Pakistani actor Mahira Khan just made her big Bollywood debut alongside Shah Rukh Khan in Rahul Dholakia's Raees. While the film is busy breaking box-office records one after the other, its makers have made sure Mahira was not in India for the promotions either before or after the films.
Mahira's favourite Indian actor is Guru Dutt. She has a 'deep admiration for Guru Dutt', said Khan. "I discovered him when I was 16. I saw Pyasa and it changed my life. I can't explain what it meant to me.
It opened a whole new kind of Indian cinema to me. Prior to that I was into the song-and-dance films, the Anil Kapoor films and so on.
After watching Guru Dutt's films I became a huge fan of Sahir Ludhianvi's poetry and the songs of Guru Dutt's films."