A decade on, fans still shout “Aata Majhi Satakli” at Kajal Aggarwal

Thirteen years after its original run, Singham is back in theatres—and so are the memories that turned Kajal Aggarwal’s Bollywood debut into a nationwide moment. The 2011 action drama re-released on October 18, 2024, and a day later Ajay Devgn and director Rohit Shetty met fans at a special screening, riding the buzz for Singham Again, slated for a Diwali opening on November 1. For Kajal, the film didn’t just open doors; it kicked them down. She says she never imagined the story of a straight-arrow cop would snowball into a genre-defining franchise with a fiercely loyal fan base.

In an interview around the re-release, Kajal put it simply: she’s happy audiences get to revisit the film that launched her in Hindi cinema and surprised her with its scale of success. She remembers the first wave of reactions—packed halls, repeat viewings, families cheering the hero’s punchlines—and how quickly the character of Bajirao Singham became shorthand for no-nonsense justice. That organic connect is what she credits for the film’s afterlife.

Kajal also addressed not being in Singham Again. Actors are greedy for good work, she said with a laugh, and you always want to be part of films that audiences love. Still, she’s fully behind Rohit Shetty’s vision, and she’s watched every title in the cop universe. What impresses her most is how he stitches stories together so the crossovers feel earned, not forced.

Why did the first film land so hard? Kajal points to the writing. The plot stays clean, relies on character-driven humor, and doesn’t punch down. That clarity made it a family crowd-pleaser even with high-decibel action. The evidence is everywhere. People still stop her and quote “Aata Majhi Satakli,” the line that leaked into everyday banter and WhatsApp forwards. It’s the kind of one-liner you remember where you first heard.

Career-wise, Singham changed Kajal’s visibility overnight. She came in with a big commercial setup and walked out with pan-India recognition. Offers multiplied across languages. While she kept anchoring major Tamil and Telugu projects, the Hindi debut put her face—and name—into living rooms far beyond the South markets where she was already a star.

The cop universe, the re-release playbook, and what comes next

Singham wasn’t just a hit; it was the starting gun. Shetty used it to build a shared world around uniformed heroes. The follow-up, Singham Returns (2014), kept the moral spine and added scale. Then came Simmba (2018) and Sooryavanshi (2021), which expanded the universe with crossovers, cameos, and a now-familiar rhythm: swaggering entrances, slow-motion face-offs, and a rousing theme that turns theatres into pep rallies. Singham Again is expected to push that template further.

The timing of this re-release is no accident. Indian studios have leaned on nostalgia screenings to warm up audiences ahead of new chapters. It worked when older blockbusters returned briefly to theatres—think pre-release runs that stoked memory and built event status for sequels. For single-screen owners and multiplex chains, re-runs offer guaranteed footfalls at a relatively low risk; for fans, they bring back first-day energy without the guesswork of a new title.

At the recent screening, Devgn and Shetty worked the room like veterans who know the ritual: selfies, salutes, that two-finger collar tug that Ajay’s character made iconic. The atmosphere is the point. You feel the thump of the title theme. You cheer the first face-off with the villain. You hear someone in the back row shout that catchphrase. It’s communal, loud, and oddly comforting.

Singham’s staying power also comes down to the kind of hero it sells—an old-school, incorruptible cop in a world that often looks slippery. That fantasy is evergreen. The films deliver it with muscular action, clear moral stakes, and punchlines built for applause breaks. It’s no surprise kids discovered the original on TV and streaming and are now turning up for the big-screen rerun.

As the franchise gears up for its new outing, Kajal is watching like the rest of us—curious about the scale, the crossovers, and the next evolution of Shetty’s shared world. She might not be in the latest chapter, but her association with the first film is baked into its legacy. To many fans, she’s still part of the Singham experience, the memory you carry from that 2011 watch: the romance track, the lighter moments around the storm, and the little beats that made the steel feel human.

For now, the re-release is doing what it set out to do: refuel nostalgia, pack theatres, and hand over a fresh runway to Singham Again. The franchise didn’t become a phenomenon by accident. It grew because audiences kept coming back for the same thing, delivered with conviction—and because, as Kajal admits, even those who helped start it didn’t fully see how big it would get.