After 'Paltan', J P Dutta plans to revisit his first ever film, ‘Sarhad’

There’s something about destiny. At least that is what filmmaker Jyoti Prakash Dutta, better recalled as JP Dutta, believes in. He opened his innings in Bollywood as the director of the dramatic and beautifully layered ‘Ghulami’ starring Dharmendra, Mithun Chakraborthy, Naseeruddin Shah, Reena Roy, Smita Patil and Anita Raj. It was in the same year that he also tied the knot with actress Bindiya Goswami after a long courtship.

But there are few who know when and where their courtship began. Years before Ghulami came into existence the director was expected to make a film, titled ‘Sarhad’. If it hadn’t gone off track, the film would have marked several debuts in Bollywood including Naseer, Bindiya, Mithun Chakraborthy and Om Puri. It was on the sets of the film that he fell in love with Bindiya.

'Ghulami' was followed by multi-starrers like ‘Yateem’, ‘

Batwara

’, ‘Hathyaar’ and ‘

Kshatriya

’. Dutta turned producer with ‘Border’ and hasn’t looked back since then. But we hear that he might soon return to a pet project that was left incomplete back in the 1970s. ‘Sarhad’ was started in 1977 with Vinod Khanna, Mithun and Bindiya Goswami, and was about two friends who are separated by destiny as kids, only to meet again during a war, standing on opposite sides of the border. The film ran into financial troubles. By the time it was finally revived, Vinod Khanna had decided to quit films and follow Osho.

J P Dutta might soon revisit the project, and understandably with a fresh cast. Talking about the project, he says, “I just might bring ‘Sarhad’ back because it has a subject that is still very relevant to us. It was about the prisoners of the 1971 war. There were about 90,000 of them in India. The story was woven around them. Some of them had their roots in India. That film had a lot of issues. The producers went into a financial mess. They stopped my film and by the time they revived it, Vinod had quit films and moved to America. The thing that makes this film relevant even today is the relationship the two countries involved and its people share. It was a very important film and I was hugely invested in it when I was making it back then.”