If Emraan had his way Jannat would remain smooch-free. “But then my director Kunal Singh got greedy,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes. “He first persuaded me to do one kiss, then another.” Emraan who turned 29 on March 24 was quite sick and tired of kissing…and cutting cakes.

Kunal Deshmukh, debutant director of Jannat, may not have imagined that he would have to shell out Rs. 5000 from his own pocket just to schedule an interview with a bookie. Since it was essentially for him to be interacting with a real life bookie in order to get his research right for his film which deals with the nexus of cricketers, bookies, match fixers, umpires and referees, he had no other option but to agree to the proposal and pay the ‘signing amount’!

This incident happened just recently, during the final exam of English Literature. The question paper had the question as “Write the synonym of the words like ‘Eternally Natural Beauty”. All the scholarly people wrote more or less the following (since they had by-hearted from the Dictionary), “Eternally Natural Beauty is an adjective, which signifies in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).” Phew! Too much of gyaan that!

More more more…The motto of motorized materialism seems to have overtaken contemporary life. Everyone wants the good things of life in the shortest time possible. The acquisitive spirit has seldom been defined with such economy of storytelling. Not surprisingly, a lot of Jannat, Mahesh Bhatt’s latest exposition on the excesses of materialism, is shot in shopping malls, expensive restaurants, and posh stadiums where money flows like unadulterated honey. And when our hero of the ‘modem’ times sees the love of his life staring at a diamond ring he walks into the showroom and breaks the show -window glass.

Jannat has enjoyed a fantastic first week in India as well as overseas which has confirmed it’s HIT status in a matter of days.

While next few days would decide the quantum of the film’s success, producer Mukesh Bhatt is leaving no stone unturned to make sure that the momentum doesn’t show a dip for this Kunal Deshmukh directed flick. Looking at the kind of success this Emraan Hashmi-Sonal Chauhan film is enjoying, the film’s prints have been increased all over.