Since it's the season of marriages and the week ended with a film that merged the talents of two celebrity daughters, let's hark back to the dramatic parents of Alia Bhatt and Meghna Gulzar.

Thirty two years ago, at the Illustrated Weekly office, Pritish Nandy told me his friend Mahesh Bhatt was getting ready for marriage at that very moment to girlfriend Soni Razdan at the other end of town.

Mahesh was already famous, known for his colourful life and renowned for his candour. By then he had also unabashedly given that shocking interview to Stardust, where he said he was the illegitimate son of Nanabhai Bhatt. He later put that story on celluloid as Zakhm, the film in which Ajay Devgn discovers that his mother is a Muslim who has been hiding her faith because she was the second (unaccepted) wife of a Hindu. At a party in Anupam Kher's house, Mahesh had happily introduced me to his mother as, "The lady I spoke about in that interview."

History kind of repeated itself when Mahesh, like his father, fell in love outside his marriage, first with Parveen Babi and then with Soni. The first time around, he had returned to wife Kiran (born Lorraine and renamed Kiran after marriage) but he turned Muslim and went through a nikah with Soni without divorcing his first spouse.

In 1986, the Mahesh-Soni marriage had created a bit of a stir, although people had got used to filmland marriages like that of Hema-Dharam and Raj Babbar-Smita Patil, which were conducted according to their own rules.

But today, it is thanks to the successful Mahesh-Soni marriage that there's a talented Alia Bhatt in our midst.

Unlike the quiet Mahesh-Soni marriage, Raakhee and Gulzar wed amidst Begum Akhtar's full-throated thumris and the film industry in full attendance. In fact, Raakhee was a two-week old bride when she came to the hurriedly-organised, low-key marriage of Jaya and Amitabh on June 3 the same year (1973).

With a broken marriage behind her, Raakhee had initially been intrigued by Gulzar's past friendship with Meena Kumari and then fallen in love with the poetic man of letters. Gulzar was a curious mix of a Sardar who once wore a turban but loved Urdu, spoke Bengali and observed the Ramzan fast. All of it, with a twinkle in his eye and a dry sense of humour.

Raakhee was also always full of fun. After marriage, she'd laugh that Gulzar would snore loudly but only inhale. And she'd wait all night for him to exhale.

So, although there's a 20-year age gap between Meghna and Alia, they have much in common as the products of unconventional, immensely gifted parents.

But there's one major difference. Mahesh always accepted Soni as a woman who needed to keep working and was fine with directing her in his films, too. Raakhee, however, had to wind up her acting career to marry Gulzar, who wouldn't cast her in his films either. When, later, she rebelled and signed Yash Chopra's Kabhie Kabhie, it signalled the end of her marriage.

Times sure have changed. Today, Gulzar wouldn't dream of Meghna quitting her career after she wed the well-spoken, non-filmic Govind and became a mother, too. And thank God for that as we wouldn't otherwise have had this talented director, who looks for way-out stories to tell, in our midst.

So, it was because of two celebrity marriages in the last millennium that two risk-takers like Alia Bhatt and Meghna Gulzar could come together today to make a fine and important film called Raazi.

Last week, Mahesh and Gulzar hugged each other after a special screening of Raazi as the proud fathers of two talented daughters but, strangely, I don't recall any film that the two master craftsmen did together. I don't recall any movie that Mahesh did with Raakhee either, which is stranger still as he would've worked magic with her on-camera flair for drama.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author