I tend to hurt myself in at least one song in every film: Katrina Kaif

Mere Brother ki Dulhan wasn’t much of a film but it had great songs picturised on the lead cast: Katrina Kaif, Imran Khan and Ali Zafar, Yash Raj style. Katrina tells Firstpost of her experience filming the hit tracks: Dhunki laage: We shot the song Dhunki in Agra and I think that was probably the most trying part of the film… One of the most difficult parts of the shoot. It was way too hot to be shooting outside… uncontrollable crowds. You are anyways hot and bothered and the media was constantly filming everything from a very close distance. It was probably the most difficult shoot I have been on. When you are on a set, you don’t want to know that everything that you are doing is going to be shown on the television the same night. And I think everyone just really had to work hard and come together and say, ‘Okay, chalo…it’s a four-day shoot…it’s going to be really difficult, but let’s try and see what we get out of this.’ I think we kind of managed to pull it off together and it was like an ordeal at the end of it, but everyone was really happy and just glad for it to be over, I think. [caption id=“attachment_82083” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Katrina Kaif in Dhunki. Image from Mere Brother ki Dulhan Facebook page.”] [/caption] I have never been afraid of crowds. I have never been afraid of people. I guess this is because I have always shot from the beginning of my career in public places and at the end of the day the people are there just to see you; they are not there to hurt you or to bother you. They are just there and they support you and I think you have to respect that and appreciate it. Sometimes, it is a little bit in your space when you are trying to work and it is difficult but it is ok and I am very used to it and I can learn to just kind of block it out. Choomantar: It is a song which required more than choreography. Imran and my character, Dimple, had to kind of stay as they were in the film and have fun. It’s kind of this 24-hour space in which they have this incredibly mad day and night and they just run around. If you just imagine, you know, a day off and you are going out with your friends and you’re just doing anything mad – roaming around in the park or having food or going to a nightclub… it’s just a very regular day that any of us would have on a day off but obviously my character in the film is very over-the-top and a little bit mad and Imran is constantly trying to, you know, control her and keep her within the limits of what is right and wrong and it’s a lot of fun — it’s something which I think is a very new space and has got freshness to the whole approach of the song. Isq Risk: Isq Risk is done in a very tongue-in-cheek kind of way. You have Imran dressed as an emperor and me as a princess and I think it’s all a very larger than life take on things with a bit of a comic feel to it and then of course you have the intercut with a kind of real shots of the things that are going on in the film. That again was an amazing experience to shoot. We shot in front of Taj Mahal in Agra among huge crowds again and they used to find it extremely funny; there’s a shot of me feeding Imran grapes and I remember every time that we used to take the grapes down to Imran’s mouth, the entire crowd would burst out laughing and Imran was finding it very awkward. But I think that kind of also adds sometimes to the energy on the sets and to what you are doing and I think it looked beautiful and just adds another dimension to the whole film. Madhubala: I had the roughest time in any film I have ever done on this song because we were shooting in the wrong temperatures, at the wrong time and it was way too hot and it was the most trying shoot for me, for sure. And in this song where everyone is supposed to be a bit high on bhang and it is at a roadside dhaba and Ali Zafar and Imran have a lot of dancing to do… I don’t have that much dancing to do and I was finding it extremely funny because they both love dancing. Well, obviously it’s a joke. Imran doesn’t really love dancing and Ali, he has never danced before and it was a million degrees hot and it was an extremely funny situation. Again it wasn’t about dancing so much as it was about everyone having fun and there are some of the funniest shots that I have seen in that song, some of the funniest sequences in that song. I think it’s just a matter of now whether people kind of enjoy that whole space and not take it too seriously and I think it’s a completely whacky song. Do Dhaari: That’s like a kind of sangeet song in the film, of course where it’s Imran’s performance more than anything. Again, it was incredibly hot weather, even though it was filmed in the night. We were running against time, so everyone was always under huge pressure on the songs. And I think for Imran, it was the first big sangeet song he has ever done…I don’t think he’s performed like that before and he really did so well. He had patience, he was there and he was full on in his energy and that whole bit he did with the boys - it was really, really nice. And I hurt my back again on that song. I tend to hurt myself in at least one song in every film! We were doing some movement where I am dancing and Imran is on a camera trolley kneeling, kind of singing and for some reason, I just didn’t move and my back went out and we had to do some 15 takes of that so I was in a lot of pain shooting that song