Shubhi Mehta or Gunjan Lakhani is thrilled to be recognised even today as Chak De! India celebrates 10 years and relives some great memories from those days.
We were kids back then and we were competing for screen space – yet we became the best of friends and forged some everlasting friendships with each other. They continue to mean the world to me.
Shubhi believes her parents’ love for sport was got her interested in the same – and even though she did a hotel management course, her love for the outdoors and the arts stayed firm. She worked with Shiamak and Ashley and learnt and taught Latin American dances as well as performed and hosted events.
While I loved the events, the parties and all the adulation, I nurtured a dream of becoming a sports anchor till 2014 when I finally got a chance to anchor for Star Sports!
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The Road From Roadies to Chak De
She landed the coveted Season 3 of the show Roadies where she went on to become a finalist – and were it not for her younger brother who guided her into taking the right decision, she may have never even auditioned.
It was just after Roadies that she was called to audition for Chak De! India – something that she recalls went surprisingly well even though she felt “ill prepared, sweaty and grimy” as she reached the studio.
I looked at the awesome, larger than life posters of Yash Raj heroines and wondered if I could clear that audition – much less star in a Yash Raj Film! But this was a very different role requirement and they couldn’t care less for our ugly looks, hairy arms and legs and sweaty clothes!
She laughs now at the disbelief she felt when she was shortlisted for the role.
While she loved sports, however, she had never really played the game and much less hockey!
It was a tough life, as it is not easy to learn hockey – but we were trained for four months from April to August 2007. We were treated not as stars but as players. We were carted to and fro in Tata Sumos and our life revolved around the sports camp in the day, followed by acting workshops in the evening. We literally lived that life and became the characters we were playing.
How Shubhi Almost Quit Chak De! India
Shubhi has wonderful things to say about the bond she shared with her girl gang.
We fought and we loved and we developed all the emotions that went into the film; so while we had all the possible bitchiness that we displayed in the film, we also cared for each other a lot.
Shubhi explains how the four-month relationship shaped them all.
I never had to act as Gunjan Lakhani. I was Gunjan and it was just a name change.
Destiny played a part here too as, disappointed at not getting the role of the captain of the team (the part that eventually went to Vidya), Shubhi decided to quit the film. When she was all prepared to abandon the project, she was once again convinced by her brother to hang in there. She now gratefully remembers how her role was eventually fleshed out and became more meaningful as Gunjan Lakhani.
The time when she almost quit Chak De! India is also a time when she understood herself better. She soon became an indispensable part of the team, like a mother hen to the rest – protective, yet confident and forthright.
People around me accepted my honest yet straightforward nature. We grew up during the film, and while we may have had our gangs and our friendships back then, about 8 of us became very good friends and kept in touch. Shilpa, Arya, Chitu, Tanya, Seema, Vidya, Anahita and I are still friends and all of them – except Anahita who is in Hong Kong – attended my wedding last year.
“SRK is Love Himself!”
So what is Shah Rukh like? Shubhi calls him ‘Romance and Love himself!’ as she speaks about her own fan moment with him in Melbourne, Australia when they attended the screening of Don with SRK.
“I saw people go totally crazy when they saw him and I remember sharing a table with him and asking him if he loved acting, and then feeling silly. Yet he made me feel so nice…. so special,” she laughs.
Later, she heard someone say that SRK was asking for Shubhi and she was completely floored!
I walked up to him and he turned and he said, ‘Where should we go to party?’ and being the fun person I was, I suggested a place called ‘Lotus’ where the whole gang along with SRK went. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
“Shahrukh has so much love to give,” she says, praising his qualities of patience, of being a great teacher and an amazing person from whom one can learn from just by observing.
He is someone who is always present in the moment. He is 100 per cent with you and never gets distracted, and if by chance someone interrupts him while he is talking to you, he will keep holding your hand so he doesn’t lose you. He has lots of love in him and there is an aura around him which makes him the King of Romance.
(A post graduate from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication with an MBA in HR, Meenakshi Sharma conceptualises and executes literary events, communication and HR projects with the same passion that she exhibits when she writes about people, places, food and relationships!)
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