Alia Bhatt Tells It Like It Is

Alia Bhatt talks about her role in Gangubai Kathiawadi and more in a candid chat with Mayukh Majumdar

- Ayukh Majumdar

Everyone and their mother is privy to the fact that Alia wedded Ranbir in Bandra on April 14 this year. Breaking from Bollywood tradition, the wedding was a simple and intimate affair. It created a lot of media hype, to say the least, for three days and we still see ourselves reminiscing over it. But we aren't here to tak about her dream wedding, Instead, we're decoding her other dream, -- that of working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. She's completed a decade in Bollywood and her dream of working with SLB finally came true with Gangubai Kathiawadi. It's a dream that she had since she was nine years old when she went to audition for a role in Black. Yeh heroine hai, yeh child actor nahi, yeh toh heroine hai, Bhansali had said about her then. 20 years later, she's playing the titular role in a Bhansali film. It's said that her performance in the song Dholida from Gangubai Kathiawadi gave him goosebumps. When she danced in Dholida, I thought there was an actor who'd finally transcended. It's a very gooseflesh moment for me to even talk about it and think about it - that you transcend where you are, you forget all I space, you forget where you are, you forget who's in front of you, cameras, what you look like, what you feel. She just became one with that character and expressed all her angst and all that she had gone through in that one song. It's a song that I will take to my grave. If there is any shot that I want to be played when I breathe my last - it would be Alia doing that shot because it is completely the best thing that I have seen an actor do in a very, very long time, SLB said during a press conference at the Berlinale.