With the directors finalized, the principal production teams assembled, and pre-production progressing across all five films at once, Zenith Film Productions had entered its final stretch before the cameras could begin turning.
The third floor of the Zenith building on Linking Road had stopped resembling an office months ago. It looked more like a war room. Corkboards lined the corridor outside Adil's cabin, each one dedicated to a single film , swatches of fabric pinned beside sketches of sets, storyboards taped in uneven rows, shooting schedules scrawled in red marker and revised so many times the paper had begun to tear at the folds.
Sets were being designed at Filmalaya and Kamalistan simultaneously, Bhansali's art department for Devdas working with an urgency bordering on obsession, insisting on real teakwood for the haveli doors instead of painted plywood, while three floors below, the Barfi unit was still deciding whether the fictional town of their story should feel more like Darjeeling or more like a memory of it. Costumes were taking shape in a rented workshop in Andheri, where three tailors sat cross-legged from morning to night, hand-stitching brocade for Chandramukhi's ghagras while, in the next room, a much simpler wardrobe of cardigans and corduroy trousers was being pressed for 18 Again. Music sittings had begun in a soundproofed room on the second floor, where the harmonium never seemed to stop playing, and Adil himself was often found there past midnight, humming a line over and over until it sat right.
Every department worked with a sense of urgency that had less to do with fear and more to do with faith, the faith that something extraordinary was being built, and that no one wanted to be the one who slowed it down.
Yet despite all the progress, two hurdles still remained before production could officially begin, and both, in their own way, mattered more than any set or costume ever could.
The first was Divya Bharti.
Zenith had selected her for the role of Shruti in Barfi!, and the casting department had sent a formal offer nearly ten days earlier, a generous one, accompanied by a synopsis, a shooting calendar, and a request for an early response given the tight production window. Divya had neither accepted nor rejected it.
Instead, a short note had arrived, written in her own hand on plain notepaper, carried to the office by her driver.
*I'd like to meet Mr. Adil Ali personally before making my decision.*
Rajiv had brought it to Adil's desk with a faint frown, as though unsure whether it was a good sign or a bad one. Adil had simply read it twice, folded it, and placed it in his drawer.
"Arrange it," he'd said. "Whenever she's free."
The second hurdle concerned 18 Again.
The screenplay had found its director, Adil himself, and the rest of the crew was nearly in place: a cinematographer known for his warm, domestic lighting, an art director who specialized in lived-in, middle-class interiors rather than grandeur, a line producer who had worked with Adil twice before and trusted him completely. But the most important role in the film, the one the entire emotional architecture rested upon, remained unfilled.
Adil contacted Rekha and Sridevi first, but they were busy and don't have time. So, Now Adil wanted only one actress for the part.
Hema Malini.
Convincing her to return to the screen as a romantic lead, which has intimate scenes, opposite a story about growing old and young again in the same lifetime, would not be easy.
Both matters had to be resolved before the first day's shooting could even be scheduled.
The following afternoon, at a quarter past three, Divya Bharti arrived at Zenith Film Productions.
Her car pulled up outside the building's modest, unglamorous entrance, Adil had never believed in ostentatious lobbies, only in the belief that people should be so absorbed in their work that they forgot to admire the furniture, and a small crowd had already gathered near the gate, drawn by the sight of her white Maruti Gypsy.
The receptionist, a young woman named Kavita who had worked at Zenith for barely two months and still hadn't gotten used to seeing famous faces walk through the door, stood up so quickly her chair rolled backward.
"Namaste, ma'am. Mr. Adil is expecting you."
She escorted Divya up to the executive floor, glancing sideways every few steps as though checking that this was really happening.
A few moments later, the office door opened from inside.
"Please, come in."
Divya stepped through.
The office was large but unfussy, a long window overlooking a slice of the Mumbai skyline still cluttered with construction cranes and half-finished buildings, one wall dedicated to framed concept art from Zenith's five productions, another lined floor to ceiling with books, some on cinema, most simply on life, Chekhov beside Manto, a battered Hindi translation of Tolstoy sitting next to a stack of trade magazines.
Behind the desk stood Adil.
He came around it with an easy, unhurried smile, the kind that didn't seem rehearsed for the occasion.
