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Celebrating 25 years of Pardes: Check out this interesting trivia about Shah Rukh Khan-Mahima Chaudhary starrer
The movie was released 25 years ago today.
Pardes: The cult classic of Bollywood that you must watch
Pardes, the cult classic starring Shah Rukh Khan and Mahima Chaudhry has now completed twenty-five years of its making. The cult classic is famous amongst the young audience for its evergreen songs like "Ye Dil" and "Mera Hindustan". The film also features Amrish Puri, Apurva Agnihotri, and Aditya Narayan among others in its star cast. The Subhash Ghai-directed film was released in 1997 and to celebrate twenty-five years of the film, let's have a look at some of the trivia surrounding the movie and meet its star cast.
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Shah Rukh Khan and his role in the film
Shah Rukh Khan plays the role of Arjun who comes to India to meet Ganga, the soon-to-be wife of his foster brother, Rajiv. Ganga travels abroad to live with Rajiv’s family but faces severe criticism and ill-treatment from them and Arjun is her only solace there. The film is a story about their friendship that slowly turns into love and their struggle against all injustices that Ganga faces after her marriage.But did you know that Shah Rukh was not the first choice of the director? Subhash had first approached Aamir Khan to be the lead in his film but Aamir declined due to scheduling conflicts. The role was then offered to Salman but he too could not play the role. It is only then Shah Rukh bagged the role, which went on to be one of the most memorable characters that the actor has ever played.,
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Madhuri Dixit and her tussle with Subhash Ghai
Sources reveal that the role of Ganga was originally written for Madhuri Dixit.. But the actress had a falling out with Subhash Ghai on the sets of Khal Nayak after which he decided against casting her in the film. His next choice was going to be Juhi Chwala but Ghai was so impressed with Mahima's audition that he cast her as the female lead for his film.
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Mahima and her part in Pardes
Mahima plays the role of Ganga, a naive village girl who agrees to get married to a man of her father's choice. She travels abroad to live with her husband Rajiv's family. Not many of her fans might know but Mahima’s original name was Ritu. Director Subhash asked the actress to change her name to Mahima, as he believed the letter M was lucky. The actress went on to adopt that name as her stage name.
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Apurva Agnihotri
Apurva Agnihotri plays the role of rich brat Rajiv who gets married to a girl from a small village in India. He is cruel and not sympathetic to the condition of Ganga when she leaves her home and comes abroad. He abuses Ganga and hurts her violently. The role was Apurva's debut in Bollywood and he did the part with utmost conviction.
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The music of the film
Before Pardes, Subhash Ghai had been working only with the duo Laxman-Pyarelal to produce music for his films. But the director went with Nadeem Shravan for this specific movie that produced evergreen melodies that are still popular among the audience. Subhash even gave the music rights of the film to Tips this time, unlike his usual preference for HMV for his previous films.
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Supporting cast
Aditya Narayan is the child actor in the film. He plays the role of Ganga's younger brother. Amrish Puri plays the role of Ganga's father-in-law who is loving and caring to her until he gets to know about the affair between Arjun and Ganga. As always, the veteran was true to his character and evoked the needful emotions with utmost conviction. Smita Jaykar, Madhuri Bhatia, Alok Nath, and Pavan Malhotra among others are part of the supporting cast.