The 2002 film ‘Aankhen’ is considered a cult. The film starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Sushmita SenArjun Rampal, Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal: still loved for its unique design and treatment. It revolves around three blind men who rob a bank after being trained and deployed by Bachchan’s character. While the film got a lot of love, did you know that the character played by Paresh Rawal was originally meant to be played by Paresh Ganatra. The film is based on a Gujarati play called, ‘Aandhro Paato’, in which Ganatra plays the role. During an exclusive chat with ETimes, when Paresh talked about his latest web-series ‘Made In India. A Titan Story’, the actor talks about his journey in movies. He started in theater followed by many television shows and then movies like ‘No Entry’, ‘Welcome’. When asked about his role in ‘Aankhen’, he shared, “Aankhen is a film based on my Gujarati play ‘Aandho Paato’. When they made the film on a small scale, they said that I will play the role of Ilyas played by Paresh Rawal, because in the play, I played that role. I am very happy because that game was a big hit. But then Mr. Bachchan said yes for the film and he was approached because he was the ideal choice for it. When Mr. Bachchan said yes and got on board, director Vipul Shah explained to me that now the film will be mounted in a different dimension. He added, “I completely understand and it is clear that the rest of the cast should also be accordingly. However, I told him that since the film is based on my play in which I played an important character, I need some role in the film. So when they gave me the character of Shailesh and people liked it very much. Ganatra recalls how things eventually fell into place. “When I saw Aankhen, based on my character Shailesh, Anees Bazmee I was called ‘No Entry’. It’s supposed to be only two scenes but please do it, I won’t cut it. But he liked my work so much that he gave me more scenes in ‘No Entry’ and I shot with them for 21 days.” ‘No Entry’ also stars Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, Salman Khan, Bipasha Basu, Esha Deol and Celina Jaitly.
