Sanjay Leela Bhansali had the singular honour of having worked with Zohra Sehgal in two of his best works Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam and Saawariya.
SLB recalls, “My experience of working with Zohraji in the two films I did with her, would remain with me until I die. She was a miracle woman. A legend beyond explanation. And look at her range! In Hum… Dil De Chuke Sanam, I put her in a Gujarati Ghagra-choli. In Saawariya, she wore a Catholic dress.”
The Heeramandi director describes his experience of working with Zohra Sehgal as timeless. “Just like the lady herself. And that reminds me, though me there was a decade-long gap between Hum… Dil De Chuke Sanam and Saawariya she had not aged one bit in those ten years…not a single extra wrinkle, not one extra grey hair!!! She was a miracle woman! At 94, when she worked with me in Saawariya Zohraji was still the sprightly gamine with dancing eyes. Her sheer zest for life and her understanding of the movie camera made all of us look like film students in front of her.”
Bhansali remembers when Ranbir Kapoor and he went to pick Zohra Sehgal up at the airport when she arrived to shoot for Saawariya. “She looked at Ranbir and said, ‘Do you know I’ve worked opposite your great-grandfather Prithviraj Kapoor and your grandfather Raj Kapoor? You’re the third generation of Kapoors I’m working with. I don’t know how she missed out working with Randhir and Rishi Kapoor. She had come laden to Mumbai with her pictures with Prithviraj Saab and Raj Saab to prove her point to Ranbir. From the first day, she insisted on calling him ‘ Ranbir Raj.’ They were the two youngest people the sets. I swear I felt old watching Zohraji’s energy on the sets of Saawariya. All of us would be dead tired by evening. But at 6 pm, Zohraji would grandly announce, ‘Let’s have a glass of wine before we got back to work.’ She loved her role because for the first time she played a Catholic character in Saawariya. She got a chance to wear her hair stylishly, put on Western clothes and she specially loved the crimson lipstick. Once she had those in place she was in full form.
Bhansali recalls Zohraji’s incredible memory at 94. “Do you remember that scene in Saawariya where she insists on singing an English-language song for Ranbir? The song was her own. It was something she remembered from the past. And what a memory she had! At 94, she remembered not just all her own dialogues, but every single dialogue of every character in Saawariya and earlier in Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam. In fact, I remember when I had picked her up from the airport for the first time, she rattled off all her lines and then all the lines of all the other characters and warned me, ‘Don’t you dare change one line.’ On the sets, if anyone forgot his or her lines, guess who promptly piped in with the correct lines??!! …Zohraji’s exuberance was infectious. The power and the magnetism in her eyes are still with me.”
Bhansali wanted to work with her for the longest time before Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanam. “She had started her career with Uday Shankar’s dance troupe and had played a part in Udayji’s dance ballet Kalpana. I worship Uday Shankarji. So for me, Zohraji was part of a legacy that I revere beyond the normal. I wanted her to play Aishwarya Rai’s blind old but jovial and zesty grandmother in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. When Zohraji agreed I was besides myself with joy. She was 84 at that time. But she brought to the sets the energy level of a 19-year old. I remember an incident where one of my assistants asked her to look toward the characters and react. She snarled back, ‘How can I LOOK at someone when I’m blind?’ She remained in character throughout. That Bhavai song Suno suno that she sings with Aishwarya and the rest of the Gujju family in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam? Zohraji managed it in one take.”
Bhansali described Zohra Sehgal as temperamental in a very positive way. “While some actors throw their weight around to feel important, she rages when she sees incompetence, mediocrity or compromise on the sets. At 84 (in Hum..Dil De Chuke Sanam) she was such a strong woman that when in a scene she had to playfully pull Salman and Aishwarya’s ears their ears went red. They asked me in a whisper if I could ask Zohraji not to put so much strength into her ear-pulling. But I didn’t have the guts to correct her. No one told Zohraji what to do. She was a free spirit. I’d often see her with her granddaughter on the sets. But she didn’t need any help. She did everything on her own. Once during Saawariya, she had some female relatives over from Pakistan. She giggled and laughed and whooped it up like Sonam Kapoor would with her friends.”
Zohra Sehgal, says Bhansali, could create her own universe for each character without going into too much background detail. “I certainly hoped to complete a hat-trick of films with Zohra Sehgal by doing one more film with her. I hoped she’d out-live us all. I think I’m the only contemporary director who had the privilege of working in two films with Zohraji. And both the films Hum… Dil De Chuke Sanam and Saawariya were made memorable by her presence on the sets. Everything else will fade.”
