When Hrithik Couldn't Sleep At Night

Rediff.com's Ronjita Kulkarni, Hitesh Harisinghani and Afsar Dayatar bring back beautiful stories from The Roshans launch.

"I am so afraid that Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai is releasing again," Hrithik Roshan tells the media.

"People will go and think what were we thinking 25 years ago?!"

The room explodes with laughter.

But Hrithik is not done yet.

A picture of a youngster, who became an overnight star 25 years ago, is seen grinning on a large screen. It's a still from that hit song, Pyaar Ki Kashti Mein, and Hrithik takes us to that exact moment.

"I remember this guitar was given to me one day before. I was supposed to play it. When you give something like this to someone like me, you can expect me to go crazy. Because I didn't play the guitar and I had to look like I could play one," he recalls.

"I couldn't sleep that night. The whole night I kept trying to make a physical action with my fingers matching the sound of the instrument to the song. And I nailed it!" he exclaims.

"Today, my sons play the guitar and they look at that and say he just couldn't do it," Hrithik says with a laugh, as the room laughs with him again.

"I was obviously play-acting it and at least my fingers were moving with the sound. But they were all the wrong notes. So yeah, apparently I did not nail it," he says, shaking his head.

Watch this hilarious anecdote

But it's not Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai that the stage is set up for.

Netflix is all set to release The Roshans, which documents the lives of three generations of the family, Music Composer Roshanlal Nagrath, his sons Rakesh Roshan and Rajesh Roshan and his grandson, Hrithik Roshan.

Roshansaab passed away when his sons were still teenagers. The younger generation may not know the extent of his contribution to the film industry, but many of his songs are still heard today.

Hrithik never got to meet his grandfather and he wonders what kind of conversation they would have had.

"I would like to ask him about his childhood, about the things he went through. I think he may ask me if I'm happy," Hrithik says.

"I would thank him because I often wonder, you know, what was that drive that I had when I was doing my first film? What was it? Where did it come from? The simplest answer is that it was already there, it was in my cells. It was something that passed on."

The Roshans is directed by Shashi Ranjan, and he narrates how it all came together.

"Rakeshji has a very nice house in Khandala and takes me there often," Shashi says. "In the evening, we sit together and sing songs and listen to music. One day, I sang a few songs by Roshan sir. So Gudduji said, you sing a lot of daddy's songs. I said yes, I've been singing his songs since childhood. A discussion happened that we should do something for Roshan sir. He died very early unfortunately."

"I said, let's make a documentary on Roshan sir. He said, yes, let's see.

"After three-four days, I went to him again, saying, Gudduji, we should make that. Where will it be made, who will take it, I don't know, but we should make it," he says.

But Shashi admits, it was difficult to convince Hrithik for the documentary, and he tells us why.

"When my father said that he wants to make this documentary, at first I felt embarrassed," Hrithik says.

"I don't like attention," he explains (he's shy, he told us just a day before, and proved it by asking the media to stop applauding him at the event.

Even his pal Abhishek Bachchan, who made his debut the same year, just a few months later, calls him 'quiet' in The Roshans trailer.)

"But I realised, no, this is not about me," Hrithik continues. "It's not about me at all. This is about history and history is important. It is the history of my ancestors, my parents, my grandfather, my chacha..."

His chacha Rajesh Roshan, however, feels very differently.

"I am in the Roshan family but I think differently," he confirms, and tells everyone just what he thinks about the documentary.

The Roshan brothers are as different as chalk and cheese, and just a few minutes of observing them on stage gives that away.

While Rajesh Roshan loves to tell a good story, his quieter, older brother hastens to remind him that the stories must only be revealed in the documentary, not on stage.

But younger siblings are known to have their way, and Rajesh Roshan, who tasted success when he was barely 20 with his chartbuster soundtrack in 1975's Julie, dives in.

Listen to it here:

The media was treated to many moments in the Roshans' lives through photographs taken through the years.

There's one from the sets of Koyla, starring Shah Rukh Khan, and directed by Rakesh Roshan.

"Hrithik was assisting in that film, and he used to sit with me on the script writing also. He used to concentrate a lot, so he's looking at the two of us, drinking tea, and thinking that 'I am working!'"

There's another picture of a young Hrithik with Superstar Rajnikanth, when they starred in the 1986 film, Bhagwan Dada, directed by Hrithik's maternal grandfather J Om Prakash.

"Whenever I messed up a shot, whenever I made a mistake, my grandfather used to cut the shot. And Rajni sir used to take the blame," Hrithik says, and explains why in the video.

The Roshans, featuring over 40 celebrities, promises to pack in a lot of stories in its four-episode run time.

So if you want to know how the Nagrath surname changed to Roshan, tune in to Netflix on January 17.