A Conversation With Dabboo Ratnani

There’s something strange about old photographs. Sometimes they capture a fleeting moment and sometimes… they capture a future.Long before cinema and fame, a little girl held the hand of a sweet, fair-haired boy under a Christmas tree at a kindergarten called Babyland in Shivaji Park. Then, life happened. The school was demolished. The city changed. The children forgot.Years later, stranded by terrible weather on a film shoot in Shimla, that same woman spent long, idle hours shooting portraits with a young, unknown photographer to pass the time. The images they captured were extraordinary, eventually gracing countless magazine covers. One evening, she mentioned her heartbreak over her old kindergarten being reduced to rubble.“Babyland?” the photographer asked quietly. “I studied there too.”A trunk call to Bombay and a search through an old baby book revealed the truth: the forgotten photograph was real. That girl was Pooja Bhatt. And the boy whose hand she held is her guest today, India's premier celebrity photographer, Dabboo Ratnani.In this nostalgic and soul-baring exchange on 'The Pooja Bhatt Show,' Pooja and Dabboo step beyond the glamour to explore the magic of a captured memory. They reflect on a vanishing canvas, discussing how photography has shifted from the quiet, intimate frames of their youth to the breathless rush of the digital era. Dabboo shares raw, personal memories from his sacred intersections with giants like Shah Rukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, and the inimitable Sanjay Dutt—iconic moments frozen in time where trust met destiny.This is a masterclass not in expensive gear, but in the unspoken bond between artist and subject. It is an eloquent reminder that to photograph a face is to honor the quiet truth of a person, and that true artistry belongs to those who reinvent themselves while holding onto the childhood instinct that started it all.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.