‘Saroj Khan was ready to kill me’: Sonali Bendre recalls ‘struggling’ to learn dance moves for Shah Rukh Khan’s English Babu Desi Mem
Sonali Bendre shared that Ahmed Khan, who used to be Saroj Khan’s assistant, would bribe her with sweets and snacks to get her to train.
Sonali Bendre in a stil from Humma Humma and a poster of English Babu Desi Mem with Shah Rukh Khan.
Actor Sonali Bendre, who judges dance reality shows on television, recently confessed that she was completely untrained in the art form when she started out in the industry. She recalled how, while filming English Babu Desi Mem with Shah Rukh Khan, the film’s choreographer Saroj Khan “was ready to kill” her. She also opened up about how she landed the iconic song “Humma Humma” in director Mani Ratnam’s Bombay, which went on to become one of the most popular dance numbers of the ’90s.
Sonali admitted that being a part of dance numbers caused her tremendous anxiety. “It is ironical. I am not a trained dancer. I am not a trained actor. I have never done theatre. So songs, shooting for a song was a nightmare for me. I went through sleepless nights. I would get acidity because of the stress I was going through. I was always scared of songs. Can you imagine my career is based on songs. Even if the movie has not done well, I have done well only because of the songs that I was featured in have done well. They have not all been dance numbers, My first song was ‘Sambhala Hai Maine…’ it was just walking, and it was just expression… It’s the songs that have carried me through,” she told Mid Day.
Sonali also shared how veteran choreographer Saroj Khan, while teaching her dance steps for the film English Babu Desi Mem, was “ready to kill” her. She said that her assistant, Ahmed Khan, would bribe her into working harder.
She said, “I had done English Babu Desi Mem where Saroj Khan was ready to kill me because I couldn’t dance, and I was playing a bar dancer. Can you imagine what she was going through? I was struggling. Every hour I wasn’t working, I was trying to learn how to dance and Ahmed (Khan) was Saroj ji’s assistant at that time and I remember how he would bribe me with chocolates and ice-cream, he would pick me up from my home in Lokhandwala (Andheri, Mumbai), take me to a rehearsal hall and he would teach me. I was like. ‘I can’t do it, I am fed up,’ and he would say, ‘Come on, just one step, just once more. This is the chocolate, this is the ice cream’. He would literally bribe me, like a little child.”
Sonali then remembered being asked to be a part of “Humma Humma” in Mani Ratnam’s Bombay. She admitted that it would be called an ‘item number’ now. She added, “It was not shot in Bombay, it was shot in Chennai. It was a Mani Ratnam film. Actually, I felt bad that I didn’t have the movie, just one song… There was an equal amount of people saying that I shouldn’t be doing it, or I should be doing it. And I said it’s ok, I get to learn something and that time the challenge in front of me was that I couldn’t dance.”
She added, “Till date I don’t know why I landed it, but I remember eventually taking it on. I remember I was supposed to dance with Prabhu Deva’s brother.” Sonali said that she took it on as a challenge, and surprised herself by how well it turned out.
