What’s it, if not the return of the morally unambiguous villain, missing for long, that also explains Khanna’s year at Bollywood’s box-office, no?

Akshaye Khanna as Rahman Dakait in ‘Dhurandhar’

I have it from a friend, on the set of Laxman Utekar’s blockbuster Chhaava (2025) once, wherein actor Akshaye Khanna as Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was being instructed to furiously scream, out of desperate anger, in a particular scene.

Khanna shot back, “I’m Hindustan’s Badshah! Why will I yell?” Take the cripplingly calm Khanna out of Chhaava, the rest of the film is a screeching fest, first. 

Khanna played the aged Muslim king in a diametrically opposite way from the excessively feisty, ravenous Ranveer Singh as young Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat (2018) — a scene-stealer still. 
In such a way that one forgets — technically, who was the hero of Padmaavat? Shahid Kapoor, of course.

In a reversal of sorts, ever since Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar (2025), with Singh as the hero this time on, there are only two things I’ve heard from everyone else who’s watched the film.

Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, in ‘Chhaava’. Pics/By Special Arrangement

Primarily — about Khanna as Rehman Dakait! Plus, the box-office brouhaha around Dhurandhar, surpassing R1,000 crore, worldwide-gross; R10 crore plus, post-release, up until 22nd day (beating........

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