Blindman's Buff and American Chai

Talented actor and National Award winner Paresh Rawal had two releases last Friday. The first was Aankhen which with its intriguingly different plotline and star cast. The second was American Chai which places the timeless tale of an immigrant's son who angers his father by breaking with tradition to pursue a career in popular music in the context of a New Jersey family of Indian background. {New York Times review} {Village Voice}

Trivia: Debutant director Vipul Shah based Aankhen on the Gujarati play Andhla Pato(Blindman's Buff) by writer Aatish Kapadia (better known as the scriptwriter for the TV show Ek Mahal Ho Sapnon Ka based on popular Gujarati serial, Sapnana Vavetar, which he wrote too, and as the writer of Indra Kumar's Mann), first staged in 1992. The film was originally titled All the Best. Incidentally, All the Best was the name of a popular Marathi play (one of the numerous casts includes now-famous director Mahesh Manjrekar) supposedly based on a Kannada play (the head spins) about a blind man, a deaf man and a mute who fall for the same girl. A David Dhawan adaptation titled Raju Raja Ram starring Jackie Shroff, Govinda, Salman Khan (who dropped out) and Madhuri Dixit (who made way for Manisha Koirala) was in the pipeline. Wonder what happened to it...