Naam turns 40: Mahesh Bhatt recalls Sanjay Dutt’s ‘I can finally look myself in the eye’ moment

Mahesh Bhatt marks 40 years of Naam by recalling Sanjay Dutt’s struggles, their emotional bond and the journey behind the film that became his first golden jubilee success. Read on.

Mumbai: I saw Sanjay Dutt step out of his car. The sunlight caught his hair and, for an instant, he looked golden to me. Handsome as a Greek god. He began walking towards me, his eyes fixed on mine across the distance. By the time he reached me, I could see that they were moist.

He held me in an embrace whose intensity I can still feel. There was warmth in it, gratitude, and something more he could not get out in words. Then he drew back, looked into my eyes and said, “I can finally look myself in the eye. Thank you.”

The body remembers. Forty years later, the body remembers.

Naam had been released. It would become my first golden jubilee film. But that morning I was not thinking of how many weeks it would run. I was looking at a young man who had come back from a place where many feared they might lose him.

There is a scene in Naam that returns to me whenever I think of Sanjay. Vicky, the man he plays, is on the run in Hong Kong. He calls the woman he loves, played with such feeling by Amrita Singh. His brother Ravi comes to him.

I remember shooting in Kowloon as evening fell and the........

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