Weekend

In today’s weekend blog, I am writing about a Bollywood film which was released 23 years back in 1997, and this film won many awards and was declared as super hit films of that year and which did the maximum business during that year in the country. The film was made on the budget of Rs 10 Cr and did the world wide business of Rs 66 Cr. This was a war film based on real incident during Indo Pak war of 1971, and the film I am talking about is Border,which was based on battle of Longewala with Pakistan. The film was produced and directed by JP Dutta, and had avery big ensemble cast comprising of  Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Jackie Shroff, Akshaye Khanna, Tabu, Pooja Bhatt , Raakhi, Kulbhushan Kharbandha and many more. It had music by  by Anu Malik, and its song ‘Sandese  Aate Hain, Humen Tadpate Hain’ is considered as one of the best patriotic song in a war film. I am giving below the some unknown facts about this film :

1 The day this film open there was big tragedy in Delhi’s Uphaar cinema, where due to short circuit in transformer there was big fire in the cinema  hall, where 59 people died and more than 100 were injured. The theatres owners were convicted in the court case for their negligence, which  lasted for more than decade.

2 The main character of this film was based on Army officer Maj Kuldeep Singh Chandrapuri, who was leading the army unit at Longewala . This role was played by Sunny Deol. Kuldeep Singh for his leadership during this battle  was awarded Mahavir Chakra.

3 JP Dutta’s brother was air force Pilot who died in crash, and his film was dedicated to him by his brother.

4 The film was shot on the real location, where the battle of Longewala happened, place is near Bikaner in Rajasthan. In the film real tanks and air crafts were used. Some real army jawans also acted in this film.

5 For the role which was played by Akshaye Khanna, earlier Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgan were also considered. Salman Khan and  Akshay Kumar refused the role , Aamir Khan although liked the role but was unable to give the dates as he was busy shooting for Ishq and Ajay Devgan said he does not want to work in multi starrer film.

6 In this film Sunny Deol acted first time as Sikh, and after this film he acted in many more films as Sikh character.

7 For the air force pilot’s role Sanjay Dutt was first choice  but due to his unavailability  due to jail and court cases, the role was then offered to Jackie Shroff.

8  Shabrani Mukherjee made her debut with this film, and played the role of wife of Bhairon Singh (Sunil Shetty), a BSF personnel. She is cousin of Kajol and Rani Mukherjee, but her later films in which she acted were flops, and she is only remembered for her role in Border.

9 Lt Dharamveer (Akshaye Khanna) and Subhedar Rattan Singh (Puneet Issar) were shown in the film as the martyr but in real life they were alive after the war.

10 The character of  Subhedar Mathuradas was to be played by Marmik Singh (remember  he had played the role of Aamir’s elder brother in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander), and he reported for location also. He was unhappy with the arrangements at location and left the film. At last moment he was replaced by Sudesh Berry.

11 The song ‘ Sandese Aate Hain, Humen Tadpate Hain, made the life ofSonu Nigam, as play back singer. Before this song became hit he used to give play back for few  films where the music rights were with T series and was also hosting TV show ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’, but with this film he became well known  and this established his career as play back singer.

12 Sunil Shetty first refused the role of BSF officer Bhairon Singh, then JP Dutta started looking for other actors to play this role, for some time he considered Sanjay Kapoor and Armaan Kohli, but he was not convinced about their suitability for this role. So JP Dutta went back to Sunil Shetty and this time he was able to convince Sunil, and he agreed to play this role. This role is considered as one of the best roles of Sunil Shetty’s career.

So these were some unknown facts about film Border.

Waiting for your views/feed backs/comments.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

7th Feb 2020