The relationship was slow-burn. Irani played Rohan not as a villain, but as a man afraid of intimacy. The audience wasn’t rooting for the CEO; they were rooting for the broken boy inside. Case Study 2: The Tragedy-Driven Second Chance ( Sands of Time , 2021–2022) Departing from urban settings, Sands of Time placed Aks Irani in a royal Rajasthani backdrop. Here, he played Arjun Rathore , a widowed prince who has locked himself in a fort for five years after his wife’s death. The romantic storyline here is a "second chance at love" with a lookalike, Meera (dual role by actress Pooja Sharma).
For the first 40 episodes, there is no romance—only disgust. Rohan sees Ananya as a liability; Ananya sees Rohan as a sociopath. The Shift: The romantic storyline ignites during a rain-soaked car breakdown scene. Stranded on a highway, Rohan admits he has a crippling fear of thunderstorms—a vulnerability no one knows. In that moment, Ananya doesn’t mock him; she holds his hand. The Payoff: For the next 80 episodes, the show explores "proximity romance." They fight, they deny, and they engage in epic "elevator arguments" that end with noses inches apart. The famous "Diwali balcony scene," where Rohan admits, "I don’t know how to love, but I think I’m doing it wrong with you," trended on social media for a week.
Irani himself has acknowledged this evolution. In a 2022 roundtable, he said: "I played Rohan in 2018 and realized the audience no longer wanted a man who yelled to prove his love. They wanted a man who listened. My recent scripts focus on consent, therapy, and growth. Romance should not require suffering as proof."