The 2002 film ‘Aankhen’ is considered a cult. The film which starred Amitabh Bachchan, Sushmita Sen, Arjun Rampal, Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal is still loved for its unique plot and the treatment. It revolved around three blind robbing 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 original meant to be played by Paresh Ganatra. The film was based on a Gujarati play called, ‘Aandhro Paato’, where Ganatra had played this role. During an exclusive chat with ETimes, when Paresh spoke about his latest web-series ‘Made In India: A Titan Story’, the actor spoke about his journey in the movies. He started off with theatre followed by many television shows and then movies like ‘No Entry’, ‘Welcome’. When asked about his role in ‘Aankhen’, he shared, “Aankhen was a film based on my Gujarati play ‘Aandho Paato’. When they were making the film on a small level, they said I will be playing the role of Ilyas played by Paresh Rawal, because in the play, I had played that role. I was very happy because that play was a huge 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 on a different scale.” He added further, “I completely understood and it was obvious that the rest of the cast also needed accordingly. However, I did tell him that since the film is based on my play where I played an important character, I need some role in the film. That’s when they gave me Shailesh’s character and people really liked it. They still remember it.” Ganatra recalls how things eventually fell into place. “After seeing me in Aankhen, based on my character Shailesh, Anees Bazmee called me and gave me ‘No Entry’. He said there are only two scenes but please do it, I won’t cut. But he liked my work so much that he put in more scenes of mine in ‘No Entry’ and I shot with them for 21 days.” ‘No Entry’ also starred Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, Salman Khan, Bipasha Basu, Esha Deol and Celina Jaitly.
