The premiere of Student of the Year was announced on November 15, 1992.
The venue was Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai, the same storied hall that had held generations of Hindi cinema's most significant evenings, and Adil had chosen it with deliberate intention. He could have held the premiere at a more modern venue, something with a larger lobby and better air conditioning and easier parking. He chose Maratha Mandir because it was a cinema hall in the fullest sense of the phrase, a building that knew what it was for, that carried its purpose in every detail of its architecture, and because he wanted the premiere of Zenith Film Productions' first film to happen somewhere that understood the weight of the occasion.
The invitations had been sent two weeks prior. Printed on deep charcoal-grey card, the card carried the film's title in raised gold lettering, the Zenith logo embossed beneath it, and a note at the bottom in the plainest possible language. Premiere Screening. Maratha Mandir. November 15, 1992. Eight o'clock in the evening. Dress accordingly.
The phrase dress accordingly had produced a small amount of industry anxiety, as such phrases always did, because it was not an instruction and it was not a suggestion and it was not particularly helpful. It was merely the implication that the evening would be worth dressing for, which was either elegant or arrogant depending on one's prior relationship with the person who had sent the invitation.
Given that the person who had sent the invitation was Adil Ali, whose prior relationship with the industry's opinions had been consistent and somewhat indifferent to them, most people dressed accordingly.
The fifteenth of November arrived with the particular quality that Bombay November evenings carry, the humidity of the monsoon finally departed, the air carrying a lightness that was not quite cool but was the promise of cool, the sky after sunset becoming a deep clear navy rather than the dense hazy dark of the summer months. The city moved through its afternoon with complete ordinary indifference to the fact that something significant was being prepared on Sayani Road.
Maratha Mandir's management had been in communication with Arjun Tiwari's office for three weeks. The front facade had been freshly cleaned. The marquee displayed the film's title in clean black capital letters beneath the venue's own name. The carpet that had been unrolled from the entrance to the road was deep red, not chosen for glamour but because Adil had specified it personally, having decided during one of his midnight planning sessions that the evening needed colour and that red was the one colour that made no apologies for itself.
Arjun had arrived at the venue at two in the afternoon with a production team of twelve people. The red carpet area was cordoned and measured. The lighting rig, which had been designed by an events team from Delhi whose work Adil had specifically requested after seeing their setup at a corporate event six months prior, was installed along both sides of the carpet path, creating a warm column of light that would photograph cleanly from any angle and that fell on a face without the harsh flattening that cheaper event lighting produced. Press positions were assigned, allocated and confirmed in advance. Photographers' locations were marked on the ground in tape. Television camera positions had been established in negotiation with the various broadcast channels that had confirmed coverage.
The security team arrived at four and established the perimeter.
By six, the first press vehicles had arrived and taken their positions. By seven, the crowd of invited guests and accredited media had begun to fill the designated areas, and the sounds of Bombay industry gathering, the conversation and the camera equipment being tested and the vehicles pulling to the curb one after another, had taken over the street with the particular organised excitement that these evenings produce when the film being premiered is one that people genuinely want to see.
At five minutes past seven, Hrithik Roshan arrived. He came in a dark navy suit that had been, given his family's connections within the industry, better tailored than anything his eighteen years would normally have produced. He stepped out of the car with the particular composure of someone who had been raised around this world and was encountering it now from a new position within it. Photographers moved toward him and the flashbulbs erupted and he stood in front of them with a patience that came not from practice but from a natural ease of manner that had impressed Adil from their first meeting in Rakesh Roshan's office.
Rakesh Roshan arrived a few minutes later and stood beside his son for photographs, and the image of the filmmaker and his son on the night of the son's debut was one that every photographer at the event understood the value of and worked accordingly to capture.
Priya Kapoor, Head of Production at Zenith, arrived at seven-fifteen and moved through the press area with the contained efficiency of someone who had spent four months making this film possible and who found the ceremonial aspects of a premiere somewhat less interesting than the logistical ones. She greeted Arjun at the entrance, reviewed something in his folder, and then took her designated position inside the lobby.
Suresh Iyer arrived at seven-twenty with Meera Desai, the two of them constituting the financial and legal pillars of Zenith's management team, both dressed impeccably and both maintaining the professional restraint that the evening would likely strain before midnight.
