The Indo-American actor Sendhil Ramamurthy made his Bollywood debut in Raj and DK’s Shor In The City which turns 12 on April 29.Sendhil’s first Bollywood Shor In The City(originally called Shor), produced by Ekta Kapoor, has him speaking in English.
In an interview in 2010 Sendhil had said, “My character is supposed to speak a smattering of bad Hindi in Shor. I have exactly fifteen words in Hindi in Shor. Trust me, I’ve counted them. I tried to get them to cut it down. I had thirty Hindi words to begin with. I campaigned to get them reduced by half. I must be the only actor in the world who has actually asked for my lines to be cut.”
Sendhil didn’t see any incongruity in being a Bollywood actor who can’t speak Hindi. “When I was here the last time my producer Ekta Kapoor had thrown a party for me to meet the Bollywood actors and actresses. When I apologetically confessed that I didn’t speak in Hindi, they said, ‘Neither do we.’ I’ve to be realistic about what I can expect from my so-called Bollywood career. I can’t play fluent Hindi-speaking hero. I wasn’t born and raised in India. So a full-fledged Bollywood career is just not going to happen. But there’re so many kinds of films being made in Bollywood.”
Sendhil’s second language is Kannada since his father is from Karnataka. “My mother is Tamil. My dad is Kannada. I can barely manage Kannada. I don’t know Hindi at all. For those 15 words in Shor, I got a Hindi coach to tutor me and then I memorized them on my I-Pod. On my treadmill or while driving I learnt those fifteen words.”
Sendhil will now be seen in Applause Entertainment and Ellipsis Entertainment’s collaborative creation bringing together an interesting quartet Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Ileana D’ Cruz and Sendhil Ramamurthy, who are all set to fire up the screens in an upcoming, yet untitled romantic comedy-drama, to be directed by leading ad film-maker, Shirsha Guha Thakurta.The film is a progressive, uninhibited take on modern relationships.