Smoking Ash

Concern over a scene in the Guzaarish trailer showing actress puffing away is why you won't see the promo with We Are Family

The first trailer of Guzaarish was supposed to go out with prints of Karan Johar's We Are Family and the former's director Sanjay Leela Bhansali was very pleased with the arrangement. KJo and SLB are friends, after all.

But now, one hears that the trailer has been withdrawn from We Are Family and will feature in theatres a month later with Siddharth Anand's Anjaana Anjaani.

The official reason given for the postponement of the Guzaarish trailer is the time factor. Official sources say there's still quite some time before Guzaarish releases. However the real story is that there are some concerns over a sequence showing Aishwarya Rai Bachchan puffing away frantically at a cigarette in the trailer.

While smoking is not entirely prohibited in our films, it is certainly seen to be injurious to health, especially since the one smoking on screen is a global icon playing a nurse. Says a source close to the film, "Aishwarya is not really smoking in Guzaarish. It's a very cute, funny and a very beautiful sequence where she is trying to smoke when she doesn't know how to."

Irrespective of its context it's been decided that that the sequence will be shown to a focus group to see how it is received. Says the source, "Agreed, Aishwarya has never been shown smoking on screen. But it's not a sequence propagating smoking. Everyone who has seen it so far has reacted very positively to it."

Siddharth Roy Kapoor of UTV (co-producers and distributors of Guzaarish) adds, "There are a lot of smoking scenes in a lot of movies. I really don't see any trouble."