Shabana Azmi recalls when she felt ‘miserable, humiliated’ on the set of Parvarish: ‘Started walking barefoot towards my house, crying’

“I cannot dance to save my life. I have two left feet. I had asked Kamal Master, he was the choreographer. I said ‘Please give me rehearsals.’ He said rehearsal is not needed. You just have to clap. I said okay. But when we went on the set, it was a full fledged dance number with a gun in one hand, and a gun in the other. It was so frightening because I was with Neetu Singh. Even before I could figure out whether I should put my right foot, or left foot, Neetu would have done two rehearsals and sat over there,” Shabana said.

Watching this, Shabana recalled that she was very “nervous” as the steps were “very complicated.” She asked the choreographer if he could change the steps but his reaction left Shabana stunned. “There were a lot of junior artists on the sets. He said ‘Okay, lights off. Now Shabana Ji is now going to teach Kamal dance master what steps to do’. It was so humiliating and bad that I just ran off the set. I was in these ghastly clothes. I went out to find my car was not there so in those clothes I started walking barefoot to my house in Juhu, crying away and saying ‘I am not going to work in any Hindi film anymore. I just don’t want this humiliation,” she recalled.

Eventually, the film’s director Manmohan Desai came to meet Shabana and apologised for the entire episode. “I said this is something i will never do again,” she said and added, “That humiliation is something I come in touch with even today when I have to do a dance step which I am much more comfortable with now, but I get that tension. Horrible,” she said.

Shabana’s latest film Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, is currently in theatres. She stars alongside Dharmendra, Jaya Bachchan, Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt in the film.