she read the script, she said, ‘I have somebody in mind for the brother.’ She brought Mamik to me—the moment he walked into my office, I knew that this was guy who will play the brother Ratan Lal. We did a screen test, but I was very convinced that he was the one. Aamir was already a star. Dil had happened and QSQT had happened. So you needed someone who was believable as the brother who was one-up on Aamir. Mamik had a strong physique and yet had this endearing quality about him.’
Farah Khan brought in Mamik for the role, and he fit the slot perfectly. In time, as destiny would have it, she also became the choreographer for the film, when Saroj Khan took off without informing. Mani Ratnam’s Geethanjali (1989), his first Telugu film, was a great success both commercially as well as among critics. It was later dubbed in Tamil and Malayalam, and remade in Hindi three years later: Yaad Rakhegi Duniya (1992, mostly known for one song—Tere liye saari umar jagun). The Press especially went ga-ga over the female lead of the film, a British-Indian named Girija Shettar. She was offered the role of Anjali, Sanjay Lal’s childhood sweetheart. Nandita Morarji stepped in as Devika, the Veronica to Aamir Khan’s Archie. It would have been her debut in Hindi films. She was to be known by her screen name, Nagma.
Mansoor envisioned someone with athletic build and oodles of arrogance, for the role of Shekhar Malhotra. Akshay Kumar was famously auditioned for the role, but finally, it was Milind Soman who bagged the role. Aamir Khan said, ‘Milind Soman was this star athlete, full of arrogance—you know, the character is supposed to be very arrogant, sure of himself, really good at what he does, the girls love him. He is unbeatable, the Greek god. That’s how this role was written. When we cast Milind and we saw the test, we realized his voice and intonation lets him down. But the part was virtually written for him, because Milind is naturally arrogant. When he looks at you, you think you are something the cat brought in.’
The casting process seemingly completed, the crew of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was about to leave for Ooty, when something happened that made them go back to square one and look through those screen test videos again. That something was Baaghi (1990). Nagma who was playing Devika, backed out as she had been offered Baaghi opposite Salman Khan, the film that was to become her debut. The team went back to view the audition tapes, and this time they picked Karishma Pahuja to replace Nagma. Pahuja was a model and actress who had appeared with Aamir Khan in an FTII Diploma film that he did for his friend Inderjit Singh Bansal, Subah Subah. She was tested for the part earlier and had been the second choice after Nagma. She was cast for Devika and the shoot began at Coonoor and Ooty.
A sixty-day schedule was completed, shooting at Ooty, Coonoor and Western Catchments. Western Catchments, about 20 km away from Ooty is shrouded in clouds all year long, and one gets daylight for about three hours—from around 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. The cycle race was shot at Western Catchments, while juggling with daylight. The four-hour drive from Ooty was horrendous, the road condition in certain places was very bad. They had to start at 3 to even hope to reach the Catchments by 7 a.m. And then the wait began for the sun to peek from behind the clouds. After a twenty-day torturous and gruelling shoot, the cycle race was finally completed. About 80 per cent of the film had been shot in a two- month schedule, including most of the climax. The cast and crew returned to Mumbai and got back to their lives, without any clue that they had to do the whole thing all over again.
Aamir was shooting for another film when he got the call from Mansoor. It wasn’t working, he said. Karishma Pahuja as Devika was just not working. During the interview, Aamir maintained that Karishma did her best. But the way the role was conceived in the context of the movie, Pahuja didn’t fit. Mansoor was insistent they will have to shoot the film all over again, with a replacement. Aamir didn’t find the idea of re-shoot too enticing. He explained to me, “As an actor, as a creative person, it has already come out of you, it’s gone from you. Now when you are told you have to do it again, you start trying to remember what you had done then. How can I take it out again? It’s gone!’ But he also understood Mansoor’s point of view. He had to give in.
Karishma Pahuja was replaced by Pooja Bedi. Pooja was already a star in her own right. Back in the 90s, Vatsyayan’s legacy was revealed to adolescents across the length and breadth of urban India not via Mira Nair’s eponymous film, but through an ad campaign that popped up on good old Doordarshan one fine evening. A rather generously endowed woman was writhing in the shower while a good-looking lad tries to moor his boat, and later joins the lady in the shower. As we collected our jaws from the floor, another lady would whisper ‘Kama Sutra’ in the background. The week’s papers told us that the man was Marc Robinson, and the woman was Pooja Bedi. Pooja had a much-hyped debut in Vishkanya (1991), a film about mythical women with the ‘kiss of death’ (much like the Batman villain Poison Ivy) that poisoned the film itself. The very next film was the one that defined her career—as Devika in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar.
After this piece of recasting, the first thing they shot was the song “Jawan ho yaaron”. After the shoot, Girija Shettar, who was playing Anjali, said she was leaving. She was going back abroad and couldn’t continue the shoot unless Mansoor Khan could manage to wrap-up the shoot in a month. He felt helpless—the entire film had to be made all over again, so completing it within a month was out of the question. So Shettar had to go too. But she could still be seen in Jawaan ho yaaron as the girl in red who dances with Aamir Khan. Ayesha Jhulka joined the cast as Anjali. Upon the departure of Karishma and Girija, the only other cast member Aamir Khan had the most scenes with was Milind Soman. Now, Aamir and Mansoor seemed to have a rather difficult time with Soman. Since most of the principal cast had already been replaced, it was finally decided to replace him too. Eventually, a role that a future superstar had auditioned for and lost, and a supermodel didn’t seem to be doing justice to, came to Deepak Tijori. And Tijori owned tha character like nobody’s business.
And that’s how Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, a film which had been shot almost in its entirety, was on the floors again. All the scenes which had the earlier cast members in the frame, was filmed again, frame by frame.
(The story about the making of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was included in a chapter in my book In a Cult of their Own: Bollywood Beyond Box Office, which was published by Rupa Publications. I have extracted from the chapter generously.)
Amborish is a National Film Award winning writer, biographer and film historian.
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