It ain’t Greek to me…

Jasmine Singh

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The muscle man actor Sonu Sood, whose rippling muscles make Salman Khan and Abhishek Bachchan spend extra time at the gym, has recently turned down a Marathi film because of the language barrier. The actor who was offered a lead in this film apparently said he wasn’t fluent in Marathi and needed time to better the language. Sonu apparently rose to fame after his stint in a good number of South Indian films.

The jerks in language however have not been a major deterrent for actors who have acted in different language films.

Recently, two famous Punjabi actors, Gippy Grewal and Diljit Dosanjh will be making their Bollywood debut with Second Hand Husband and Udta Punjab respectively. And yes, the two Punjabis will be reciting their dialogues in chaste Hindi, something they would be trying for the first time.

It makes one wonder how easy or tough it is for the actors to get the hang of a language, which might just come across foreign to them for a film, which is made in a stipulated time. Or if the good old lip sync and dubbing works as the magic wand.

Do as the Romans do

The South Indian cutie Dhanush won hearts with his Banarasi accent in Raanjhanaa, actors like Nana Patekar won accolades with Tamil director Bharathiraja’s Bommalattam, Manoj Bajpayee played a negative character in Telugu film Vedam, and the Punjabi boy Sonu Sood has done over 45 films down South! Did someone say language is a barrier! “When I did my first film down South, my mother sent me a book, ‘How to learn Tamil,’ from then till now, I can say I have become pretty good at speaking Tamil, Kannad and Telugu. It did take a lot of time to get a hang of these languages I was never exposed to earlier. I never thought I was just working in a film down South, I realised if I had to stay here and work I needed to know the language,” shares Sonu.

Accelerate a bit

While some like Sonu Sood took his lessons from a handy book, others like the Angrezi beat tey fame actor Gippy Grewal who played the lead role in the cult comedy Punjabi film, Carry On Jatta, and will now be seen romancing Tina Ahuja (Govinda’s daughter) in the Hindi film Second Hand Husband calls it a pure art to learn a new language, whether it is on the sets or anywhere else. Though he feels it largely depends on the kind of character an actor has been asked to portray.

Gippy who shares that he is not very proficient in Hindi, didn’t have much problem with his dialogues for a simple reason that his character in the film is set in Punjab. “My Hindi has a Punjabi accent, something that the director wanted to retain. I am only speaking Hindi, which I can genuinely and normally speak. In fact, it was slightly tough for other actors like Ravi Kissen, Alok Nath and Tina who had to bring in a touch of Punjabi in their Hindi dialogues.” This isn’t just one odd Hindi film, Gippy would now do Hindi as well as Punjabi films.

On a role

Off late many director and TV actors have been seen in Punjabi films. Jackie Shroff, Zarine Khan, Neha Dhupia, Ravi Kissen are just few names. They definitely sound out of sync in Punjabi films. Nevertheless, for actors everything boils down to their role and what is wanted out of them. Kartar Cheema has recently shot for a Hindi film, Mirsa where he had to speak chaste Hindi, something Kartar laughs about. “In normal day today conversation, I get stuck when I have to talk in Hindi with someone, but for the film, I assigned myself with a task of interacting only in Hindi with everyone.” Kartar has earlier done a Bollywood film Tere Naal Luv Ho Gaya, starring Ritesh Deshmukh and Genelia D’Souza. “It becomes easy for me if my character in a Hindi or any other film is Punjabi, I can do with a Punjabi accent, but if my character is based out in UP or any other place, how would I sound speaking that language with a Punjabi accent,” he questions, knowing it would look and sound bizarre.

There is another pretty actress, Surveen Chawla of Hate Story 2 fame who has worked in a dozen of South Indian films. This Punjabi has played the lead heroine in almost all those films, and she did more than running around the tress- she had to say out her dialogues.

Well, if Sunny Deol can pick dance moves then picking a language in a couple of days doesn’t come across as a huge task for the actors. But like Nelson Mandela said, ‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head, if you talk to him in his language, it goes to his heart’!

jasmine@tribunemail.com