‘Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’ was Aditya Chopra’s directorial debut. He started working on the film when he was only 23 years old. The film was released when he was 24 and became not just a hit but a megahit. If you have watched the documentary ‘The Romantics’, you would know that Aditya Chopra, especially back then, was incredibly passionate about the films he was creating and he sat day and night revising the script for DDLJ like a fanatic.
If you remember, Simran’s dad, Chaudhry Baldev Singh, the character who was played to perfection by actor Amrish Puri, was a rigid and perpetually angry man. The reason why he had a harsh temperament wasn’t shown in the film. However, in the first draft of DDLJ, Aditya Chopra wrote an interesting backstory for the character.
Chaudhry Baldev Singh was a farmer in Punjab who lost his farms to the floods, came to England to make a living after his cousin insisted and got cheated by his cousin. Here’s what an excerpt from the draft read:
“Chaudhry Baldev Singh was originally a farmer in Punjab but because of floods destroying his farm, he came down to England with his then pregnant wife to earn a decent living, at the call of his cousin who was already settled there. But very soon the cousin cheated him and they separated. Ever since then he runs a small grocery store and refuses to socialize with anybody. He is a man of great self-respect, very stubborn and rigid in his thinking. Time has not changed him and he insists on wearing the same clothes he wore twenty years ago.”
Have a look at the draft here:
A picture of this draft was shared by a guy named Pankaj Sachdeva on Twitter. The picture is a screenshot from ‘The Romantics’.
The story of Chaudhury Baldev Singh from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge's script from #TheRomantics. Floods destroyed farms in Punjab. Moved to London, and got cheated on by a cousin. "Time has not changed him, and he insists on wearing the same clothes he wore twenty years ago." pic.twitter.com/uo74SRyO0B
— Pankaj Sachdeva (@sachdeva_pankaj) February 22, 2023
Isn’t this interesting?