Shahid Kapoor, who will soon be seen in the action film Bloody Daddy, recently completed 20 years in the movie business. The actor, in a recent chat, spoke about his only collaboration with director Sooraj Barjatya, in the film Vivah.
In a chat with Radio Nasha, Shahid said that while doing Vivah, “Half the time, I used to be like ‘What am I doing? What is happening? What is going on?” Shahid continued, “I was a big city kid. I wasn’t getting half the things that were happening. I was like jal (water)? What is this? And then we were doing songs which were sung in an older man’s voice. I was wondering how will I do this?”
Shahid shared that he had huge respect for Sooraj, and so he decided to follow whatever direction he was given. “I just followed it. I said, ‘You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’ He would tell me ‘Trust me Shahid, just do this’ and I did. I did it with all my honesty,” he shared.
Shahid recalled that back in 2006, when Vivah released, “a lot of cinema that was doing well was that front-footed college, young, Dharma and Yash Raj, that was doing really well. He went completely reverse.” He said that Sooraj made a “very conservative film about a very core audience in our country which hadn’t been addressed for the longest period of time, and he knew that that was his comfort zone.” He continued, “That was his playing ground. He went back to his playing ground and he said, ‘this is what I am going to do’ and he made it purely. He did not push any tropes in there which could be commercial or which were working at that time.”
In a previous interview with Pinkvilla, Sooraj had shared that Shahid was completely unaware of this world when he worked in the film. “I always tease him because in Vivah, he understood nothing about arranged marriage,” he had said. Sooraj recalled an incident and shared, “Shadi ho rahi hai uski climax mein he said main pagdi kyu pehnu? Maine kaha pehnni padegi. Aise rooth gaya. Fir apni shaadi mein sab kia usne (Then in the climax for his wedding scene, he asked why should I wear a pagdi? I said you will have to, then he got upset. He then did everything at his own wedding).”
Vivah also starred Amrita Rao, Anupam Kher, Alok Nath, Seema Biswas, Samir Soni
