"I could not believe it as I had never experienced stardom of this level", David Dhawan on success of Aankhen

On April 9, 1993, when the year's biggest hit, Aankhen, was released, both Govinda and director David Dhawan were in Bangalore filming another movie. Dhawan then got a call from the producer to explain what he and the team had done, unaware of the uproar that the movie's popularity had caused. 

“Pahlaj Nihalani called me and said, ‘You don’t know what this film has done. It has broken all the records. People were going crazy’. And back then, there were no mobile phones, so I started receiving telegrams from distributers,” recalls Dhawan, adding, “Isse pehle aisa success dekha hi nahi tha. Shola Aur Shabnam did well but Aankhen’s success was enormous.”

Too innocent to understand the business that the film was doing, Dhawan travelled back to Mumbai, a week later. “From the airport, I directly went to the theatre where my film was being screened, and I was taken by surprise to see people’s reaction. At the venue, there was chaos. The whole press was present and everybody wanted a picture of me. I could not believe it as I had never experienced stardom of this level. Later that evening, there was a party at Taj and every senior of mine...every big filmmaker was present. They congratulated me. I had tears in my eyes ,” he recounts the frenzy