In focus: Vivah's trial by fire

Disappointed after Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon, his Hrithik Roshan-Kareena Kapoor-Abhishek Bachchan love triangle, failed to strike a chord with the audience, Sooraj Barjatya turned to his father for a subject for his next film. "He had always chosen my subjects for me. Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon was the only time I picked the subject myself and it didn't work," the filmmaker says candidly.

Rajkumar Barjatya handed him a newspaper cutting he'd had with him for 20 years, saying, "I'm giving you a subject that only you can make." It was a story of a man from Meerut who had married his burnt bride-to-be on her hospital bed with the nurses as the delighted baraatis.

Two films made earlier by none other than the legendary Raj Kapoor, Aag and Satyam Shivam Sundaram, both revolving around burnt brides, had not fared well and Sooraj remembers that there was a huge debate about whether they should go ahead with the 'taboo' topic. Eventually, they decided to risk it and started Vivah, around a young couple, Prem and Poonam, who agree to an arranged match. But two days before the wedding, a fire breaks out in Poonam's home. She runs out in time but dashes back into the flames after realising that her cousin, Rajni, is trapped inside. She is badly burnt and everyone believes the wedding will be called off. But Prem turns up at the hospital with doctors from Delhi and marries Poonam informally before the surgery. A month-and-a-half later, they return home to take the pheras and start their life together.

For Sooraj, the biggest challenge was the suhaag raat in the climax. His writers had conceived a regular, happilyever-after end but he didn't feel it was right and chatted up a doctorfriend, a burn specialist who was a consultant on the project. "He told me how they counselled hero husbands, telling them that they would have to live with pus-filled blisters, scars and the stench of burnt flesh for a long time before they healed. It was also pointed out that the girl's self confidence was at its lowest. I rewrote the climax. Prem's line to Poonam, "We won't need a nurse anymore," could have gone against the film. We took a chance, for me Vivah wasn't about aag but how this couple zindagi ke aag ko saath mein jhelte hain. Fortunately, it worked for us," reminisces a relieved Sooraj.

The fire during the shoot was for real, with Alok Nath, Amrita Rao and the other actors along with the many technicians and Sooraj himself rushing around, trying to avoid the flames. "We had fire brigades waiting outside. Luckily, there were no injuries and in the post-production, the flames were enhanced through special effects," he says.

He recalls how, on Amrita's insistence, they had visited burn wards at Sion Hospital and a few others. "It's one thing to write a script and another to see it for real. Amrita would clutch my hand tightly as we did the rounds and learnt that this was the only ward where the girl would be screaming inside in agony, and sometimes, there was no one from either her maika or sasural waiting outside."

The director had himself gone through an arranged marriage at the age of 22 with Vineeta, a girl from a business family in Gwalior, so he instantly connected with the story. But, he remembers that for his hero, Shahid Kapoor, and leading lady, Amrita, who had not grown up on this kind of cinema, it was an alien world.

"They were like bewildered kids who didn't even understand the dialogue they were speaking and certain plot points in the screenplay. There was a scene when Prem comes to see the girl and her uncle keeps talking to him for a long time. Shahid asked me why we couldn't hurry up and introduce him to the girl," laughs Sooraj, adding that for that scene Shahid had turned up in jeans and couldn't understand why he had to change out of them. "He also threw a fit about the pagdi. When I told him he couldn't get married without one, he promised he wouldn't wear a padgi when he got married for real. I reminded him of that recently."

The film released on November 10, 2006, and was one of the biggest hits of the year.