Alia Bhatt’s Raazi is widely viewed as one of the landmark performances of her career, but the film has continued to face criticism from Harinder Singh Sikka, the author of Calling Sehmat, the book that inspired the 2018 spy drama. In a recent interview, Sikka leveled new allegations against director Gulzar, director Meghna Gulzar and a person he identified as a representative of Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment.Sikka claimed that his first meeting with Gulzar took place around 2016-17, where the veteran lyricist and director urged him to consider Meghna Gulzar for the project.
“When I went to meet Gulzar at his house, he said, ‘My daughter hasn’t gotten any work for four years. People think Talvar is Vishal Bhardwaj’s creation. So give her some work.’ I said, ‘I will do it.’ It’s a promise,” he said in an interview with Desmartini’s YouTube channel.Sikka added that he later discussed the matter with Vishal Bhardwaj, who, according to him, replied, “Vishal said, ‘I am like Gulzar’s son.
This statement said it all.”According to Sikka, he agreed to relinquish the rights to Calling Sehmat only on the condition that he had a say in the selection of the director and lead actors. He claimed that Junglee Pictures eventually accepted these terms, reluctantly.“So Meghna Gulzar became the director of this project,” he said.Sikka further claimed that Meghna maintained a warm relationship with him throughout the film’s shooting, and addressed him as ‘uncle’.
However, their equation allegedly changed once the filming wrapped.“I don’t want to call you uncle anymore. He claimed she wrote to him after the movie ended. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”The author also criticized several creative liberties taken in adapting his book, saying that the changes significantly changed the essence of the original story.“According to the book, when Sehmat returned, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) welcomed her with a red carpet and tricolor salute.
That was the real story. Meghna removed that and brought Sehmat back into a state of depression and they made it look like a Kashmiri woman had made a mistake in fighting for India. “There were no tricolours in the film but there were a lot of Pakistani flags,” he said, adding: “They portrayed the Pakistani army as weak and questioned the IB.
“Sika also claimed that he contacted Gulzar after Al-Razi’s release in 2018 and accused him of delaying the publication of his book.
He further claimed that Gulzar influenced the organizers of the Jaipur Literary Festival not to invite him.“Gulzar called the Jaipur Literature Festival and told them not to invite me after I put in so much effort to make his daughter a director.”He also claimed that the title of the film was deliberately changed from Calling Sehmat to Raazi.“They changed the name of the film from Calling Sehmat to Raazi so that Sehmat would not gain as much importance as Meghna because they wanted to protect Meghna,” he claimed.During the same conversation, Sikka revisited an earlier incident which he said took place in 2008, when a person named Samar Khan, who was allegedly a manager at Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, approached him for the rights to Calling Sehmat.According to Sikka, he demanded Rs 1.5 crore for the rights and insisted on retaining control over the selection of director and cast. He claimed that these demands were rejected.“He got up and said: ‘We give 5-7 thousand rupees.’
Chetan Bhagat
. Who are you?’ I refused to sell him the book. “We’ll do it anyway,” he said. You do what you want to do.”Sika also claimed that after discussing the matter with his friend Major Sheba, the dispute was resolved and he received a written apology from Samar Khan. However, he claimed that during a subsequent meeting, Khan made another statement.“Within two weeks, I received a written apology from Samar Khan, but when he met me in person, he said, ‘I will not let you work in Mumbai.’”Earlier this year, in March, Sikka called allowing Meghna Gulzar to direct Razi “the most serious misjudgment.” Despite his repeated criticism of the film and its makers over the years, neither Meghna Gulzar nor Gulzar have publicly responded to his allegations.