"Miss Divya Bharti."
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," she said, extending her hand.
"The pleasure is entirely mine."
They shook hands and took their seats, she on the low sofa near the window, he in the armchair across from it, deliberately not behind the desk, as though the desk itself might have gotten in the way of the conversation he intended to have.
An office assistant entered briefly with tea, samosas, and a small plate of nankhatai, set them down without a word, and left, closing the door softly behind him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Outside, a taxi horn sounded somewhere far below.
Divya finally broke the silence, turning her teacup slightly in its saucer without drinking from it.
"I hope you don't mind my asking for this meeting. Most producers would have found it strange."
"Not at all," Adil said. "In fact, I was expecting it."
She looked up, surprised. "Were you?"
"If you'd simply wanted another film, you'd have signed the contract the same day it arrived." He said it plainly, without any trace of flattery. "You wanted to understand why I chose you. That's a different question altogether."
She smiled, a small, genuine thing, not the practiced smile she gave at premieres. "Exactly."
She glanced around the office again, at the books, at the concept sketches, before returning her gaze to him.
"I've heard a lot of producers tell me their heroine's role is 'different.'" She said the word with light, amused sarcasm. "Usually that means two crying scenes, four songs, and a wedding at the end."
Adil laughed. "I've sat through enough of those scripts myself to know exactly what you mean."
"I've reached a point in my career," she continued, more seriously now, "where I don't want that anymore. I want a character people remember after the lights come on. Not just remember, buy carry it with them."
Adil nodded slowly, as though she had said something he'd been waiting to hear. He reached into the drawer of the low side table and placed a bound screenplay on the glass surface between them. The title, embossed in gold on a deep green cover, read:
**BARFI!**
"I wrote this myself," he said. "Every draft of it."
Divya picked it up gently, running her thumb along the edge of the pages before setting it back down.
"I've heard that too. What I haven't heard," she said, meeting his eyes, "is why you chose me to play her."
Adil leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Because I wasn't looking for the biggest actress available. I was looking for the right one." He paused. "Shruti isn't written to decorate the hero's journey. She's not a garland around his neck in the last reel. She has dreams of her own, some of them selfish, some of them noble, most of them somewhere confused in between. She has flaws she doesn't apologize for. She makes choices that hurt people, including herself, because she's human and not a symbol. She loves in a way that costs her something. And by the end of the story, she isn't the same woman she was in the first scene, she's stronger, but not in the way audiences expect. It's a quieter strength."
He let that settle before continuing.
"I've watched your films over the last few years, Divya. There's an innocence in your face that the camera loves, it's not something that can be taught, and very few people have it. But underneath that innocence, there's a steadiness. An emotional weight. I think very few actresses working today can hold both of those things in the same performance without one swallowing the other." He looked at her directly. "I believe you're one of them."
Divya was quiet for a moment, her fingers resting lightly on the cover of the screenplay.
"No producer," she said finally, "has ever explained a role to me like that. Most of them tell me what the film will do for my career. You're telling me what the character needs from me."
"Then let me tell you the rest of it."
For nearly an hour, Adil narrated Barfi! from its opening frame to its final one. He didn't summarize it the way casting directors usually did, reducing three acts into six flat sentences. He performed it. His voice dropped and rose with the story's own rhythm, playful during the film's early comic stretches, unsteady and soft when he reached the scenes of loss, quiet almost to a whisper by the time he described the ending. He became, briefly and without any self-consciousness, every character in the room, the deaf-mute hero with his restless charm, the girl with autism whose worldview reshaped the entire film around her, and Shruti herself, caught between the safety of a conventional life and the pull of something she couldn't fully explain even to herself.
Divya forgot about the tea beside her. She forgot, for long stretches, that she was sitting in an office at all. She wasn't listening to a producer pitching a project anymore.
She was listening to a storyteller.
When Adil finally fell silent, the office held its stillness for a few seconds longer, as though the story itself hadn't quite finished leaving the room.
Divya slowly closed the screenplay, her hand resting on its cover.
"That's beautiful," she said, quietly.
Adil smiled. "So..."
She laughed, shaking her head slightly. "You already know my answer."
"I have a feeling."
"I want to play Shruti," she said. "I want to play her exactly the way you just described her, nothing softened, nothing made prettier for the audience."
