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Your guys' love story is fascinating. I used to call him sir. Because I was new into the industry. I was scared of girls. I was an actor, married to this beautiful woman. At that age, I was somebody who didn't believe in love. It took growing up and maturity to understand that don't disrespect the love in your life. Then you meet somebody and you're like, By nature, love has to be a car you're not driving. But also, we human beings always need to keep making efforts for those people who we love. I put a block in my head that this is who I am. And now we live up to our own story. It's only delusion till you make it up. Then it's reality and then it's belief. Listening to a podcast called Empire which was suggested by someone on how the English traders, East India Company came and became an empire. I was so affected by the information and my own history and I was like, and I didn't know any of it. I knew about the Bengal famine, but when you get into the story of it, what they told us to what they actually did, this has happened to your family. I don't know my own story. So I was excited that this is a story. This is knowing our history is really important. If you haven't subscribed yet, you binge episodes and come back for new episodes, but you don't press the subscribe button. My and my team's goal till the end of this year is to hit 5 million subscribers. If our podcast has ever provided you any value, then please subscribe. It's completely free. In return, I promise, me and my group will keep bringing you your favorite guests and conversations. Okay, first podcast guys. Namaskar, Prakhar Bhai. Full practice. I respect. Full practice, Vijay bhai. I appreciate. Have you guys ever done a podcast before? I haven't, but I did three interviews today and I thought everything was like a podcast. Yes, it's like that. Even in film interviews, we talk about life, philosophy, childhood, so everything is a podcast now. Actually, eventually the media converges. Like in cinema, we are seeing so much of what South produces, then Hindi has to catch up. Then Hindi produces something. There is a way in which culture is becoming very mono. What is the difference between an interview and podcast, essentially? Okay, so the first difference is that you should be in my studio and I should not be in your studio. Oh, that is the first rule. The other thing is that podcasts should generally be agenda-less. Okay. Yes, now that Agenda 5 is done. That too is gone. Yes, that too is there. So, nothing is left. We have to sit in a kurta and talk. Only this mic. Mic is not there. And it can be a prob at times. No problem. Who knows if there is a wire or not. But, what haven't people asked you since morning? What haven't they asked? Yes, I mean, something is left because I am imagining. What didn't you ask? No, now I can't think about the questions. Yes. I can think about answers. You know what is very interesting is just how, I don't know what the right word is. Your guys' love story is fascinating. It's like my feed for months has been the two of you. And I was wondering if you guys remember how you met? Of course you remember how we met. Yeah, we met on set. What movie was that? Geeta Govinda. And you knew instantly? No, no, no. He said no first, right? Instantly? Can you ever know instantly? I don't believe in love at first sight. I have to go through a lot of journey for love. You can know instantly she is beautiful. But to know instantly that she is the one, I know nothing about her. So I did think she was a very beautiful girl. But your meeting, when we met for the first time, it was professionally on the set. It was my third movie. It was the fourth picture. So you're more about the excitement of being on set and the nerves of being day one on set with a new team. And the aspiration of doing something successful with this picture. The first day on any set is very nerve-wracking. Because there is a new team, a new character, so the first few days are always a little, you're trying to find it on edge, you are not comfortable enough to think about love and such, so yeah, day one we met, it's going to be 10 years next year, or the next, no, this year it was 8 years, so my, when people ask me, No, it has been 9 years since we have met, but 8 years since our film released. So that's my, that film is my marker for how long I've known her. Only after the film is done, can I allow myself to fall in love? It's not about the film. You can fall in Love on set also. I'm sure many people have. But I think it's more about falling in love. First of all, at that age, I was somebody who didn't believe in love How old were you then? I was what, 27, 28? 28? 