Rajiv Shenoy was already inside. He had been there since five, having determined that a premiere this size would develop at least eleven separate logistical complications before the evening ended and that it was better to be present for all of them than to arrive and find three already unresolvable.
At seven-thirty, the industry began arriving in earnest.
Salman Khan came with the ease of someone for whom red carpets were a natural habitat, moving through the press area with a grin that the photographers responded to immediately, the particular smile of someone who found everything genuinely funny and who had no interest in performing a version of himself that was more dignified than the actual one. He had brought Somy Ali and the two of them made their way through the crowd with the unhurried confidence of people who understood that the event would not begin without them having arrived.
Aamir Khan arrived shortly after, quieter than Salman in the way he was always quieter in public, wearing something simple and well-cut, the clothes of a person who had decided that the evening's interest should be the film and not what he was wearing to it. He stopped at the press area and answered several questions with the thoughtful brevity that had already made him one of the industry's most respected voices on craft, and then moved inside.
Rishi Kapoor came with Neetu Singh. Rishi was among the most ebullient presences on the carpet, trading remarks with journalists and photographers with the warmth of someone who had been attending film premieres since before most of the junior press corps had been born and who genuinely enjoyed the ritual of it. He had known Adil's father, had worked in the same industry across overlapping periods of it, and there was something in his manner at the entrance that suggested he was looking at the premiere of Zenith's first film through a particular kind of historical consciousness.
Sanjay Dutt arrived in a black kurta of a cut that was distinctly his own, that particular combination of scale and style that was impossible to separate from the person wearing it. He was greeted by photographers with the specific enthusiasm that Sanjay generated in them, which was different from the enthusiasm directed at most other stars, less reverential and more physically warm, as though the cameras themselves liked him. He paused, spoke briefly to several journalists, and then was inside.
Juhi Chawla came with her usual brightness. Divya Bharti, who was one of the most exciting presences in the industry that year, arrived shortly after, the flashbulbs doubling in frequency the moment her car door opened. Madhuri Dixit moved through the carpet with the complete poise that had become one of her most recognised qualities, the ease of someone for whom public attention had been refined into something graceful rather than demanding.
Dimple Kapadia. Sunny Deol. Jackie Shroff, who stopped long enough at the press position to make a remark that produced genuine laughter from the journalists nearby. Anupam Kher, who had been one of the industry's most reliably interesting presences for a decade and who brought to the premiere the observational attention of someone who had been watching the industry closely for long enough to have strong opinions about everything. Amrish Puri arrived with the quiet authority that he brought to every room he entered, the presence of a man who had been one of Hindi cinema's most essential performers for so long that his appearance at a premiere was itself a statement about the film's credentials.
Javed Akhtar came and with him the suggestion that the literary and intellectual weight of the industry had acknowledged the occasion. Gulzar was present. Ramesh Sippy, who had directed Sholay and who constituted in himself a kind of reference point against which the industry measured its own history, was in conversation near the entrance with Yash Chopra, who had the manner of a man who had built much of what surrounded him and who could afford, therefore, to look at it with a certain calm proprietorship.
Subhash Ghai arrived and paused at the press position for longer than most, giving interviews with the expansiveness of a filmmaker who had always understood that public presence was part of the profession. N. Chandra. Vidhu Vinod Chopra. Mahesh Bhatt, who had opinions about everything and expressed them with a directness that made him one of the press's most reliable sources of quotable material. He stopped at the press line and was asked about his expectations for the film and gave an answer that was careful and honest and that placed Adil's career in a longer context than most premiere coverage demanded.
The trade press was positioned at a designated area along the far side of the carpet. Komal Nahata, who was among the most respected film trade analysts in the country, was there with his characteristic quiet attention, watching the arrivals with the specific interest of someone who was already forming assessments. Vinod Mirani. Several representatives from trade publications and exhibition journals, the people who would tell the industry what the film had earned before the industry knew what it felt.
Film critics from Filmfare, Stardust, and Cine Blitz occupied the centre press positions. Khalid Mohamed, whose film criticism had been among the sharpest and most widely read in the country, stood in conversation with a colleague, his notepad already open. Several television journalists from Doordarshan and the nascent entertainment channels that were beginning to emerge in the early nineties were positioned with their cameras and microphones, capturing arrivals and conducting the brief red-carpet interviews that would appear in the entertainment segments of the following day's broadcasts.
