November 5: That lucky day, three years ago!

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It is three years today to the date.

November 5, 2021 was the day when Sooryavanshi was released all over. It was indeed a lucky date for Hindi cinema. The pandemic was in its last stages and producers Hiroo Johar, Karan Johar, Aruna Bhatia (Akshay Kumar’s mother), Apoorva Mehta and Rohit Shetty struck gold with this huge hit, ending the jinx on the movie business. It gave the first shout-out to everyone that cinema-watching in movie halls was going to be back in fashion, as not even Covid could keep people from getting their value-for-money big-screen entertainment in theatres, with CinemaScope, Dolby Atmos and the works.

Sooryavanshi (obviously heavily panned like all Rohit Shetty films by ‘critics’ and pseudo-intellectuals) was that nutritive Hindi movie with all the ingredients of entertainment, and it has all along been a sick tradition with the so-called ‘intelligentsia’ to rubbish such movies in print, digital domains including social media and so on. But the all-important word-of-mouth and the festival fervor (after everyone missed out on Diwali 2020) made the people rush to the movie halls. After all, in Western India, it was also Diwali New Year and a holiday!

Rohit Shetty had made a bold decision to withhold the proposed release of this action drama (first announced in the last shot of his hit, Simmba, in Christmas 2018) that was earlier scheduled to release in late April 2020. But the lockdown was announced and sabotaged it. Shetty toughly refused to compromise with an OTT release, as he had faith in his audience (not just the single-screen masses!) and was confident that they would want to enjoy the actioner with nears and dears in a community setup.

And so, though Pushpa—The Rise: Part 1 also released later, and so did the exorbitantly-priced 83, Sooryavanshi took its place in the sun as the top hit of the year, with a Rs. 196 crore domestic nett figure, thus trouncing Pushpa…’s Hindi version by Rs. 88 crore.

Sooryavanshi was also the film that set India’s first cinematic Universe—Rohit Shetty’s Cop Universe—in full throttle, though, as said above, Akshay had been shown in a one-scene cameo in Simmba, in which  Shetty’s first cop, Singham a.k.a. Ajay Devgn had made a special appearance.

(Incidentally, this has now inspired Salman Khan’s similar cameo in Singham Again, and set the expectant tone for a new Shetty spectacle—Chulbul Singham, marking the coming together of the Cop Universe with the Dabangg franchise.).

The personal connection

At a personal level, the date was also immensely lucky, for it was the day my fourth book (and my second one with Rupa Publications after Dharmendra: Not Just A He-Man), Music by Laxmikant Pyarelal, was released.

This book, mostly written during the pandemic, was held up as it was originally supposed to be released later in 2020. But the publishers had to face the same delays that Sooryavanshi faced, and so, finally, it was out in the market on November 5, our Diwali New Year.

And this was to become the book that fetched me (and Rupa Publications) the “National Award for Best Book on Cinema 2021” at the 69^th National Film Awards held on October 17, 2023 at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. I received the award at the hands of the Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Draupadi Murmu, with the Information & Broadcasting Minister, Shri Anurag Thakur, looking on and applauding as he handed over the Swarna Kamal (Gold Medal) and citation to her to present to me. What a surreal experience that was!

And that is the reason why I now feel a special bond with the movie that released alongside my book and also became a hit—for Music by Laxmikant Pyarelal also got its first reprint just five months later in April 2022!