Bollywood's yesteryears actor Manoj Kumar is plotting his comeback to films after a decade as a scriptwriter and there are media reports that Aamir Khan is likely to star in his ambitious project on former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
Manoj Kumar is making a comeback to cinema after 10 long years.
He will work as a scriptwriter with two patriotic scripts – one titled Aakhri Goli (The Last Bullet) based on the life of Chandrashekhar Azad and the second titled Lal Bahadur Shastri on the life of the former Prime Minister who died in Tashkent on a cold January morning after signing the Tashkent Accord with Pakistan's Ayub Khan.
Manoj last acted in the 1995 film Maidan-e-Jung and later wrote a film called Jai Hind in 1999.
Aamir Khan has been approached to play the role of Lal Bahadur and mouth the famous slogan 'Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan' that Shastriji gave during the 1966 India-Pak War.
Manoj Kumar told Mumbai newspaper DNA: "Aamir has been approached and he is quite excited. The film is about the life and times of Lal Bahadur Shastri.
“It is like a bio-pic, but since so little is known about the personal life of the man except for the fact that he was extremely close to Jawaharlal Nehru and that he had fought a war with Pakistan — and his mysterious death at Tashkent about which people have debated whether he was poisoned — we have to improvise a lot on the plot to make it dramatic and intriguing. The script will have the permission from the descendants of Shastri's family."
"I think Aamir is well equipped to pull off this role. I have seen his movies and I must say I love his acting. He is certainly the finest actor we have today", Says Manoj.
Manoj Kumar, who has spent 50 years in the film industry, says, "Life has begun for me at 50. I have always believed in quality over quantity and so in my entire career, I have just done around 50 films — unlike others who have done 300. Hats off to them, but I don't have the stamina to go on and on unless something really fascinates me," he says.
"I have researched the subject for many years and only after that did I decide to take the plunge. Movies have been my passion and I don't think I can ever quit it. We are yet to start full-fledged casting."
