Indian Media Magazine – Media, Television, Movie and Celebrity News

Asha Bhosle’s act­ing debut in the film Mai at age 80 has not been dif­fi­cult for her at all. The direc­tor Mahesh Kodiyal who also makes his debut in Mai, explains why.


“Ashaji’s songs have always been the high­est form of emot­ing. Even while giv­ing play­back voice to hero­ines, she was con­stantly emot­ing to pitch-perfection in the songs. The dif­fer­ence was ear­lier she emoted for other hero­ines. In Mai, she emoted for her­self. I thought I’d have to do a lot of rehearsals with Ashaji to get her famil­iar with the cam­era. But she took to the cam­era like a born actress. Let’s not for­get her father Pan­dit Dinanath Mangeshkar was a bril­liant actor. In the 1920s and 30s, he’d play both male and female parts, since in those days women were averse to act­ing.“


Mahesh remem­bers when he went for the first read­ing with Ashaji. “I gave her some emo­tional lines and I took charge of Pad­mini Kolhapure’s line. She took over the lines as though they belonged to her. Doing the lines she broke down and sobbed. I get goose­flesh even think­ing of how she responded.”


Mahesh says he took his time to fin­ish script­ing Mai. “Since it was a film where the main char­ac­ter suf­fered from Alzheimer’s, I didn’t want experts to pounce on me for get­ting med­ical details wrong. I worked exten­sively on get­ting the details right.”


Mahesh admits the theme of own­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the par­ents’ upkeep in their old age is not new. “I know many films like Mohan Kumar’s Avtaar and Ravi Chopra’s Bagh­ban have been done on the theme before. But the prob­lem of chil­dren not being able to look after their par­ents is peren­nial. It is all around us.“
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