Aiyya! Rani Mukerji aali...

The biggest challenge for Rani Mukerji whose upcoming film Aiyyaa is based in a Maharashtrian set-up in Pune was to look like a Marathi girl. The language, she was sure, she would pick up, having been born and brought up in Mumbai. “I knew chalu Marathi, because my staff is Maharashtrian but I wasn’t sure how I will look the part, especially because Marathi actors are playing Maharashtrians and Prithviraj, who is a South Indian is playing a Tamil guy! But Sachin (director Sachin Kundalkar) told me that Kokanastha Maharastrians are light-eyed and therefore he was confident I will pull it off,” smiles Rani, who worked hard on learning Puneri Marathi. “I had to be perfect because we were shooting in sync sound and there was no scope for mistakes,”
says Rani.

The actor confesses that she had longed to play a Marathi mulgi and had earlier got the opportunity in Nayak. “But that wasn’t a full-fledged role, so I was very excited about this. Also, the concept of weaving romance around the concept of smell intrigued me,” says Rani, adding that her character Meenaxi is simple but has a lot of dreams. Was it her dream to perfect her belly dancing moves too? “In Hindi films,   women are always portrayed as objects of desire. But in the song Aga Bai, Sachin wanted the focus to be on the man’s body instead. It was Vaibhavi’s idea to fuse belly dancing with Indian classical to make it larger than life,” explains Rani.

Talking about on-screen love, veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra, announced his retirement from Bollywood recently. Rani, who has done several romantic films, however, never got to play a typical Yash Chopra heroine. Does she regret that? “He made films like Deewar, Trishul, Daag and Waqt before becoming the king of romance. He introduced the angry young man and my character Sania Siddiqui in Veer-Zara was the angry young woman. She had that side of his (Chopra’s) jhalak. And, like his heroines, even Sania wore churidars and chiffon dupattas,” points out Rani but admits that Chandni and Lamhe are her favourites.

Speaking of Chopra, what is her take on the rumour mills marrying her off to his filmmaker son Aditya? Rani toughens up and responds, “It’s a very irresponsible rumour. You have to realise that we come from good families and this is like directly attacking an actor’s character. I am neither an insecure person nor an insecure actor. Marriage is a happy thing and
I want to share it with everybody, when it happens."