Did Farhan Akhtar’s rift with former best friend Uday Chopra inspire Dil Chahta Hai?

Farhan Akhtar has always been associated with breaking barriers in Bollywood be it with the films he has directed or those that he has acted in. The actor-filmmaker started out as a 26-year-old who ushered in a new age in cinemas with his directorial debut Dil Chahta Hai . The story of three friends, starring Aamir Khan , Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna so deeply resonated with the masses that it started a new trend.

But did you know that that when Dil Chahta Hai released rumour mills were buzzing that the film’s premise was set of Farhan’s broken friendship with Uday Chopra and filmmaker Aditya Chopra . The story goes that Farhan’s mother Honey Irani who shared a good friendship with the Chopra family was not credited for the work she had done on Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’s script.

The fact caused a rift between the two families leaving Honey Irani deeply upset and severely impacting Farhan’s friendship with Aditya and his close childhood friend Uday Chopra. It was rumoured that Farhan based the story of Dil Chahta Hai on his fall out with Uday.

The filmmaker in a few interviews post the film’s release was asked about this. During an interview with Filmfare in 2002, Farhan addressed the rumors and said, “Maybe that incident inspired me on a sub-conscious level. But the movie is not inspired by the event which drove us apart. My point is that its not difficult to build bridges. It's not difficult to get hack. A friendship is never over. So in that sense, the movie is autobiographical.”

As for Farhan and his friendship with Aditya Chopra and UDay Chopra, the filmmaker had then said that despite all things they remain cordial.

Farhan had been working on Dil Chahta Hai for few years before he decided to direct the film which still remains a cult classic over two decades later. The idea for Dil Chahta Hai came from Farhan’s journaling his trips to Goa, his month and half long stay in New York in 1996 and a story outline told to him by a friend.

The actot-filmmaker had said that he had initially wanted to make the film a love story between Aakash and Shalini (Aamir Khan and Preity Zinta )but scrapped the idea since it was conventional. He added Aakash’s friends to the story whose characters and journeys then took a life of their own and eventually the friendship became the heart of the story.