Of Mumbai cabbies and ‘QSQT’: Juhi Chawla goes down memory lane

Juhi Chawla, appearing in ‘The Kapil Sharma Show’, looks back at the time when ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ (QSQT) had not yet achieved its blockbuster status. Miss India 1984, popular heroine and co-owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Juhi will be seen as a special guest on the TV show.

Recalling the time when her co-star Aamir Khan and she would go around Mumbai asking taxi drivers to put up the 1988 blockbuster film’s poster on the back of their vehicles, Chawla had a sweet memory to share:

“I still remember when our movie was going to be released. Nobody knew us. Remember, at that time, it was a common practice for taxis to carry film posters. There was a long line of taxis below our building, so I would go from driver to driver requesting them to put up the posters.

“They would ask, ‘Who’s he?’, and I would say he is the hero, Aamir Khan. They would then point to my image on the poster and ask, ‘Who’s she?’, and I would say, ‘This is me.’ And they would say, ‘No, no’, and shoo us away. But some did reply sweetly, allowing us to put up the posters.”

Chawla also remembered how Aamir and she would wait outside cinemas to see how the audience responded to the film. “In those days, it was not like today, when daily collection figures are public knowledge in a day. We would stand outside theatres to see if people were going in to watch the movie or not. And we slowly came to know that people actually like our movie.”

When she was asked how she felt after ‘QSQT’ became a mega hit, Juhi replied graciously: “Should I tell you the truth? For long, I just couldn’t understand what happened.”

(‘The Kapil Sharma Show’ airs on Sony Entertainment Television.)