Hansal Mehta

Some Lesser Known Facts About Hansal Mehta

• Does Hansal Mehta drink alcohol?: Yes ^[4]The Times of India

• Does Hansal Mehta smoke?: No (he quit smoking in 2018) ^[5]Twitter

• Hansal Mehta is a famous national award-winning Indian director with a career spanning over three decades. Some of his excellent works include movies like ‘Shahid’ (2012), ‘CityLights’ (2014), and web series ‘Scam 1992.’

• Hansal Mehta was born into a Gujarati middle-class family. According to him, he had a phobia of examinations as it was very difficult for him to accept failure. In an interview, while talking about his fear of examinations, he said,
  

  Examination brings a lot of anxiety to me. I don’t like to be judged in two hours. Rejection really scares me and it’s always been like that.”

  

• After completing his engineering and getting married by the age of 21, Hansal got a job in Australia in a company called South Pacific Recordings. His life there got monotonous, and soon, he realised that this job was not his calling. The company where he was working, rented stores for pirated films. He started working with their cameras and learned to edit the films they were pirating.

• He returned to India in 1993 with the aspiration of becoming a director. Mr. Mehta’s love for food made him send a proposal to Zee TV for a cooking show titled “Khana Khazana.” According to him, his proposal was accepted on a condition that he would have to find a pretty girl to host the show. In an interview, talking about his quest to find the host for his show, he said,
  

  I went looking out for pretty chefs and landed at Hotel Centaur, where I didn’t find a pretty girl but discovered a tall chef called Sanjeev Kapoor. I decided to shoot with him without telling the channel. When they saw the episode, they freaked out and found it very boring without the pretty girl, with this man wearing a chef’s uniform. But they ran four episodes and kept extending it every four weeks, till he made a dish called Shaam Savera that became such a huge success that he became a household name.”

• The show turned out to be a milestone in the careers of both chef Sanjeev Kapoor and director Hansal Mehta. Hansal also recalls a few oversights committed by them to make the show different; they once tried to make tandoori roti without a tandoor. While talking about this in an interview, he said,
  

  You stick rotis on the walls inside the pressure cooker and it works. We showed that and it was pretty successful but the pressure cooker company sent us a legal notice. They felt pressure cookers are not made for this and it could be explosive. Once we made softy without the ice cream maker. I remember trying it and telling Sanjeev that it was not working. He gave it to my limited understanding and I allowed it to go on air. All hell broke loose after the episode went on air. Women started writing that their in-laws have stopped talking to them. Someone said her husband was angry.”

• While working on Khana Khazana Hansal was also hired to edit a song for the famous Indian filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj, who was then working as a composer. In an interview, Mr. Mehta revealed that Vishal was rude to him in the beginning as Vishal was not paid, but after seeing his work, Vishal apologized to him, and they became friends.

• He has also directed other television series like Amrita (1994), Highway (1995), Yaadein (1995), Lakshya (1998), and Neeti (1998). Hansal’s first independent film as a director was ‘Jayate’ that was released as a part of the Indian Panorama (1999-2000) during a film festival in Hyderabad. Jayate was inspired by the 1984 Bollywood film ‘Saaransh,’ but it never got released.

  

• The bankable director went through a dark phase at the beginning of his career. In 2000, he directed a Bollywood film, “Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar!!,” starring Manoj Bajpayee and Tabu. The film was critically acclaimed for its dark humour even though it failed badly at the box office. While talking about this film, he said,
  

  The failure of Dil Pe… took me to the point of self-destruction. Years of dejection and bankruptcy took its toll. My films couldn’t find a voice. I took to alcoholism. My relationships broke down. My parents supported me for years.” 

• During this period, he gave a series of washouts with movies like Chhal (2002), Yeh Kya Ho Raha Hai? (2002), and Woodstock Villa (2008). It was the failure of Woodstock Villa that made him take a three-year-long sabbatical from directing movies. He then left his job as the COO at the White Feather Films Ltd, a production company founded by famous producer and filmmaker Sanjay Gupta. In a media interaction with The Times of India, he said,
  

  I went off to a small village Malavali between Lonavala and Pune with my partner Safeena Hussain. At 10,000 to 15000 a month we could survive. I wanted to free the knots in my head. I cooked, I blogged. Through blogging my political thoughts also found a voice. That drew me to Shahid Azmi’s (slain Human Rights lawyer) story.”

• The director made a comeback in 2012 with the biographical drama film “Shahid” based on the life of human rights lawyer and activist Shahid Azmi who was assassinated in 2010. He was known for defending cases of only those who were allegedly accused of terrorism. The film was premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, and it was awarded the Silver Gateway Trophy at the Mumbai film festival where Mehta won the award for Best Director. He also won the Best Director Award for the film at the 61st National Film Awards ceremony.

• Hansal was very impressed by Rajkummar Rao‘s performance in Shahid. He also collaborated with Rao in movies like CityLights (2014), Aligarh (2015), Omerta (2017), and Chhalaang (2020). Aligarh received a standing ovation at the 20th Busan Film Festival and the 17th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

• Hansal Mehta earned popularity as a critically and commercially successful director with the humongous success of SonyLiv’s web series Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, released in 2020. Scam 1992 is based on the life of stockbroker Harshad Mehta who is infamous for committing the Indian stock market scam in 1992.

  

• Hansal got separated from his wife Sunita after 11 years of marriage. His son Pallava is a special child suffering from Down syndrome.

• Hansal’s daughters, Kimaya and Rihanna (from his wife Safeena), were born out of wedlock.

• He has his own production company, Karma Pictures.

• On 25 May 2022, Hansal took to Instagram to inform his fans about his wedding with Safeena Husain. Sharing a few pictures from his wedding ceremony, he wrote,
  

  So after 17 years, two children, watching our sons growing up and chasing our respective dreams we decided to get hitched. As always in life this was also impromptu and unplanned. Our vows however were truthful and but for this little ceremony they would never have been said. Ultimately love prevails over all else. And it has…”

 

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