On September 4, Mahesh Bhatt’s Kaash completes 38 years, a film that stumbled at the box office but refused to fade away. Starring Jackie Shroff in one of his most vulnerable performances, the 1987 drama has since found its place among Bhatt’s most personal works, standing quietly alongside Arth and Saaraansh. For Bhatt, Kaash was never just a film; it was a wound, a scar, and a truth too raw for its time one that continues to echo decades later.
One of your finest, most underrated films Kaash is 38 years old on September 4?
Cinema is a strange beast. It devours dreams, feeds on illusions, and thrives on spectacle. It comforts us with bearable truths—because, like staring at the sun, raw truth is blinding without a veil. The market wants hype. The audience wants heart. And most of the time, they want truths softened, sugared, and neatly packaged. But Kaash, the film I made in 1987, refused to play that game. It was a wound I chose to keep open. The box office punished it.
And yet today Kaash stands right up there with your Saaraansh and Arth?
Decades later, that scar gleams with a grace only time can grant. Some films die quietly. Others are rediscovered by generations that weren’t even alive when they were made—and they begin to sparkle. Kaash has become one of those rare, quiet gems.
Jackie Shroff played a fallen superstar?
At its heart, Kaash is about failure, about a man stripped of dignity, love, and purpose, who fights not for glory but for his child’s fleeting life. Jackie Shroff gave one of his finest performances here, embodying a broken star with heartbreaking humanity.
There is a scene I still cannot watch without tears…
Yes, I know. The father, drunk and desperate, attends a party hosted by a superstar whose career he once helped to nurture. In a moment of humiliation, he is caught stealing from the man’s purse—in front of his own son. That scene was not imagined. I had seen a man, drunk and desperate, be mocked by a wealthy host while his child stood beside him. That image scarred me. It became the soul of Kaash.
The child actor Makhrand, who played Dimple and Jackie’s son, was so moving?
The boy’s illness is the spine of the story. His three wishes form its heartbeat: he wants his father’s return to stardom, a pilgrimage to a memory in the Nilgiris, and finally, the impossible—the wish to live. Life grants only two. Stardom returns. Memories are revisited. But mortality cannot be bargained with. Even in triumph, the father is powerless. He cannot save his son. That is the quiet cruelty of Kaash.
Why do you think this sparkling gem failed to shine at the box office?
When I showed the film to my friend and provocateur U.G. Krishnamurti, he said, “It’s too real. Movies are painkillers.” He was right. Ours is a death-averse, truth-averse culture. Life is a series of goodbyes, yet we live as if loss is a myth. Audiences enter darkened cinema halls for comfort, not confrontation. Truth, like light, can be unbearable in the dark. So Kaash failed.
But what an honourable failure?
Failure is fertile soil. If it had worked commercially, perhaps I would never have made Aashiqui, Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin, Sadak, Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke—films that gave people the anesthetic they wanted. Kaash was my apprenticeship in honesty. It taught me that while truth may be universal, timing is everything. Years later, the film found its breath again. Rajesh Roshan’s music, especially Kishore Da’s immortal “Baad Muddat Ke Hum Tum Mile,” has only grown in power.
This was one of the last songs that Kishore Kumar sang?
I remember sitting across from Kishore Da as I described the scene where the song would play. He sang it with ineffable soul, and less than three months later, he was gone. His voice, like the film, became a relic of something deeply real.
Your closing thoughts on Kaash?
Kaash is not an escape. It is a scar. It reminds us that even in triumph, life can humiliate us; that even love cannot defeat death; that sometimes, telling the truth is an act of rebellion. Today, we live in an age of endless entertainment. Content floods our screens, numbing us with noise. Films are engineered to distract, to pacify. But Kaash is proof that cinema can still wound—and wounds are where the light gets in. History has its own justice. Vertigo flopped in 1958; today it’s called Hitchcock’s masterpiece. Blade Runner was panned in 1982; now it’s a cultural landmark. In its own quiet way, Kaash belongs to this lineage: a film that fell forward, carving a path for me as a filmmaker.
I feel Kaash should be released now, when so many marriages are falling apart?
Looking back, I see that Kaash was less a movie than a mirror. It reflected a truth too raw for 1987 but strikingly relevant now: everything we love is slipping away—and yet, we love anyway. A filmmaker is only a fairer god. On screen, I could resurrect a fallen star’s career. In life, I could not give a dying boy one more breath. And maybe that’s why Kaash endures. It refuses to lie.
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