Mahesh Bhatt’s unexpected return

Nearly 20 years ago, in 1999, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt declared his retirement from direction, saying “I have said goodbye to direction, I will not return to it.” Now, as he prepares to occupy the director’s chair once again for Sadak 2, he says he’s as shocked as everyone else.

“Even I was stunned to see my name listed as the director of Sadak 2. I thought to myself – what am I reading? The picture that was taken of the Sadak 2 team – with Alia, Sanjay and all – right before it was clicked, I walked around and realised that I was a director again after 20 years,” Bhatt says, adding, “There is another energy that’s grabbed hold of me, and I’ve fallen in love with it again.”

Reminiscing on the last time he called the shots for his 1999 film Zakhm, the filmmaker adds, “I still remember the last shot vividly – Ajay immersed his mother’s mangalsutra in the ocean, and the camera zoomed out. Then I said, ‘It’s over.”

He reveals that though his daughter Alia kept urging him to return to film direction, he kept telling that he’d lost his passion for the craft. “I would tell her there was nothing that moved in me. Now, suddenly, there is a fire of life. The lesson I’ve learnt is that there are no full stops in life. When I tried to put a full stop, life said there’s one more song to sing. Now, I don’t know whether it will be my last song, but it’s a great feeling to not know anything and have the same zest for life that you had when you were younger,” he says.

Mahesh Bhatt’s Sadak 2, a sequel to his 1991 hit film, will star his daughters Alia and Pooja Bhatt, as well as Sanjay Dutt and Aditya Roy Kapoor.