17 years ago, Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya released on July 15 and emerged as a box office hit. Starring Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sushmita Sen, Katrina Kaif and Arshad Warsi, the David Dhawan-directed comedic caper drew audiences to the cinema thanks to its funny quotient, music and star cast. This was also the first time Salman and his then-girlfriend Katrina were cast together and the curiosity of seeing them together also played a part.
17 Years of Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya: How the Salman Khan-Sushmita Sen-Katrina Kaif starrer came to the rescue of people stranded in the floods of 26/7 Mumbai
But few know that Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya came to the rescue of many office visitors who were trapped in the flooding of 26/7 in Mumbai. For those who don’t know, on July 26, 2005, Mumbai and the surrounding areas received an unprecedented 944mm of rainfall in 24 hours. It led to the loss of lives and threw the lives of public transport and commuters out of gear. Trains and buses could not run due to extreme flooding. The rain started around noon. As a result, many had already reached their workplace by then. Thousands of people then had no choice but to spend the night in their offices, as there was no way to go home.
Ajay Bhattacharya, a retired techie, was one of those people who stranded that fateful day. He told Bollywood Hungama“My office was near Churchgate and I lived in Mira Road. This was a time when most of the offices were in South Mumbai. A lot of people couldn’t return home and were stranded in the city. We learned that the trains closed and that it was not possible to get home by road. Me and my colleagues decided to spend the night in our office. However, for obvious reasons, our offices are not designed for sleeping. We were not in the mood to sleep early so we decided after dinner to watch a movie at the nearby Eros cinema as the rains had stopped and there was hardly any flooding and walking to the cinema was no problem.”
Ajay continued, “Maine Pyaar Kyun KiyaThe night show was about to start. We bought the tickets. Shockingly, we saw that hundreds of stranded office visitors had turned up at Eros! By the time the movie started, the show was sold out. And mind you, Eros was a huge single screen movie theater. So you can imagine how many people must be there.”
Ajay Bhattacharya then said “The movie was a timepass entertainer. Thanks Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya, we forgot all our worries and hardships for 3 hours. I will never forget this experience.”
Even other single screen movie theaters in South Mumbai recorded surprisingly good lineups that day. An oldtimer told Bollywood Hungama“So was on 7/26 in its third week. It played in Minerva and New Empire and got decent footsteps. Bunty Aur Bablic ran in New Excelsior while parineeta was in Freedom. These films had completed several weeks and still got some footsteps. Viruddh, starring Amitabh Bachchan, John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt, starred in Novelty. It was released 5 days before 7/26 and didn’t do very well due to its depressing subject matter. It also managed to find buyers thanks to the flooding that day.”
He added: “And then there was the recently opened Inox multiplex at Nariman Point. Here played all the latest releases and Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya was the first choice because it had just ended 11 days and so many hadn’t seen the movie. It was also the perfect movie, as it was a light entertainer and just something you need after a long, harrowing, rainy day!”
He also revealed that “in the suburbs of Mumbai, the situation was different. Several areas experienced power outages. That’s why many theaters had to close their doors after it started to rain. Chandan cinema played the last show at 3:30 pm and canceled the evening and night shows.”
Also read: 20 Years Of Devdas: After a bizarre incident on the sets, Salman Khan had the injured mock boy taken to the hospital; cared for him until he came out of a coma and made a full recovery
More Pages: Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya Box Office Collection, Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya Movie Review
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