27, I think. nine years ago I'm 37 now so 29 yeah okay so if you look at my interviews from then I talk about love very from a distance yeah I talk about it almost disrespectfully and it comes from ignorance and it comes from that young energy but I would be like love is a is a marketing term what is love how we've all fallen in love multiple times in life how can so what does love mean if i can fall in love with someone and then fall in love with somebody else this is bullshit and stuff so i would talk like that a lot but you didn't appreciate that love it it's a real thing that is there like you feel your mother's love don't you so there is something there is love and there is intense love there is love where people think about you more than themselves even so so much it took growing up and maturity to understand that don't disrespect the love in your life don't say love is a marketing term like respect it appreciate it nurture it so then I started looking at love relationships uh differently and then eventually it took how old I'm 30. Oh, you're like, young, young. I thought 30, okay, he'll say, okay you look like 35. I'll take it brother, I'll run with that compliment. I also got married only last year. Oh, that's like really young. Yeah. It took me, I had to be 30. You were late. You were. Like, when I was 36, finally, I felt like I wanted to get married. I felt I was ready and mature enough to first understand this, to love it, and I felt ready. But it took me 36. At 29, you felt it, so you're a very mature person. Life has a lot of clarity. No, I think it's like this. I had brief phases where I had no desire to believe in love. You know, your heart breaks and all that. Then you meet somebody and you're like, this is beyond my control. Like this is not something I want to control. I'm not in the driving seat of something like this. And then... A lot of my friends who are my age ask me this all the time. Actually, I take your opinion on this also. That how do we think of marriage? How do we thing of love? And by nature, love has to be a car you're not driving. It has to something that's driving itself and you are enjoying the journey. And when it happens, there is this sort of, I am taken in, I'm now no longer swimming against the current. And then it just rolls in, like, I don't even know when we got married, but it happened. And I'm very glad for it. And beyond that, there's a new world to discover properly, right, like living together is very different than just dating also. So yes, I think I got lucky also in some way, I met the right person at the right age. a lot of people, because our society is arranged or love is a little divided. So, a lot people also shuffle between that and I'm observing a lot of that with my friends right now. That they should go in love and do it according to their family. You know that kind of stuff. You know, can I just give you two bits into it? Yes. I completely agree with you that you can't be the driver. It has to just be an automobile where it's just like going by itself. But also, we human beings always need to keep making efforts for those people who we love because most very often that we make a lot of effort for people everyone else other than people at your own house i keep thinking that you know very soon after you get married um some things some very basic things you stop telling each other like something like a good morning or are you doing well or how was your day it goes into huh my partner already knows now what's the point of saying it and then it could go into like why haven't I heard this in such a long time and then the things in life would be you know driving us into different aspects in life generally so i feel like efforts no matter how um into the relationship you are or into the marriage you are or even if you have kids together i still feel like those little efforts should be made for each other and that is love it's it's not like it should be effortless but also you need to do these things because you want to do those things and that's that's something that I believe in love is your story congruent to his story similar like were you also antithetical to love when you first met no no yeah she is very clear about it look at how she's talking she makes sure she tells me I love you at least 15 10 15 times a day and she tells me that it's important that I express, I constantly feel it but I shouldn't feel like it's okay, he knows and I don't need to say it and she tell me, which makes me aware that because we are so caught up in life that sometimes you can forget these smaller simpler but important things So she's the one who she's actually made me. I didn't even know if I could drive a car in an auto for 4-5 years. I was scared. I'm a control freak. If I leave the steering wheel, will it work in an Auto? I drove it for 4 to 5 years. He knew it. From day one that I'm driving the car. The car is running, you relax. By nature, that's probably your upbringing, your childhood. you are who you are because of everything that you don't even remember everything shapes you into the kind of person you are and i was somebody who needed to at one point she yeah somebody who needs to almost ensure that this relationship has gone through every obstacle and lasted before i remember when i first met him on set I used to call him sir because I was new into the industry and he had done like 3-4 films by the time and I used to be like yeah sir okay sir and there was also this time where on the day one I was playing some random music and he like goes like turn that music off and I was like whoa whoa whoa wait wait what is going on why is he Wait, every word you say has consequences. I was like, it was a very casual, I'm like a little... What do I say? I speak a little bluntly and I assume that everyone understands the intention. Yeah. I feel like we should be able to talk freely, openly. But sometimes when you don't know each other fully, it was stupid of me to assume she'll get it. So it was a casual like, what is this shitty music you're playing? I shouted because we had to share a caravan with a locked door in between. But we