New Delhi: Former Miss India Swaroop Sampat recently took a nostalgic trip down memory lane. The actress-turned-educationist recalled how filmmaker Manmohan Desai brought the magic of cinema to the bylanes of South Mumbai during Ganapati festivities.
Speaking to TV9, Swaroop revealed that every street of Khetwadi, where she grew up, would come alive with elaborate Ganapati pandals. “Every lane of Khetwadi would have a Ganapati pandal and me and my brother would visit every pandal to take darshan,” she said.
Manmohan Desai’s Ganapati screenings
But what made her lane truly special was the presence of legendary filmmaker Manmohan Desai. According to Sampat, Desai would host screenings of his latest releases right in the heart of the neighbourhood during the celebrations. “There was something that people in our lane knew was that director Manmohan Desai lived in our lane and on every Ganapati he would organise a film show of his latest film,” she recalled.
Those screenings weren’t held in theatres but on makeshift screens fashioned from white curtains. Swaroop described how families and children gathered in the lanes, sitting together to watch the films under the festive lights. “Everybody would come and sit in the lane and watch the film together. Our house was very strategically placed. Sometimes I have seen the film from the front side of the projector and there were times I have seen the film from the backside but all in all it was great fun during our younger days,” she shared.
Among the many films she enjoyed during those celebrations were Rajesh Khanna’s Haathi Mere Saathi, a special memory as the superstar himself lived nearby in Girgaon’s Thakurdwar, along with the filmmaker’s classics like Amar Akbar Anthony and Seeta Aur Geeta.
When Paresh Rawal bought black tickets for Amar Akbar Anthony
Interestingly, Amar Akbar Anthony also played a part in Swaroop’s personal life. She revealed that her first movie outing with her now-husband, Paresh Rawal, was at the Liberty Cinema in South Mumbai, where they watched Manmohan Desai’s blockbuster. The seats, however, weren’t together. “That actor had bought the tickets from a black marketeer. The seats were on separate ends of the same row,” she said with a laugh.
(With inputs from Bharti Dubey.)