When Sridevi Flung Aside Her Heels For Aamir

'Somehow no producer found the right project that would justify casting these two selective stars with each other.'

The very first issue of the magazine I edited featured on its cover Aamir Khan and Sridevi posing together for the first and only time. All youthful enthusiasm about being appointed the editor of Movie magazine in October 1988, I desired to bring in a new look with a splash.

In those days, it was practically unheard of to arrange a magazine photo shoot with two stars who were not doing a film together. But I wanted to do something startlingly different for my first cover.

Sridevi was the reigning queen of Hindi films and young Aamir was the flavour of the season post Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak so I decided on a joint cover with them.

I wisely approached Aamir first and got his consent because the first question Sridevi asked me was: 'Has Aamir agreed?'

At the photo session, Aamir was elated though a tad nervous. After all, he had just scored his first success while Sridevi had been a leading star for a decade.

Also, Sridevi, for some reason, was sporting high heels.

When I whispered to my photographer friend Rakesh Shreshtha that she was looking taller than him, Sridevi overheard and flung aside her heeled shoes.

Did Aamir and Sridevi chat with each other?

Only formal hellos.

But their photos crackled.

I was ecstatic when I saw the results of the photoshoot.

However, I ran up against an unexpected hurdle.

My publishers had appointed a hotshot designer duo from the advertising world to design the magazine. And they took one look at the negatives in the dark room (this was pre-digitisation) and airily declared: 'We have decided to go with a Sridevi solo picture on the cover.'

While a Sridevi cover would have looked undeniably attractive, it would have hardly been ground-breaking.

I politely underlined that it was my call to make, and saved a much-talked-about cover from the jaws of anonymity.

Analysing the hot reception to the cover, Rakesh Shreshta said, "The boy next door standing with the diva was like the ultimate fantasy of the common man coming true."

Aamir and Sridevi sure did look good together, but sadly while Sri paired up with Salman (Chaand Ka Tukda) and Shah Rukh (Army), somehow, no producer found the right project that would justify casting these two selective stars with each other.

Anyway, the issue with Aamir and Sridevi on the cover sold out at the stands in days and we had to rush in a reprint.

As the editor of Movie magazine, creating a stand out cover was a monthly challenge and I rubbed shoulders with the best shutterbugs in showbiz.

The soft-spoken soft-focus specialist Gautam Rajadhyaksha shot the joint Rajesh Khanna-Amitabh Bachchan cover, the jocular Jagdish Mali shot the Pooja Bhatt body-painted cover, and Mr Rush Rakesh Shrestha shot Aamir-Sridevi besides Shah Rukh (at the peak of his dark Darr-Baazigar days) being overrun by a bunch of toddlers.

I would like to believe that the foundation for this awareness about visual quality was laid by my stint as a photojournalist.

A few years earlier, I had armed myself with a Nikon camera and ventured into photo-journalism to supplement my modest salary and capture the essence of film personalities, not just in words but also in images.

Dimple Kapadia and Jackie Shroff were my favourite muses but I also shot Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Meenakshi Seshadri, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan, Salman and Aamir.

Baby-Faced Aamir Pulled The Wool Over My Eyes

I shot this picture of a young Aamir Khan, with some baby fat still intact, in the late 1980s at Sea Rock Hotel. While excited about his nascent success, he was also handling it with remarkable equanimity in those early days.

A day before I met him, an actor had inadvertently let slip that Aamir, already a sensation among teenagers, was secretly married to Reena Dutta. I wanted to hear the story from the horse's mouth.

Aamir heard me out but denied the marriage.

Though disappointed, I asked Aamir to pose for me on the stairs of the 5-star hotel that led to the swimming pool. He happily obliged. I tried to capture the dreamy look in his eyes as he looked into the distance towards an as-yet-uncertain future.

Later, of course, Aamir came clean to us and talked about how he hated hiding the truth.

But family elders wanted to protect his fledgling career.

"I felt very bad," Aamir said ruefully. "However, Reena made it easier for me. She was very understanding. When the film completed 100 days, I went up to Nasir uncle and expressed my wish to bring Reena out of hiding. He agreed and I was thrilled."

Aamir Postermag Creates Near Stampede

All my collaborations with Aamir, whether it was Movie magazine or two new adjacent concepts Postermag and Classic Postcards, were superhits.

Once again, Aamir was the subject of the first issue of Postermag, two eight sheeter posters which when folded also became a magazine.

When Aamir turned up to release Postermag at a bookstore in Bandra (north west Mumbai), teenagers from a nearby college lined up for autographed copies and soon created a near stampede with their clamouring for the star.

'Chunk' In The Armour

Inspired and enthused by my golden run with Aamir, I planned another Movie cover, this time with Sunny Deol, Sanjay Dutt and him together.

But Aamir inexplicably backed out at the nth hour, and didn't turn up at Sunny's bungalow at the designated time.

Sunny had organised tall glasses of lassi for us but I was too preoccupied to sip the drink.

I had the option of calling off the shoot or organising another star at the last hour. And voila! I thought of the single unfussy star who wouldn't crib at being a last-minute replacement.

Chunky Pandey not only bailed me out but also brought his own singlet after checking with me what colour singlets Sunny and Sanju were wearing.

Fortunately, things have a way of working out for everyone concerned.

Hard to believe that over 30 years have elapsed since those heady days and Aamir will turn 60 on March 14.

The Poster Boy with stars in his eyes has now metamorphosed into a giant star whose popularity straddles five decades from the 1980s to the 2020s.