We meet at a suburban Mumbai studio. Rakesh Roshan, one of the country’s best known producer-directors is busy putting the finishing touches to his latest mega venture Krrish, a fantastic tale about a modern-day super hero. A fiveminute wait and he joins me at the makeshift dining space. Right away, I am struck by his matter-of-fact demeanour; his voice is so low-key that I have to strain to hear him through the cacophony of the bustling afternoon traffic outside.
Fair and light-eyed, bald pate shining, there’s an engaging air of quiet authority about the director. We get talking about Hrithik, his actor-son, and the hero of Krrish. It’s amusing to see how like all good Indian fathers, this celebrity father of a celebrity son, too, feels the need to boast of his son’s academic prowess back in school! "Hrithik was very good in his studies. We never kept a tutor. He used to concentrate and would always get above 90 per cent.’ Later in the evening when I meet the very-boyish Hrithik – fitness fetish and solid muscles, not withstanding – at his Juhu apartment home, he declares laughing: "Everyone around me was so poor in studies that compared to them I seemed to be intelligent! Actually, I used to average between 65-75 per cent."
Son of a music director, Rakesh Roshan was, by his own admission, a 'notorious child' and was sent away to boarding school. "I had a very formal relationship with my father. He was a strict disciplinarian. The turning point for me came when he expired; I was only 17 then, but I came back from college in Pune and went to work assisting in film direction. I had to look after my family. It made me a man overnight. ‘My relationship with my children is different. The age gap is not much – I got married at 22, and in a few years, my daughter Sunaina was born, followed by Hrithik two years later – so we’re like friends; we chat and spend easy-time together.’ His son doesn’t quite agree, though. ‘What we’re about is respect, there’s too much respect here so I wouldn’t want to call Dad a friend. He is someone I look up to; a friend is someone at your own level."
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