weren't that big of a star. So one caravan was half for him and half for my team. So she was playing some music on a speaker which I could hear. And I was like, this is the music? What is this shit music? See, this was the first thing your co-actor is telling you, right? What should I say? Correct, correct. It's absolutely right. and I feel like now that I think about it apparently she had tears in her eyes because she was like oh he doesn't like me because it's a new place new industry it's going to be hard how am I going to yeah 100 days it's gonna be torture if he's like this but then she told me this much later though yeah yeah yeah for a long time I hadn't said it and I was like what you took that made you cry what are you saying and I'm extremely sensitive okay like everything would make me like tear up well up and all of that and then uh going to the set and there were these uh situations when like you know we started working in the film and he would help me with the dialogue and everything and that's when i every time i used to call him sir he used to be like stop calling me that i have a name call me and then it of course became vijay and then we became friends and then because we did two films back to back with each other we sort of like we spent so much time with each another we were like pretty much talking to each other the whole day right because you're shooting and you're prepping for the same film hence became like he was my best friend back then and then later on much later on uh that i was like okay now i'm feeling something you know this is not i just believe that god has his hand in our relationship like in our love i believe there's some sort of supreme power who's guided us into this but yeah and hence happened the wedding and here we are and here we are it's beautiful you guys have a very interesting story and it always begins with like any good love story starts with spices something occurs and you're like what and then you know the head's turn and all of that stuff happens it's very cool is there any time anyone is not thinking do you have any time where your mind is still only when I do Like sometimes I do 10 day long meditation retreats And then you come out of that And 4-5 days you are like, this is how it feels When your mind is not working I really want to experience this Bro, you would love that stuff Did you do Vipassana? Yeah, Vipasana Oh my god, I can't, I'll die Start with something smaller There are other things you can do Where you can talk a little bit Vipaasana sounds rough I know I know I'm really interested by the concept But it's one human experiment at another level. You know, when I tell someone about Vipassana, the people who are the most scared are also the most excited. Because you know there is something there. Your psyche subconsciously knows that something will come out on the other side. And sometimes I just push people over. And they go there and they come back. I have a bet with my friends that if anyone goes there, they will call me and say thank you. Because it's so life changing. Where have you done it? I've done here once and once in America. Here in Shimla, I heard they have centers everywhere. They'll be centered 30 kilometers from here. And you stay there. Those 10 days. You don't write anything, read anything. You don' t talk to anyone. I know the process. It's fantastic. Oh, but we can't go there. No, but they're separate. Yeah, the men and women. Except when you're meditating. no yeah but if i have 10 days off i'd rather be on a beach where do you guys like to holiday everywhere like i want to see the world he's a full beach guy i'm a beach guy if you the popular question is beach or mountain i don't know why i have to choose but if if i had to make the choice i would want a beach because it's vibes are good mountain is more uh it feels like one introspective more. We don't need any more introspectives for you. I need activity. Yeah, I need, I need that activity. And you grew up in Hyderabad also, no? I was born here most from age when I was age six. I was put in a boarding school in a place called Anantapur in Puttapurthi. It's a, so it is a boarding School boys hostel from age six to 15. I grew up there. So most of my life was in that boarding school. And after my 10th, I came back to Hyderabad and I've been here since. Yeah. So of the very few interviews that I could find of you guys in my research, there's one interesting line that stood out. I don't know if you know, he talks about being very nervous talking to women when he moved back to hyderabad. Yeah, that was a dapper guy. If I look like you, I would never be afraid. I always didn't look like this. And I don'T think it was to do with looks it was just to do with when you grew up in a boarding school a boy's hostel from age 6 to age 15 and you haven't uh other than female teachers and my headmistress man who was a who we loved but we had fear and respect for uh you never you never saw a woman uh you would see girls at a distance they were a concept like women are there and they kind of walk like this we weren't allowed to look at each other and so it was really strict and we spent 10 months in a year in boarding school only 2 months holidays in summer and summer you would come and you would be home with your parents, grandparents cousins watching TV we didn't even have TV there we were shown one film every two weeks uh we would be shown one film uh and