Adil stood and extended his hand. "Welcome to Zenith Film Productions."
She shook it warmly. "I'm looking forward to making this film."
"So am I."
As she reached for the contract that had been placed discreetly on the table earlier, she hesitated.
"The salary," she said, glancing at the figure. "Your company has offered me fifteen lakh rupees."
"I know," Adil said.
She looked almost embarrassed. "Don't you think that's a little too much? I'm still, I'm still fairly young in this industry."
"You may be young," Adil replied evenly, "but you've already delivered nine consecutive successful films. That isn't luck repeating itself nine times. You're one of the fastest-rising stars working in Hindi cinema today, and everyone in this building knows it. The offer reflects what I believe you're worth, not what convention says a twenty-year-old should be paid."
She studied him for a long moment, then smiled and shook her head. "I don't think there's any point arguing with you."
"There usually isn't," he said, and both of them laughed.
Divya signed the contract and slid it back across the table. As she rose to leave, she picked up the Barfi! screenplay and held it against her chest almost protectively.
"I'll start reading it tonight."
"Read it as many times as you like," Adil said. "The more you live inside it before the camera turns on, the less you'll have to *act* it."
She nodded, pausing at the door. "I have a feeling this is going to be a very special film."
"So do I."
The door closed behind her. Adil stood alone for a moment, looking at the signed contract on his desk, at the empty teacup, at the faint scent of jasmine perfume still lingering in the room.
One hurdle had been cleared.
With Divya Bharti now officially part of Barfi!, only one obstacle remained before the entire slate could move into production, and it was, in many ways, the most delicate one.
The female lead of 18 Again.
Unlike the other four films, this decision carried a different weight entirely. Adil had written 18 Again as a story about marriage, about the small erosions and quiet repairs of a decades-long life shared between two people, using the fantastical premise of a man mysteriously regaining his youth only as a doorway into something far more grounded. If the audience didn't believe in the wife's strength, her dignity, the unglamorous, unconditional nature of her love, the entire film would collapse into a gimmick.
From the day he'd finished the screenplay, only three face had come to Adil's mind.
Hema Malini, Rekha and Sridevi. Sridevi and Rekha are now out. So, only Hema Malini remained.
When Zenith's casting department first approached her with the script, her secretary had declined politely but firmly on her behalf. The message, delivered over the phone and later confirmed in writing, had been brief.
'Hema ji appreciates the offer, but she does not feel the role suits her at this stage of her career.'
Adil had read the note and simply smiled, not the smile of disappointment, but of someone who had expected exactly this and had already planned around it. Some stories, he knew, could not survive being reduced to a two-line synopsis over the phone. They had to be told, in full, by someone who believed in every word of them.
He asked Arjun to arrange a personal meeting.
Fortunately, Hema Malini agreed. She would visit Zenith the next morning.
She arrived a few minutes before eleven, dressed simply, without any of the visible entourage that so often trailed after actresses of her stature. She carried herself the way only someone with two decades in the industry could, unhurried, entirely unimpressed by grandeur, because she had already seen every version of it.
The receptionist welcomed her with visible nervousness and escorted her upstairs. A soft knock landed on the office door.
"Come in," Adil called.
The door opened.
Adil rose immediately from behind his desk. "Hema ji."
She smiled warmly. "Mr. Adil."
"It's an honor to have you here."
"The pleasure is mine," she said, settling into the chair across from him with the ease of someone entirely comfortable in rooms like this.
Tea was served. They exchanged a few pleasantries, about the state of the industry, about a mutual acquaintance's recent film, about the unusually heavy pre-monsoon humidity, before Hema Malini set her cup down with a small, knowing smile.
"I suppose we're both too experienced to spend an hour discussing the weather."
Adil laughed. "Probably."
"Then let's talk about why I'm here."
"18 Again," he said.
She folded her hands in her lap. "I read the synopsis your office sent."
"And?"
"It was interesting." A pause. "But I couldn't understand why you wanted me for it."
Adil said nothing, waiting.
"In recent years," she went on, "most producers who approach me either want a glamorous guest appearance in a song, or they want me to play someone's mother, sitting quietly in the background of a story that belongs to younger people." She looked at him directly. "Neither interests me anymore."
