Most films exist in a specific universe and while some filmmakers manage to create unique worlds with their cinema, very few like Sooraj Barjatya are able to craft a cosmos that can be both real and illusory. Intriguingly enough, since the late 1980s to now, the one factor that has come to define the realm of Barjatya's cinematic universe is an actor who would ideally appear to be a misfit. With Prem Ratan Dhan Payo  the fourth Sooraj Barjatya film to feature Salman Khan after almost a decade and a half  the actor tries returning to what was once his home. But would an entire generation of fans, who can't imagine the actor beyond Chulbul Dabangg Pandey or Pawan Bajrangi Bhaijaan Chaturvedi, still have time for the soft-spoken sanskari PremIJ

One of the oldest surviving film production houses in India, Rajshri, was set up by Tarachand Barjatya in the year of Indian Independence, and in spite of being actively producing films since the early 1960s and being associated with a kind of cinema that perhaps in hindsight could be defined as typical ‘Indian’, the production house was never associated with cinema of the country as some others.

When compared to films produced by Dev Anand under his banner Nav Ketan, BR Chopra under BR Films, and, to an extent even his younger brother Yash with Yash Raj Films, Rajshri’s body of work features cinema that is more personal and at the same time more universal in an Indian context.

Thematically a large number of BR Chopra-produced films, especially the early ones such as Naya Daur (1957), Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Dharamputra (1961) and to an extent Kanoon (1960), were socially conscious films that highlighted a kind of a nationalist identity that would bind a young nation.

Although more entertaining and even escapist to a degree, the cinema produced by Dev Anand, too, in its own way contributed to creating a visual as well as aural milieu that highlighted nation-building activities. But Yash Chopra’s cinema, without being squarely social in a broad context, managed to become the definition of Hindi cinema for not just an entire generation of Indian audience but also initiated the interest of the Western world in popular Hindi cinema.

Beyond these three when it came to social cinema it were Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt who ended up dividing the sphere among them. With each being identified with a particular variation of the genre that covered the entire spectrum, it was practically impossible for anyone else to enter the fray.

In the early 1960s, when Tarachand started producing films, Rajshri instantly came to be associated with what the world later recognised as indie. The first film that Tarachand produced was Aarti (1962), which featured established stars such as Meena Kumari, Ashok Kumar and Pradeep Kumar in a story that was the kind that would have attracted a Bimal Roy or Guru Dutt.

The tale of a doctor, Aarti (Meena Kumari), who falls in love and eventually marries Deepak (Pradeep Kumar), a man who saves her from killing herself, in spite of being engaged to Prakash (Ashok Kumar) didn’t suffer the burden of the stars, which sometimes the A-lister productions couldn’t do away with. But it was with

the very next film that Barjatya produced that Rajshri went on to create a reputation for itself as a production house that celebrated stories and characters that the more mainstream names would either ignore or stylise beyond recognition.

A surprise hit, Dosti (1964) featured two unknown actors Sudhir Kumar and Sushil Kumar in the lead roles of friends Mohan, who is blind, and Ramnath, who loses his legs in an accident. The poignant tale of their friendship and sacrifice is still remembered. Directed by Satyen Bose, the small film went on to collect over `2 crore at the box-office and besides being the third highest grosser of the year, it also walked away with six Filmfare Awards including Best Film, Best Story and Best Dialogue.

The film’s music with songs like ‘Meri dosti mera pyar’, ‘Rahi manwa dukh ki chinta’, ‘Jaanewalo zara’ and ‘Chahoonga main tujhe’, which won Mohammed Rafi the Filmfare for Best Male Playback and Majrooh Sultanpuri his only Filmfare for Best lyricist, became a landmark in not just Hindi film soundtrack but also the careers of composers laxmikant-Pyarelal, who also got their first ever Filmfare for Best Music for Dosti.

Barjatya went on to produce Satyajit Ray’s Mahapurush (1965) next and followed with a remake of one of the first Konkani films, Nirmon, in Hindi as Taqdeer (1967).

