Guru is a forthcoming Hindi film to be directed by Mani Ratnam. It stars Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Madhavan and Vidya Balan in pivotal roles. The movie also stars Mithun Chakraborty in a supporting role and Mallika Sherawat in a cameo role. The movie will also be dubbed in Tamil and Telugu. The film's score and soundtrack will be composed by A. R. Rahman. The film is currently slated for release on January 12, 2007.
Guru will also be exclusively premiered at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres in Toronto, Canada on January 11, 2007
Directed by Mani Ratnam, who has written the script with Suhasini Mani Ratnam and Vijay Krishna Acharya, Guru is said to be a mature love story. Shooting for the film took place in Turkey and Badami, Karnataka, as well as in Chennai and Madurai, Tamil Nadu. The music is composed by A.R. Rahman, with lyrics by Gulzar. Cinematography for the film is handled by Rajiv Menon. Current reports state that the film is based on the life of India's biggest petrochemicals tycoon, Dhirubhai Ambani.
With choreography by Saroj Khan and Brinda, Guru, produced by Ratnam and G. Srinivasan, is to be released on January 12, 2007
Gurukant Desai - Idhar village, Gujarat. Don't dream. Dreams never come true, my father, the headmaster of our village school often told me when I was a young boy. But I did dream. As I grew, so did my dreams. Bigger than my outstreatched arms, bigger than my small house, bigger than my village. I loved Idhar. It was quiet, peaceful, lazy and green. But I knew that my destiny was beyond this village. I knew that my destiny had to be made by me. When I came to Bombay I had two shirts, a wife, a brother-in-law and Rs.15,000 in a small suitcase to start a business. But all doors were shut for a newcomer. Indian business and trade were run by a handful of the rich and the privileged. Only they were given the licenses, they had the quotas and they controlled all the government and trade. It was an exclusive club where it was imposible for an ordinary middle class newcomer to enter, leave alone succeed. You had to kick the doors open or cajole them open. I did both. I did not take no for an answer. And that's because I can never hear the word no. 40 years later. We started Shakti Trading in a 350 sq feet room, with one telephone, one table and three chairs. Today Shakti Corporation is the first Indian company to enter the Forbes top 500 list. People ask me how this happened. I said to them, "Think Big, Think Ahead and Think Fast".
Sujatha - I hated my father for forcing me to marry Guru. But I was sent away to Bombay to live with my unwanted husband and my anger in a one-room chawl. I don’t know when I stopped thinking of him as a stranger and started calling him Guru. I was too shy to say things like I love you, but love was perfume I wore everyday. Some people call him God, some say he is evil, but for me he is the man who has to just enter the room and I can feel that perfume waft its way across and settle on me... that perfume called love.
Manikdas Gupta (Nanaji) - Swathantra – is the newspaper I run, and the newspaper runs me. Gurubhai was like a son to me, when I met him first on the streets of Bombay. He had righteous anger and a desire to achieve his goals. I liked that. He was in a hurry to make his own way. I liked that even more. When others told me that Gurubhai was not all white, I thought they were envious of him and ignored them. That was my mistake. No cost is too great in the pursuit of truth. And in my fight for the truth I knew that I’d either destroy Guru or myself. And I was prepared for both.
Shyam Saxena - Gurukanth Desai should be put in a jail and the keys should be thrown away. It’s not just that he is evil, but he awakens the evil in everyone. Gurubhai flirted with the law and the lawmakers, did anything and everything to enhance his business, and then buried the laws and built a fountain on top of it to make the grave look pretty. Profit and the share price were the only two parameters that mattered to him. Right and wrong, just and unjust were incidental. I will fight him and the Gurus of this world till the very end.
Meenu - I met Gurubhai when I was seven years old. He was the only one who never asked me why I limped. While Nanaji and Shyam could only see what Gurubhai had done, I could see why he had done it. When you run fast you do kick up a lot of dust. But dust always settles. I could see it from my wheelchair but Nanaji could not. I like fights. And this one where everyone I loved was fighting each other was exciting. They cared but they fought. The contradiction was exactly like life. And I loved life. Especially when there was so little of it left.