The very public Mahesh Bhatt’s most private interview ever

I am a bastard child to a Muslim mother, what do I know about being a father, he says

I’m waiting at Mahesh Bhatt’s home for my afternoon appointment with him. He’s three minutes late and enters apologising profusely. If I didn’t know him better, I’d think the enfant terrible of Hindi cinema was patronising me. But he wasn’t. Not today, and not that day four years ago when I entered his warmly-lit cabin for a possible lyric-writing gig. Sitting beneath a radiant portrait of Tagore, he surveyed my face as if searching for something and found a resemblance with a man he cursorily knew. The man I reminded him of happened to be my father. Trying to play it cool, I informed him that my father had died just over a year ago. He reached for my hand, I hesitated; he didn’t persist. He simply narrated his brief but beautiful memory of my father.

From Arth (1982) to Zakhm (1998), Mahesh Bhatt has regularly used his personal relationships as fodder for his films(Prabhat Shetty)

“As you grow older, you tolerate more things in yourself and extend the same to your parents”

Bhatt with his mother, Shirin Mohammed Ali, who was a Gujarati film actress

Bhatt’s parents Shirin Mohammad Ali and filmmaker Nanabhai Bhatt

“I started out being a scared father. I didn’t have one so I didn’t know how to be one!”

His absentee father, Nanabhai Bhatt, may have been the filmmaking pioneer in the family, but the formidable ‘Bhatt’ name as we know it today was established by Mahesh Bhatt (Prabhat Shetty)

“Sunny [Rahul Bhatt] said to me, ‘they don’t make men like you anymore, sir’. To hear that from a child you’ve wronged feels good”

Mahesh Bhatt (centre) with daughters Pooja, Shaheen and Alia

“Brand Mahesh Bhatt has found a new lease thanks to Alia”

Bhatt’s first wife Lorraine Bright became Kiran Bhatt after marriage

Soni Razdan and Mahesh Bhatt with daughters Shaheen and Alia

(From left) Pooja, Rahul, Alia and Shaheen Bhatt

Bhatt’s conversations are peppered with repeated references to philosopher U G Krishnamurti who he calls his “old man”

Mahesh Bhatt with author Kausar Munir