"I understand completely."
"So tell me," she said, "why Hema Malini?"
Adil slowly opened the screenplay resting on the table between them.
"Because this story isn't about a man growing younger," he said. "It's about a woman who's already wise enough to know that love was never about age to begin with."
She tilted her head slightly, intrigued despite herself. "I don't understand yet."
"You will."
For nearly ninety minutes, Adil narrated the film from its first frame to its last. He described the quiet architecture of the marriage at its center, the years of small routines, the sacrifices so ordinary they'd stopped being noticed, the slow misunderstandings that accumulate in any long relationship like dust on furniture no one quite gets around to cleaning. He described the husband's inexplicable transformation into his eighteen-year-old self, his desperate, often comic attempts to reconnect with the family that no longer recognized him, and at the emotional center of it all, his wife's refusal to accept what her eyes were telling her, because some truths are too disorienting to believe even when they're standing in your kitchen.
And finally, the film's quiet, devastating realization: that love was never measured by the smoothness of a face or the energy of youth, but by the accumulated weight of years two people had chosen, again and again, to spend together.
Hema Malini listened without interrupting. She smiled more than once. Twice, she laughed, a short, surprised laugh, the kind that escapes before you can stop it. And during the film's more wrenching moments, her expression softened in a way that told Adil, long before she said a word, that she had already stopped evaluating the film and started living inside it.
When he reached the end, the office fell into a long silence.
She closed the screenplay slowly, her palm resting flat on its cover for nearly a minute before she finally looked up.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
Adil looked genuinely surprised. "For what?"
"I judged this film by its title." She smiled, almost at herself. "I assumed it was another light comedy about an older man turning young and chasing women half his age. A cheap gimmick dressed up in an interesting premise."
She shook her head. "It isn't that at all."
"No," Adil said quietly.
"It's about marriage," she said. "About family. About what it actually means to grow old *with* someone, rather than simply growing old *near* them."
"Exactly."
She leaned back in her chair, studying him with new interest. "And my character, she isn't simply the heroine of a romance."
"No."
"She's the emotional anchor of the entire film."
"The audience experiences almost the whole story through her eyes," Adil said. "Everything the husband goes through only matters because of how it lands on her."
Hema Malini was quiet for a moment. "I haven't been offered a role with this much weight in years," she admitted.
"That's exactly why I couldn't imagine anyone else playing it," Adil said simply. "I didn't write this for 'an actress.' I wrote it, somewhere in the back of my mind, already hearing your voice say these lines."
She looked at him for a long moment, something between amusement and genuine respect crossing her face. "You know," she said finally, "you're surprisingly convincing for a man who's only produced a handful of films."
"I've been told that," Adil said, and they both laughed.
She picked up the screenplay again, holding it the way one holds something they've already decided to keep. "I'd like to play this woman."
Adil's smile widened. "I'm honored."
She extended her hand. "I accept."
They shook hands warmly. Her secretary, who had been waiting outside for nearly two hours without complaint, entered with the contract. Hema Malini flipped through it unhurriedly before stopping on one particular page.
She looked up. "Fifteen lakh."
"Yes," Adil said.
"I wasn't expecting that."
"You've spent over two decades entertaining audiences across every kind of film this industry makes," he said. "You've earned the respect of the entire industry, on-screen and off it. I believe the figure reflects that, nothing more, nothing less."
Without further hesitation, she signed the contract and handed it back.
"I have a feeling," she said, standing, "that this film is going to surprise a lot of people."
"I hope it does."
"So, when do we begin?"
"Very soon," Adil said. "Our production team is finalizing the last preparations. The moment the shooting schedule is locked, you'll be the first to receive it."
"I'll be waiting." She turned to leave, then paused at the door, glancing back at him.
"One piece of advice, if you'll allow an older colleague to offer it."
Adil raised an eyebrow. "Please."
"You're producing five films at once, directing three of them, and acting in two." She looked at him steadily. "Don't forget to take care of yourself in the middle of all this history you're determined to make."
He laughed. "I'll try."
"You'd better," she said, with a small, warm smile, before walking toward the elevator.
Adil watched the doors close, then turned back into his office. The second and final hurdle had been cleared.