At eight minutes to eight, Gaurav Agarwal arrived, and the significance of his presence was understood by the industry professionals in the crowd. If the music director of a film came to its premiere, the music had already been played enough times in private that he knew it was worth being seen at the public event for.
Arjun appeared at the entrance at three minutes to eight and exchanged a glance with the security coordinator. The confirmation passed between them without words. Everything was in position.
At precisely eight o'clock, Aishwarya Rai stepped out of a black car at the far end of the carpet.
The photographers had been photographing arrivals for forty-five minutes and had developed a professional steadiness about the process, the controlled efficiency of people doing skilled work in a familiar environment. When Aishwarya stepped out of the car, that steadiness paused. Not dramatically. Simply the way a room pauses when a door opens onto something that was not expected.
She was wearing a deep burgundy silk saree that had been chosen, in consultation with her styling team, to complement the colour of the carpet rather than compete with it. Her hair was arranged simply. Her jewellery was minimal. The effect was the effect that had been responsible for every modeling contract she had signed in the preceding two years, a physical presence that did not seem to be performing but simply to exist at a slightly different pitch from everything around it.
The photographers began working immediately and with an intensity that had not been present before her arrival.
She moved through the carpet with a composure that was entirely natural. She paused at the press positions, answered questions briefly and with a quality of considered attention that several journalists would note in their coverage, and then moved toward the entrance.
The crowd that had gathered behind the barricades, the fans and onlookers who had been there since the afternoon, responded with a wave of sound that moved through the evening air and briefly competed with the traffic noise of the city.
And then Adil arrived.
He came in a black bandhgala suit, precisely cut, with the slightly severe elegance that he wore naturally rather than constructedly. He was nineteen years old and he looked it and did not look it at the same time, the particular quality of someone whose interior life had always run somewhat older than the face through which the world observed it. He stepped out of his car and paused at the entrance of the carpet for a moment, not for the cameras, simply the pause of someone who is about to walk into a room where something important is about to happen and who takes a moment before crossing that threshold.
Then he walked.
The flashbulbs from both sides of the carpet came together into a sustained wall of white light. The photographers worked without stopping. The television cameras tracked him from the far end. The crowd behind the barricades produced a sound that was different from what they had produced for anyone else, not louder necessarily, but differently textured, the response of people who had been watching a person from a distance for long enough that seeing them at close range carried a specific charge.
He stopped at the press position.
He was asked about the film. He answered with a restraint that was entirely genuine.
"I hope the audience feels something they recognise," he said. "Not recognition of the story. Recognition of what it felt like to be that age. If they feel that, the film has done its work."
He was asked about directing himself.
"It's a conversation you have with yourself at two in the morning when everyone else has gone home," he said. "You ask yourself whether the character is honest. The answer tells you what to do the next day."
He was asked about Zenith Film Productions.
"Zenith exists to make films that matter," he said. "This is our first. It will not be our last."
He moved toward the entrance and paused for a moment beside Aishwarya, and the two of them stood together in the lights for a brief moment before walking inside, and the image of them together on the steps of Maratha Mandir on the night of November fifteenth was the image that would appear in every entertainment page in the country the following morning.
The lobby filled behind them. The industry of Bombay cinema gathered in the same space for the last time before the film would belong to the audience rather than to the people who had made it.
Rajiv found Adil near the entrance to the hall, where Adil was standing quietly, apart from the larger conversation, watching the room fill.
"Everything is in place," Rajiv said.
Adil nodded. He looked out at the lobby, at Hrithik talking with his father and Rishi Kapoor, at Aamir Khan and Mahesh Bhatt in conversation, at Priya Kapoor managing something near the press coordinator's table, at Gaurav Agarwal sharing a joke with Suresh Iyer, at Aishwarya speaking with Juhi Chawla with the particular ease that women who have met several times in professional contexts find between themselves.
He looked at the poster for Student of the Year on the lobby wall. The one that showed three faces, young, not quite smiling, looking at something just outside the frame. Ambiguous in the way that good posters were ambiguous, promising something without specifying what.
"Do you think it's ready?" Rajiv asked.
Adil looked at the poster for another moment.
"The film has been ready since the picture lock," he said. "I've been ready since this morning." He looked back at the room, at the lobby filling with the people who made up the world this film was about to enter. "Now we find out if the audience is ready."
The lobby lights dimmed once. The evening's formalities were complete.
The doors to the screening hall opened