as we grew up from eighth grade we were shown news for 10 minutes just the headlines of the day would be cut by somebody uh and we would be showing news so holidays cinema was like i remember those because you get to see one movie every two week the excitement when you know it's movie night it would be on a sunday from morning we would be excited trying to find out what movie we would run with our little mats on our terrace they would have a projector uh we would sit and i remember we don't have patience these days but that day every title like 500 students would be like reading it out like village roadshow pictures Keanu Reeves as we would be reading out because we're just so excited and then you would be getting immersed in that world I still remember how it felt it was it was something else so coming back to your question so when you come after 10 years which are kind of your formative years and now you're a teenager with hormones and you know you have this attraction to the opposite species but you don't know how the species operates you don' t know how they are you don know if you can talk if you talk do they think you're something you don have the balls first of all to do it you don t have the courage so it was a it took me two three like the first two years of coming back i didn't speak uh to a girl at all that's 11 12. 11 12 as in the girls somehow thought that, so we would have a bus, a college bus and it went from, I was staying in Srinagar colony then, so it would start from Jubilee Hills, Srinagara colony, Begumpet, India, won't know these places and go to a place called Upal. Somehow in Hyderabad, reason I don't know but most beautiful girls live in these areas. Reason I don' know. You know, there is something like this in Bombay that in some areas, somehow in these areas, pretty girls, so the bus was filled with really pretty girls. But I knew that I had this attraction towards them by biology or nature, but I had no courage to talk to them. But and every boy would be, you know, that age, that is the that is their main aim and goal in life to have a girlfriend. But I was the one who would always be looking outside the window, not talking. And I didn't know I didn'T even know one boy from Hyderabad. So imagine you get into a college where everyone is from some school. so subgroups all are from this little flower group and they are all gangs of boys you don't know one boy you have never spoken to a girl so you just sit in one corner and look out to the window and somehow these girls thought that that was cool or that this guy doesn't care I don't what went on through their mind so they would call me and ask me to sit with them and chat and because I was scared of looking into their eye I would look outside the window and talk and maybe they thought that was cool again so I was called what a life but it was really I was filled with my heart would be pounding at like some but then at some point I think post my inter second year I was like you like women what is the point of all this fear and this nonsense if you like them just talk to them I thought and when I went to my undergrad I did B.Com the first pretty girl I saw I just spoke to her and slowly the fear went the first few times I was speaking to her I'm sure I was I was scared and nervous and stuff but life may be like when you drive a car for the first time you're like oh my god there's one car coming from here there's a truck and there's three things down and one gear there's just too many things but at some point you don't even know that you're driving you're thinking about work and you've reached your home you're not even looking at the direction that you are going so i feel like in life everything with the repetitiveness of doing something makes you comfortable with with any with anything and we're all capable of everything i don't think other than other than some biological or genetic phobias which might be which i'm not a doctor i can't talk about i think most of everything is in your head and everybody can do anything is something like all of us i was scared of public speaking i'm an actor now who gives speeches and does podcasts with you and i was afraid of girls and i'm not an actor married to this one beautiful woman yeah so so i i believe very strongly that people like to categorize themselves we like to say i'm introvert which is true to an extent we have something because again it comes from childhood the environment we grew up in but every introvert with his close friends is an extrovert i'm sure he's cracking jokes and loud with his best friend at least just when he's around others is he feeling shut off or is he feeling exhausted and tired with that social interaction and would rather not but so my question was if you can be so happy with people you are so close with that means you are not incapable of speaking or you are not incapable of hanging out and chatting it's just I've put a block in my head that this is who I am and now we live up to our own story our own story yeah so it's very important every thought you think every word you say it's important what you're saying because your brain doesn't know your brain thinks this is the truth you're instilling that neural connection in your brain that this is you and we're creating this persona and and that's that's what's happening so say the right things and jo bhi aapko ban jo bhe aap If you want to be, do it. It will happen. I think