Juhi Chawla’s ‘animated’ challenge

Juhi Chawla to do voice-over in Ketan Mehta's upcoming 3D animated film 'Ramayana - the Epic'.

MUMBAI: Sita is not a talkative character in the upcoming 3D animated film Ramayana - the Epic but Chawla runs through take after take to give the voiceover. With Hindi-speaking skills becoming worse by the day, she found it to be quite a challenge, says Juhi Chawla.

“Even though this film is an animation, I felt privileged to do the voiceover for such a beautiful character. It didn’t take me more than two minutes to say yes. The only thing I was concerned about was  that it should be a quality film and much ode to the hard work that everyone put in, it has really turned out to be a great movie,” Chawla told IANS in an interview.

“Our Hindi is becoming worse day by day and then there’s Ramayana where proper, pure Hindi is expected, so it took a little time getting used to it. In terms of dialogues, Sita didn’t have a lot to talk about. She is not very talkative as a character. But there were times where I had to go through take after take to get the dialogue right!” she added.

Even though Juhi Chawla has acted in many films, most memorably Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Bol Radha Bol, Darr and Yes Boss, she found this experience interesting, refreshing and at the same time relatively challenging.

“When you act in a film and you dub for it, the thing is you have already enacted that scene and the entire challenge originates when we need to match that scene to the dialogue perfectly so it does not appear to be dubbed.”

“In the case of Ramayana, things were the other way around; I had no picture. I was explained the scene and situation then I stood at the microphone, in a small cubicle trying to imagine scenes using scrambles of old folk tale and my spiritual side to grasp the true essence of the scene. So yes, it was quite challenging,” said the 42-year-old.

The film is produced by the famous filmmaker, Ketan Mehta under the banner Maya Digital Media and being directed by Chetan Desai. Hence, it comes with great expectations of spectacular audio-visual experience far beyond anything ever attempted before in India with skills and designs that match international standards.

While Rama’s voiceover has been done by Manoj Bajpai, Raavan was voiced by Ashutosh Rana.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 18^th, 2010.