Real life matches are made in heaven. Reels ones are made by tinsel town’s dream merchants. Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai is one onscreen jodi that might have sizzled, had things happened otherwise.

Danny Boyle is possibly right; some things are written. May be Shahrukh and Ash, who were hyped, as the next big Bollywood jodi after their sparkling chemistry in Devdas and Mohabbatein, were also not destined to work together after that. They did team up for Chalte Chalte but a nasty incident on the film’s sets, involving a certain other Khan, cost Ash the movie.

Now we hear that even Mani Ratnam wanted to cast Shahrukh in the lead role opposite Ash in his latest bilingual movie Ravana which is in the making stages. It happened in the days when SRK had outrageously declared himself “unemployed” because the two big projects he was slated to work in – Raju Hirani’s 3 Idiots and Shankar’s Robot – fell through for one reason or another. Unexpectedly, that was the time Mani first spoke about ‘Ravana’ with SRK and the superstar expressed interest.

But before Mani could come to Mumbai and give the superstar a detailed script narration, Rab intervened and Aditya Chopra approached SRK for his comeback movie Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.

So by the time Ratnam met SRK to discuss ‘Ravana’, the actor had already given his dates to Aditya Chopra. Since Mani didn’t want to delay the movie, he roped in Abhishek Bachchan as the film’s male lead instead of SRK.

And so, another chance of SRK and Ash working together came to nothing. May be it was destined!