the number one thing you are controlled by is your own perception of yourself. Yeah. And my job incidentally ended up becoming just talking to extremely successful people, all in their own right and their own field. And when people who are not from these worlds, when they talk to me, my friends, I live with my parents. I make it a point that I live in my hometown and all those things. So when they ask me what I've learnt, what is your best conversation, what have you learnt and I tell them the number one secret is delusion. You have to be crazy delusional. If you tell yourself a story, you will live up to that story. Then you cannot say, oh shit, my life turned out this way. You have to be a crazy delusion that you do whatever you want to do. And then suddenly when magic starts happening, as I'm sure you guys have experienced, you're talking about your first film, right? From the first till this, so many days you would have woken up and been like shit, Now this is also happening. Oh my God, now I have this opportunity also. And it's just because probably you believed at 15, you could do all of this and more, right? Like for me, at least to whatever extent I've played the games of society, every day I wake up and I'm like, Oh crazy. Okay, this too now. And it is fantastic. I love it. It sucks when people close the door on themselves. It's only delusion till you make it happen. And then it's reality. Then it's a reality and then it is belief. So, completely be delusional, be delusion, people will judge, people will mock, people laugh, people believe, people support, but it's only delusion till you make it happen. You also went to boarding school? Yes. Yeah. Like boarding school is interesting. Both of you went to school. I wonder if like, there is something to sort of being away from family that inculcates something different. Do you find that to be the case? for me i will i got into the boarding very very young when she was like what three or four or something yeah yeah i first went to a pg and then uh i went into the boating school but my boating was again co-ed so boys hostel girls hostel but uh you until the fifth grade you guys are having dinner together in different rows and after fifth of course you have girls uh dining hall boys dining hall and stuff like that uh so like ever since the beginning there was always this interaction with you know your classmates were boys and there was this concept of having boyfriend girlfriend but boyfriend means if his friends start teasing one girl with you that means she is your girlfriend done that's it like there was nothing in terms of actually i don't know what actually your choice even yeah it wasn't even choice or not because sometimes senior boys are like the junior girls and if the seniors say that you're dating this guy you'reating this guy there was no like yeah so it was always like that it was almost like that and then of course like what boyfriend girlfriend in fifth class one slap you need correct correct i absolutely agree but like that that's how our hostel was and then also it's a hostel in koog right so you have like people from koog and people from different parts of the world coming in together and they bring sort of this new traditions and stuff and if you don't live up to it then you're uncool and if you um you know say no this is not the way i want it to be then they'll it's not ragging it's not bullying but almost cornering so you have to live up to those standards and stuff like that so i feel like the surviving skills that i have today came from then because i truly believe that this is some uh it is a conversation that i had with my girlfriends from back in school that we survived through that hostel means we can survive the world and genuinely even till today in the industry i don't do anything different i was doing the same i i am doing the same thing that i was do in the hostel back then you know there were like bunch of people talking about you and then for some reason you're like but why are they talking about me like what have i even done today same you know like i just believe that what happens in school in school level surviving in a hostel is survive fight or flight yeah it's in that the world is like that they're a bunch of five-year-old yeah but then you're also protected in this hostel environment like atmosphere now you're playing the same character same game in the industry right it's pretty much the same thing it's not complicated we all over complicate our own things so yeah grew up like that even my plus one and plus two I sort of was in my saw I was away from my parents and degree also the first year in Ramaya I was studying in Bangalore first year was in the hostel and after the first day I started working so because of the uneven timelines night shoots this and that. My parents got me a flat to which they also moved and two, three years I was in Bangalore and I shifted to Hyderabad. So, this has been my life journey. Yeah. Any industry, when a close group of people go, it becomes a popularity contest. And popularity contests are very similar to what high school, middle school tend to be. That there will be gossiping, bitching, we will throw this away, there is politics somewhere. But it's a very interesting thing that you learned and picked that up in the hostel. And it's still survival at the top level. Do you remember what you learned? See, also because my parents, they sort of