Newly-wed Kalki Koechlin is the next leading lady in a Bollywood movie to sport a bikini in Bijoy Nambiar’s Shaitan, produced by her husband Anurag Kashyap. “The bikini hasn’t been given a ‘hot’ treatment. It’s a casual sequence in the pool. It’s not like I’m walking down the beach in a typical ‘bikini avatar’,” she laughs, adding director Bijoy made it all very comfortable for her. “And since it’s not a typical bikini outing, I wasn’t asked to bathe in oil or do any other stupid things. Thank God, it didn’t upset me.”
Kalki plays NRI Amrita Jaishankar who comes to India with her father. She’s initially presented as a lonely geek who afterwards meets rich Mumbai kids and undergoes a transformation. “She tries to fit in to a cool girl mould, but underneath, she’s vulnerable. It’s exciting to play this combination,” she explains, adding that the shooting was extremely hectic and completed in only 40 days. “We shot night and day. The climax was shot in 22 hours, non-stop. Phew! But it was fun.” When asked if Anurag’s presence as a producer made life easier on the sets, Dev D’s Chandramukhi says, “He’s an ideal producer, who didn’t even come on the sets or thrust his opinion.”
Kalki has worked with Anurag in Dev D, That Girl In Yellow Boots and now, Shaitan. “It’s not a big deal. When two creative people are in a relationship, they think alike. So what’s wrong if we work together a lot?”
While promoting Shaitan, the ‘just married’ couple has been trying to figure dates for their impending honeymoon. “We can’t find dates,” smiles Kalki, whose list of favourites includes South American destinations Peru and Machu Pichu, and Leh and Ladakh in India. “We’d like to explore any or all of these during our honeymoon. But we’ll have to see if we can sneak out after Shaitan releases.” The couple has moved into their new abode too, that according to Kalki, needs a lot of work.
-HT
