How Dubai's 'dubbing king' producer Rajan Lall helped Anupam Kher land 'Saaransh' and now welcomes him for 'Tanvi The Great'

Dubai: Friendship is basically a pause button: slam it for decades, hit play, and the banter picks up like you never left. That’s exactly the vibe when Anupam Kher breezes into Dubai to catch up with entrepreneur-slash-“Dubbing King” Rajan Lall—the man who quietly set the stage for one of Hindi cinema’s most iconic performances.

Flash back to the early ’80s. Rajan and filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt are neighbors in a Mumbai building, a random housing quirk that’s about to rewrite Bollywood history.

At that point Kher is a 28-year-old theatre hopeful, praying someone will just remember his name.
“The only thing you were looking for in Mumbai at the time,” he says, “was some kind of warmth and some kind of recognition—that somebody will call you by your name.”

Mahesh offers him the role of a lifetime—B.V. Pradhan, a 65-year-old widower in Saaransh—and then… wham. “The day Mr. Bhatt threw me out of the film and decided to take Sanjeev,” Kher recalls, “I was crying and giving him curse.” Suitcase packed for Shimla, career almost over before it began.

Enter Dubai's flamboyant producer Rajan, drama-saver. “He was uncomfortable, he was crying,” Lall remembers. “Sanjeev Kumar had come home and Jagjit Singh and I were discussing it till late in the morning. Money was not an issue. But Mahesh narrated the story to Sanjeev and he decided to do the film next day.”

Rajan wasn’t having it. “I called Mahesh down,” he says. “I said, Mahesh, you better come. Rajan, but you know, you committed to Haribhai, and he’s a star. Eventually we all prevailed upon him, in spite of him.”

Kher now laughs at his meltdown. “My grandfather used to say, if you want to be equal with anybody in the world, just don’t expect anything from the person. Now I can say anything to him, so I cursed him!” He shrugs. “Truth is sometimes very empowering. I still speak my mind out whether it’s popular or not. I need to be popular with myself, then with the rest of the world.”

Mahesh blinked first. Ten days before shooting, the part was Kher’s again. Saaransh dropped in 1984 and—boom—Anupam Kher was everywhere. Sanjeev Kumar even watched the film alone and later admitted, “I couldn’t have done this role.”

Rajan’s pad was the original Bollywood after-hours lounge.

“They used to stay till four in the morning. I don’t drink—I’m a teetotaler,” he laughs.
“Teetotaler among raging, high-functioning alcoholics!” Kher shoots back.

Kher still lives by the lesson of Saaransh. “I was 28, playing a 65-year-old man,” he says. “Five minutes before the shoot I asked Mahesh, what is that one quality this character has? He said compassion. That compassion has stayed with me.”

Fast forward 41 years and the circle is deliciously complete. Anupam Kher is in Dubai to promote his new film Tanvi The Great, and guess who’s hosting the splashy screening? None other than Rajan Lall.

And because these two can’t resist a style moment, Rajan rolls in wearing a flamboyant pink-striped suit with glossy leather shoes, while Kher promptly steals his sharp jacket for photos. Fashion policing? Forget it—this is friendship couture.

Rajan plays it modest: “I was only a catalyst,” he insists. But let’s be real—without that late-night lobby ambush in a Mumbai apartment block, the world might never have witnessed Kher’s powerhouse debut.

Friendship. Compassion. Conviction. Saaransh delivered all three.

And as Dubai applauds Tanvi The Great these two prove that some friendships don’t fade—they just wait for the next fabulous sequel.