Veteran actress Hema Malini took a stroll down memory lane and recalled her experience of visiting Afghanistan decades ago. The actress called its capital’, Kabul ‘beautiful’ and said that she traveled to Khyber Pass, Bamiyan, and Band-e-Amir.
Hema visited Afghanistan to shoot her film Dharmatma in 1975. It was the first-ever Bollywood movie to be shot in the country. The hit song Kya Khoob Lagti Ho was also shot there. The cast of the film included Rekha, Feroz Khan, Premnath, Farida Jalal, Danny Denzongpa, Helen, Ranjeet, among others.
Speaking to a leading daily, the veteran actress said, “The Kabul I knew was so beautiful and my experience there was very nice. We had landed at Kabul Airport, which was at the time as small as the Mumbai airport, and we stayed at a hotel nearby. But eventually, we traveled to locations like Bamiyan and Band-e-Amir for our shooting and while returning back we would see these men with these long kurtas and beards, who looked like Talibanis. At that time Russians were also a force in Afghanistan.”
Adding further she said, “There was no problem at that time, it was peaceful and Feroz Khan had managed the whole trip and it was a very well organized shooting. My father had accompanied us to the shoot and when we were passing through Khyber Pass…We were all hungry so we stopped at a Dhaba. Because we were vegetarians, we bought Rotis and ate them with onions. Again, I remember seeing similar-looking men. They looked very scary but, I think most of them were those kabuliwalas.”
On the current situation of the country, Hema called it ‘sad’ as people are ‘trying to escape from the country’. She added that the ‘mad rush at the airport is very scary’ and fears for the future of the country.
For the unversed, the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, completing their takeover of the country. Visuals of empty streets and crowded airports have left the world heartbroken.