Rajshri’s image has undergone a major change since the early days and memorable as they may be it’s not a woman trying to follow her heart in Aarti or the innocence of two kindred spirits in Dosti that come to mind when one thinks of the production house. On the contrary, it’s the virtuous Prem, an embodiment of the ideal son, the loving brother, the caring friend, the compassionate brother-in-law, the playful nephew and the generous employer all rolled into one. But above all Prem is someone who is naturally respectful towards everyone and everything. Even though this interpretation of the cultural ethos of a joint Marwari family such as the one Sooraj Barjatya grew up in might appear to be unreal in the times we live in, ironically enough, it has ended up being a well-accepted inversion of what typifies escapism in popular Hindi cinema.

What makes this more riveting is the choice of the actor who manifests the filmmaker’s vision. For an actor who was relatively familiar even before the success of Maine Pyar Kiya (1989) catapulted him to superstardom, Salman Khan’s image wasn’t the kind that one would associate with Rajshri.

For starters Rajshri circa 1989 had come to be associated with small and far from the radar of A-list stars films, and Salman — thanks to a handful of TV commercials like Hero Honda motorcycles, limca, and his debut film, Biwi Ho To Aisi (1988), where he played the spoilt rich younger brat to Farooq Sheikh’s morally sound elder brother — didn’t seem an ideal fit for a space vacated by Anil Dhawan, Sachin or Arun Govil. But what made Salman’s Prem in Maine Pyar Kiya work was the manner in which Sooraj configured both the actor’s image and screen presence as well as the interpretation of the ‘good son’ that would suit the times.

The late 1980s was a time when popular Hindi cinema was showing signs of a transition, and Sooraj’s film found a fantastic platform that was built by Mansoor’s Khan’s Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), which had come a year earlier and had got a segment of the audience, that was lost due to the dip in quality of cinema and the onslaught of video piracy, back to the halls.

Maine Pyar Kiya had a hero who wasn’t a throwback on the stars of the past and the foreign returned Prem (Salman), was agyakari but not someone who didn’t have a mind of his own. The film’s plot — a rich city boy falling in love with a girl from a small town, Suman (Bhagyashree), and later leaving the comfort of his father’s (Rajeev Verma) house to earn `2,000 to prove to the girl’s father (Alok Nath) that he had his own independent identity — wasn’t path-breaking and neither was the treatment, but the narrative where Sooraj got this young man to become a bridge of sorts between two different generations without disrespecting traditional values and at the same time being someone who appreciated modernity was what clicked.

Prem in Maine Pyar Kiya is a character that grew up in comfort but is aware of the penury that his father underwent and one can’t help but wonder if this is what Sooraj was feeling as he took over the baton from his grandfather Tarachand. By the time Tarachand handed over the reins of Rajshri to Sooraj, the landscape of popular Hindi cinema that he was a part of had changed. In a clear departure from the saccharine-laden symbolism that has now come to define Rajshri, there was once a time in the 1970s when the production house experimented with subjects across genres and was one of the few places that cared about characters and not the image.

It was arguably the only production house that didn’t get overwhelmed by the tidal wave of action films, and their big hits through the decade featured the short-lived stars like Anil Dhawan (Piya Ka Ghar, 1972), Honeymoon (1973), Rameshwari (Dulhan Wahi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye, 1977), Arun Govil (Paheli, 1977), Sawan Ko Aane Do (1979). It was also the place where some actors found their career-defining roles — Jaya Bhaduri (Piya Ka Ghar), Amol Palekar (Chitchor, 1976) and Rakhee (Tapasya, 1976) — and also managed to feature some of the biggest stars in roles that were diametrically opposite of their popular image — Dharmendra in Jeevan Mrityu (1970) and Amitabh Bachchan in Saudagar (1973).

Their films largely followed a standard template — a humanist story based in an environment where family, both immediate as well as extended, played a vital role and featured actors who weren’t larger than life. Another common factor among their films was good music and had it not been for Rajshri, composers like Ravindra Jain and singers such as Hemlata and Yesudas might not have risen to prominence.

It’s hard to imagine but in midst of these films, Tarachand also produced a spy thriller like the original Agent Vinod (1977) with Mahendra Sandhu. But the brand couldn’t survive the era of South remakes, Bachchan’s one-man industry, and the rising popularity of art house cinema in the 1980s as strongly and got relegated to the lower half of the list when it came to marquee names. It failed to attract stars, or maybe the stars demanded higher fees. Besides the stars they had created — Sachin, Amol Palekar or Mithun Chakraborty, whose Tarana (1979) with Rajshri was one of his initial hits — were either past their sell-by dates or had moved on to bigger things.

