Bollywood Flashback: When Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla’s trivial fight took a serious turn

There was a time when Bollywood’s original chirpy and bubbly girl, Juhi Chawla, could walk away with the ‘most charming smile’ award without any fight. Known for her impeccable comic timing, though she had to face tough competition from her contemporaries like Madhuri Dixit, Juhi, too, had a huge fan following. She shared a very close bond with both, Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan. She has often said that she has grown in her career with them. Juhi talks about the two Khans and some of her other co-stars like Rishi Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty and Sunny Deol  while reminiscing few funny and memorable moments with each one of them.

Aamir Khan – the 4am friend

Aamir and I used to fight like kids on sets. He would tease me, play pranks on me, we have seen him play pranks on other heroines, it was such a fun time. I really admired Aamir because anything that I asked him, he would explain in detail, he is a very intelligent guy. It was wonderful to listen to him. It was great comfort working with him. There was an ease, I always thought that if there was one person I can call when in trouble it was Aamir. He was kind of 4am friend. But he was such a prankster. One day, in Filmistan studios, while.keeping a straight  face he tells me that he knew how to read palms. He took my palm in his hand and suddenly spat on it and started running. I chased him while yelling. Couple of hours later, Manisha (Koirala), who was shooting on the next floor, joined us. He played the same prank on her. He took her palm in her hand, and I was almost rolling down on the floor laughing. Once, when we were shooting for Tum Mere Ho, he chased me with a snake in his hand. He played asapera in the film and he’d learnt how to handle snakes. I would get nervous even looking at a snake and forget my lines. One day we were shooting an intimate bedroom scene and when I came for the shoot in the morning, I found him playing with a baby snake. Next he asked me to hold the snake and started coming closer, I was so petrified. I just fled and started running. I ran all around Filmistan and Aamir was running after me. It was quite a funny sight for everybody.

“Aamir and I didn’t speak to each other for five to six years”

Aamir and I were the best of pals. If there was one platonic relationship I shared, it was with him. He was like my buddy, we were on back-slapping terms. I was never ever romantically interested in him. I just loved him. We would fight over stupidest of things and then come back together. During the shoot of Ishq, Aamir and I fought three to four times. He made me cry with his pranks, and after our last fight I got really mad at him and I didn’t turn up for shoot the next day, which made him very angry. We stopped talking to each other. Both of us felt that we are angry with each other, we assumed that now we won’t talk to each other ever. Obviously, we didn’t know what was going on in our head. Had I known that this wasn’t true and I was just assuming, I would have gone and given him a hug. Why break our friendship? We didn’t speak for about five to six years. Finally, I made the first move and went to meet him when there was something crucial happening in his life..He told me then that he kept thinking I was angry.That is the most childish and stupid thing to do, we took very long to make up. But I learnt a very important lesson with this incident. When you are good friends and you have had a fight, go and make up immediately otherwise the communication gap can lead to misunderstandings. When you speak, misunderstanding goes away in a minute. You have to just extend your hand towards the other person and he or she would be happy to come back.

Shah Rukh Khan : Homeless SRK ate Studio food, drank Unit tea

He is very intelligent and witty. He would become one of the unit members during shoots. He would eat the unit food, drink the unit tea in the same glass as others. He didn’t have his own home those days. He’s from Delhi and during initial days he was staying at somebody’s house whereas we would get food from home. As an actor he was always ready to cooperate and assist the directors. He would be willing to do 200 rehearsals, 20 takes, whatever they expected from him. He would add value to scenes and make it more and more interesting. He would make people laugh between shots and do good work, he was always joy to work with.

Rishi Kapoor : How Chintu drove away his fans

I would never be the target of Chintuji’s (Rishi Kapoor) pranks, it was never on me but on people coming to him for autographs. Some fans would come, push their children in the front saying that they want to take his picture, but actually it was their mummy or daddy who wanted it. This would really annoy Chintuji, who would, with a straight face, start talking in English while using big, big words which were totally unrelated. People would start wondering what he was talking. They would get nervous as things would get complicated and not make any sense to them. This was his ploy to drive away these fans out of studios or locations. I would be rolling with laughter knowing exactly why he was doing it. We didn’t have much to talk with each other and we would kill time by playing Scrabble. In fact, we would have a kind of championship and most of the time he would end up defeating me.

Jackie Shroff : Jaggu Dada’s fans brought him ghar ka khana 

Jackie is a very earthy person. He would never like the hotel food and always preferred homemade food. So whenever we would go on outdoor location, Jackie had this brilliant idea of having homemade food. During the shoot of Aaina, we had gone to Khandala. When people would throng for his autograph or to take pictures with him, Jaggu Dada had just one request from them – to get homemade food for him. ‘Photo lena hai toh ghar se khana lana padega (If you want a picture with me, you will have to get homemade food for me) It was a big honour for the locals…Jackie ke liye khana jaa raha hai… they would most willingly and with lot of love get food for him. It was such a novel and wonderful idea.

Suniel Shetty : Bollywood’s Anna scared Juhi with missed calls

I shot for a film, a thriller, with Suniel but it never got released. We were shooting in Ooty and mobile phones had just come in. There was some number that kept flashing on my phone but when I tried taking the call, nobody answered. I kept getting these blank calls repeatedly and it really got me worried and scared as well. I told Suniel about it and he kept telling me, ‘Ya, ya, you got to be careful…’ Here I was telling him about these missed calls and he was making me think that somebody was stalking me while I was believing him. Later I realised that he’d made his friend call me repeatedly from the sets!

Akshay Kumar : The ‘magician’ co-star made Juhi’s watch disappear

Akshay is one superb magician. He talks to you while holding your hand, your wrist, keeps you engaged in conversation and within few seconds you realise your watch has disappeared. I just can’t believe how well he does it. He really knows how to do Haath ki safai. 

Sunny Deol : An aloof screen lover

He’s a sweet and reserved person. I didn’t know what to talk to him and would sit quietly on the sets whenever I shot with him. We did quite a few films together – Darr, Lootere, Arjun Pandit...He would be very nice. While acting we did what the scene required, look into each other’s eyes and stuff because obviously we have to pretend all the time. But once the scene was done, we would be a bit aloof and not talk much.

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