At the lavish wedding reception of Bollywood producer Anand Pandit’s daughter, Aishwarya, a plethora of stars descended, turning the event into a truly glittering affair. Amidst the sheer star presence, it was the inadvertent reunion of Emraan Hashmi and Mallika Sherawat that became the focal point of the evening. The duo, who had co-starred in the 2004 sensual hit ‘Murder’, caught the spotlight as they met cordially on the event’s red carpet, eventually posing for photographs side by side.
Their surprising convergence evoked considerable excitement among cinema enthusiasts, who had last beheld the pair in their early-career blockbuster. In ‘Murder’, Hashmi and Sherawat’s on-screen chemistry had set the box office ablaze, but off-screen, the situation was quite the contrary. During the shoot, rumors of a rift between the pair circulated widely, even impacting their communication during the film promotions.
However, with both dressed to impress—Emraan in a suave black suit and Mallika in an eye-catching pink ensemble—the duo’s interaction at the reception indicated that past dissent had been replaced with a congenial rapport. As photographers eagerly captured the moment, the two were seen engaging in a brief exchange, a prelude to a congenial embrace—suggesting that whatever discord had marked their past association was now water under the bridge.
Their tiff had resurfaced in the public domain when Sherawat, on Mandira Bedi’s talk show ‘The Love Laugh Live’ in 2021, described their fallout as ‘childish’. She reflected on the dispute, affirming it was “so uncalled for and so childish on my part also.” Emraan Hashmi too had ironically created ripples when he humorously remarked on a famous chat show hosted by Karan Johar that Mallika was a ‘bad kisser’. Unfazed, Mallika retorted playfully that a serpent she kissed in the film ‘Hisss’ proved to be a superior kisser than Emraan.
These throwbacks to their squabbles indicate the colorful journey the two have had, both in their individual careers and during their time together on set. On the professional front, Emraan Hashmi was recently seen in ‘Ae Watan Mere Watan’, in which he portrayed Ram Manohar Lohia alongside lead actress Sara Ali Khan—a biopic grounded in the life of the freedom fighter Usha Mehta.
As for Sherawat, her international and Bollywood projects have sustained her presence in the entertainment industry, even as she ventures into varied themes and stories. This joint appearance at the wedding reception may just signal not only a personal reconciliation but perhaps even a hint to directors and producers that the duo could electrify the silver screen together again.
While the reception was a celebration of union for Anand Pandit’s daughter, the delightful coincidence for Bollywood fans lay in the renewing of a once-lost camaraderie between two prominent figures of the early 2000s. Their red-carpet interaction resonates with the very nature of cinema: A never-ending narrative where connections are reforged, roles are reassumed, and scenes evolve to embrace newer contexts. As the two found solace in buried hatchets, it served as a testament to the evolving dynamics of personal and professional relationships within the glamorous yet unpredictable realm of Bollywood.