It continued to make meaningful cinema such as Saaransh (1984), which was one of Rajshri’s most acclaimed films in this period, but it did precious little for the brand as far as the new kind of cinema-going audience was concerned. It was around this time that Tarachand sowed the seeds of change that saw Rajshri transform for the first time ever since its inception. In his grandson Sooraj, the patriarch saw an ideal person under whose baton a new phase could be ushered in without casting aside the brand’s heritage. And, in Salman, Sooraj found an unlikely fellow traveller.

If Sooraj was burdened by a glorious past that posed as an impediment for his flight of fancy, Salman’s background, too, wasn’t an easy load to carry. The son of legendary screenwriter Salim Khan, who along with one-time partner Javed Akhtar revolutionised the manner in which the hero was seen in Hindi cinema, Salman might have been making a name as a model and displayed signs of being a breakaway. But somewhere he searched for a break that would keep him attached to classic popular Hindi cinema.

Writer-filmmaker Johny Bakshi remembers how a young Salman would often request him to help put a word for him during his struggling days. Bakshi often visited Salim Khan and would notice how the writer never thought that Salman could make a conventional hero, and in spite of many opportunities Salim never pushed his son’s case.

Even for Sooraj, Salman wasn’t the first choice. If industry folklore could be believed then just about everyone from Deepak Tijori, Vindu Dara Singh, and Faraaz Khan, the son of Yusuf Khan who played the villainous Zabisco in Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), were in the running.

The two together came up with a character that has not only been Salman’s calling card over three decades, but even a gap of 15 years since the last time he played Prem in Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999), and two variations of Prem in the form of Hrithik Roshan in Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003), a remake of Rajshri’s own Chitchor, and Shahid Kapoor in Vivah (2006), hasn’t diminished its charm.

The singular facet of the audience’s fascination with Salman and Sooraj’s Prem has transcended all expectations and even logic. The post-liberalised India of the time when Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994) released and the sheer metamorphosis of Salman’s image in the years between Maine Pyar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! should have adversely impacted the fortunes of the film. Wouldn’t the city slicker Salman of Baaghi (1990) or Saajan (1991) or the star who allegedly assaulted his girlfriends be a miscast as Prem, who incidentally by now had also become sanskaariIJ

If reports are to be believed then Sooraj, too, might have had some doubts about Salman as Prem because he unsuccessfully pursued Aamir Khan for the same role but in the end the film surpassed all expectations. The follow-up in Hum Saath-Saath Hain saw Salman’s Prem share the spotlight with Saif Ali Khan, who was cast in the typical Prem-esque character, and Mohnish Bahl.

With every subsequent film, Prem has regressed, and perhaps this is a result of Sooraj trying to retreat to a world that is fast dying. If in Maine Pyar Kiya he was sure of gen-next and the past happily coexisting, with Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! Sooraj felt that a globalised India would sever ties with the past and as a result his world shrunk and existed in a vacuum. That’s why the locations, the sets and the execution of Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! seems illusory.

Interestingly while Sooraj retreated Salman’s onscreen demeanour, he raced in the opposite direction. Even his off-screen image — with Salman embroiled in numerous controversies, including an ongoing case where he is accused of poaching three chinkaras and a black buck, and a 2002 hit-and-run case where he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment (the case is presently being heard in the Bombay High Court) — seems light years away from the universe of a Barjatya film.

Yet, the overwhelming response to the recently released Prem Ratan Dhan Payo — that has come at a time when an entire generation of Salman fans that grew up without seeing him as Sooraj’s Prem and is used to him as a different Prem in No Entry (2005) or Partner (2007), or Radhe in Wanted (2009), Chulbul Pandey in Dabangg (2010) or Pawan in Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) — bears testimony to how the two different universes of Sooraj Barjatya and Salman Khan can coexist.

Some have accused the film of being pointless but such utopian cinema has always been celebrated in India. More so in a time when genres such as sci-fi or urban drama, and dark characters, such as killers and sociopaths, for instance, grab more eyeballs, the so-called cult of escapist mainstream Hindi cinema only becomes strong.

Moreover, there is an audience that likes the cosmos that Sooraj Barjatya creates which is different from the one that worships everything that Salman Khan does, and while the former might be a dying breed, it still deserves the cinema it wants.

Chintamani is the author of the best-selling Dark Star: The loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna I Tweet him @gchintamani