built what they have today when I was in the hostel, which means we didn't have what we had today back then. Which means like I was also one girl who studied one, two years in Tamil Nadu where I didn't know English I wasn't exposed to a lot of English where I came to this hostel in Coombe and suddenly someone asked me something in English and I've gone mum I didn't know so I was terrible I couldn't communicate in English I was in like my exposure was Tamil and I don't know I think Tamil only because I was around Tamil people right um so coming to this already my first step into the school was not very great because she she doesn't know how to speak English you know how stupid is this like she is not part with us so it started like that and you've gone to the school in fourth grade and till 10th grade I was here so people already have that mindset right and no matter how much you learn and no mater how much speak in English people already that you're lesser than us kind of mind space so then i realized that okay that is my survival instinct where i just smile through things i'm just like okay fine all the seniors whatever they say it's right all the juniors they won't talk because why would they talk and these senior boys will be like okay can you go and give this love letter to my girlfriend from this class this class business so you're like a mediator and if you get caught you you get called they don't get caught because i'm also someone who doesn't give away I'll be like okay it's mine and that kind of person I've always been man so now after this you come into the industry and then like people are like oh she has a different accent or she has she's not a good actor or something like this happens now you're like this I've been dealing with since nothing you I'm not very see it makes you feel bad when someone says like you work day in day out for a film and if someone says your performance is not good then it hurts you it stings you a little but it's not like heartbreaking where i'm like oh shit maybe i'm not made for this so then you learn to okay this is what they're saying but i'm gonna do my best and i'm going to interest all my time and effort to the director right and that's what i'm saying not very many things change when you grow up it's just maybe something that you're dealing with in school just becomes larger scale but the how you approach to things can be as simple as that okay not everyone is going to like you deal with it no no like not everyone is going like you but are you earning well for yourself are you happy with your family friends and your partner good enough what more do you want yeah that's a really steep bargain to have happiness and something I've come to learn as I've grown up I mean sure things could be better but things are great yeah things are beautiful I'm so grateful like itna kuch ho raha hai itna sab sahi ho rha hai somebody's looking after it it just cannot be you know like me I can't be controlling this ship so much randomness and agar family theek hai if your parents are happy if you have a loving partner dude that's that's a blessing yeah but I'm assuming you guys are ambitious with your work yeah you don't get here without being ambitious yeah right well what is like what's the ambition like when do you think the goalpost keeps changing no sure yeah should it be one thing i don't know it's i want to understand like what is it when do u think you've done enough and do you ever wonder about that is that even a question in your head i don' t think about doing enough i feel like you have one life I got like 80 good years in me. I need to do something with it. If you want to spend a day, then you don't have to do anything. Otherwise, it would be boring. So do something. Have fun. Do what you feel good about. Make money. Spend money. So I think it's just like for some reason the world got created in a way I don't even know how that we as a species came and now we this 80 years just do something with it be productive push whatever I think purpose is beautiful if you wake up feeling like looking forward to something it's good enough it could be planting something and watching it grow or it could be wanting to become a unicorn on but if you're able to do something that makes you happy the your family happy and can contribute in some way to because we're a social we're social animal we're society as a structure our actions can affect other people if you can do things to benefit others also is like a beautiful thing but primary purpose is at least your wife and family and parents and kids if you can make happy that's a super successful life in itself you feel the same I feel like I fully 100% agree with what he says I feel like we are all here to we have this particular phase that you're bought into this world you're alive and you move on from this world your only choice is what do i do till then yeah yeah you're coming you need to do something till the time you need go and so in these years what do you want to do some choose happiness some choose like i want to achieve so many things some choose i just want to be married and just bus some choose farming some choose agriculture it depends on what they want to do but in the end of the day like he says we need food to eat we need roof over our heads yeah and we need clothes to wear which is we should be able to buy what we like which is 100 we're all here to do that All of us get dealt different