Hypnotic Eyes and Smile of Mohanlal.

"His (Mohanlal) eyes and smile were so hypnotic." - Ahlam Khan (Theatre Artist)

Very few people in the audience at the JT Performing Arts Centre at Kochi would have known that Fatima is being played by Ahlam Khan, the 30-something daughter of the late Amjad Khan (Gabbar Singh of 'Sholay' fame).

And unlike her father, Ahlam has stayed away from Bollywood. Instead, her first and last love is theatre. Asked why the daughter of a Bollywood icon did not go into films, Ahlam says, "A lot of people choose a career in Bollywood because of the glamour. But I have seen it from the inside. There is a bad side too. When my father died, a lot of his filmi friends just disappeared. You are as good as your last film. Equations keep changing all the time. I was put off by that."

"A lot of projects which I wrote, when it came to the financial or production stage, it would get stalled," she says. "My sensibility was never mainstream or commercial cinema. I always believed in a parallel cinema. It was bizarre to meet producers and directors who wanted absolute rubbish that I finally gave up."

But Ahlam has had some good experiences in film also. For her friend Bijoy Nambiar’s short film, 'Reflections', she played one half of a romantic couple. The hero was Malayalam actor Mohanlal, who was playing a lonely 60-year-old man.

"I was intimidated by Mohanlal’s presence on the set [at the Borivili National Park, Mumbai]," she says. "But despite being a superstar he was so humble and down-to earth. He knew my dad well. He said, 'Your father was a great man. His goodwill and his name live on after so many years.' When Mohanlal said that it made me feel so proud of my father. The short film was a silent one, and I was quite floored by the way Mohanlal did scenes just by hearing directions from Bejoy. Later when I asked him how he knew whether this particular way of enacting was what Bejoy needed, he replied that its all pure magic. I love that word, and I still carries it with me. There is something so alluring in him and his way of acting. His eyes and smile were so hypnotic."