[ad_1]
Alia Bhatt’s Raazi is regarded as one of the breakthrough performances of her career, but the film has been met with constant criticism. Harinder Singh SikkaAuthor of Calling Sehmat, the book that inspired the 2018 spy drama. In a recent interview, Sikka made fresh allegations against filmmaker Gulzar, the director Meghna Gulzar and a person whom he has identified as his representative Shah Rukh KhanIts Red Chillies Entertainment.Sikka claimed that he first met Gulzar around 2016-17, when the veteran lyricist and filmmaker requested him to consider Meghna Gulzar for the project.“When I went to meet him at Gulzar’s house, he told me, ‘My daughter hasn’t got any work for four years. People think Talvar has made Vishal Bharadwaj. So give her some work’. I said, ‘I will do it. It’s a promise’,” he said in an interview to YouTube channel Desimartin.Sikka added that he later discussed the matter with Vishal Bharadwaj, who, according to him, responded, “Vishal said, ‘I’m like Gulzar’s son. This statement says it all.According to Sikka, he agreed to part with the film rights of Calling Sehmat only on the condition that he would have a say in choosing both the director and the lead actor. He alleged that Junglee Pictures eventually accepted those terms, albeit reluctantly.“And that’s how Meghna Gulzar became the director of this project,” he said.Sikka also claimed that Meghna maintained a warm relationship with him during the making of the film, addressing him as “uncle”. However, she alleged that their equation changed as soon as the filming was over.“I don’t want to call you uncle anymore. I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” he claims she wrote to him after the film’s completion.The author also criticized various creative liberties taken in adapting his book, saying that the changes significantly changed the essence of the original story.“According to the book, when Sehmat returned, he was welcomed with a red carpet by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and he saluted the tricolor. That was the real story. Meghna removes it and brings Sehmat back to her depressed state and they show that the Kashmiri woman made a mistake by fighting for India. There was no tricolor in the film but many Pakistani flags,” he said and added, “They painted the Pakistani army as soft and questioned the IB.“Sikka also alleged that after the release of Raazi in 2018, he contacted Gulzar and accused him of delaying the release of his book. He also claimed that Gulzar had influenced the organizers of Jaipur Sahitya Utsav not to invite him.“Gulzar called the Jaipur Literature Festival and told them not to invite me when I tried so hard to make his daughter a director.”He also alleged that the title of the film was deliberately adapted from Kaling Sehmat.“They changed the name of the film from Calling Sehmat to Raazi so that Sehmat is not as important as Meghna because they wanted to protect Meghna,” he claimed.During the same conversation, Sikka recounted an earlier incident which he said took place in 2008, when a man named Samar Khan, who identified himself as a director of Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, approached him to acquire the rights to Kaling Sehmat.According to Sikka, he quoted Rs 1.5 crore for the rights and insisted on retaining control over the choice of director and cast. He claimed that those demands were rejected.He got up and said, ‘We pay 5-7 lakhs Chetan Bhagat. who are you?’ I refused to sell him the book. “We’re going to make it anyway,” he said. Do what you want to do.”Sikka also alleged that after discussing the matter with friend Major Chiba, the dispute was settled and he received a written apology from Samar Khan. However, he claimed that Khan made another comment during the subsequent meeting.“Within two weeks, I sought a written apology from Samar Khan but when he met me in person, he said, ‘I won’t let you work in Mumbai’.”Earlier this year, in March, Sikka described allowing Meghna Gulzar to direct Raazi as her “grave wrong decision”. Despite repeatedly criticizing the film and its makers over the years, neither Meghna Gulzar nor Gulzar have publicly responded to her allegations.
[ad_2]
Source link