cards and there's a lot of, I know there's a lot, we are talking from comfortable lives. I'm an actor, you're doing 26 episodes a month, podcasting, very comfortable. But there's lots of struggle and lots of hardship in, in lots of people's lives. They just, they, they got the wrong hand, but still to have some purpose like even those people have purpose they want to see their kids get educated like our parents a lot of our parents were like that like my my parents sole purpose in life was give these two boys a good education if they get a job and get a salary and if they can build us a house the only thing they would tell us all our houses all my life from my grandmother to my parents save money a small house everybody needs their own house yeah once if you have that enough that was just the goal for life they gave us just do this that was also in doubt it's not easy to to do that somehow we've life's jo life manager very very kind to the life i live now it's two different completely different kinds of lives but also life presented me the opportunity i also attacked it aggressively because yeah because of who i am and how i think or whatever but we should consider that lots of people get dealt really hard hands and but for them it's just about having that purpose and doing it and it's like a great fulfillment it's a great move that one step further we've got this life it's beautiful experience it and I think hardships everything need to you need to I like hard like life gets really hard sometimes but you need to love hard like give it to me hard hero sir Only, the amount of resistance there is, when you break that resistance and become victorious, that's the hero. If everything is set, as soon as you are born, everything is like that, no one wants to hear the story. Every hero that you see on screen, every book you read from Ramayana to Odyssey to Bahubali are like guys who faced resistance on every level from their own family. They've been dealt the hardest things and they've beaten that thing and come out on top. top. So you need to look at this. Every obstacle is a part of my hero journey. It has to happen. Otherwise, what's the point in life? It's like, do you enjoy games that are easy? Yeah, no. You want complicated shit, you want to beat that and then you're like, then you get that dopamine that I did it. So life is like that, it's a game. You have to play, you have to beat, you have to win. What did you learn from your mom and dad? My mom and dad, they actually worked for where they are today with all of the willpower and ambitions ambition that they had basically came from nothing but now they have security in terms of money and land and all of that and they've worked for it and my dad used to like like very similar to vijay's parents where they needed he needed me to be well studied so that any well educated so that any form that you read any form that you sign you need to be able to read it and understand it he came from that he was like you need to know what you're putting your signatures on he came form that and my mum came from the space of you need earn so that you're very independent right which a lot of women don't get to do don't have an option this even if they want to work and even ifthey want to like earn for themselves they have resistance from family members or society or what you know things like this but i had a support from my mother where she was like work work hard earn save these were her things and which I do even till today I'm like I'm also now thinking okay after 20 years when you know I won't be able to do the same work that I am doing today I need the money that I saved today to take care of me and my kids in the future and their grandkids I'm thinking in that way so I think these things I have learned from my parents because also our parents struggled to where they are today and luckily I got this support from them to dream big and sort of you know actually work for what I dreamt not a not maybe 10% of the people don't get to do this you know very few get to do this so I really am grateful for that I really respect that and yeah yeah today we're all happy when you were talking about the game part life game there's a dragon there's an obstacle you have to fight and that obstacle is called life that's my dad's first lesson to me I can etch it somewhere and loving hard is a great way of saying it because when hard hits that morning when you wake up and it's stuff's just bad man there are two ways that day can go and it totally depends on your attitude you need to be a little bit crazy to be like give me more hard Is there something specific you remember that your parents taught you? My mum is all love. For her, nothing else matters. Like she's the kind of mum who, imagine you have an exam, there'll be mothers who'll be like study, wake up and you have a tuition at 4 a.m imagine or a special class she'll be like sleep sleep sleep it'll rain outside you sleep and my dad is like you don't screw them you'll screw their lives but my mom is always like she wants us to be slept well fed she wants her to be happy that's her view of life she's just all today if i have to tell her that i have to go for shoot. She was like, why are you working so hard? At the same time she is really emotional and appreciative that all your hard work has changed our lives. But then she doesn't want us to work. She wants us to be happy and home. She feels sad that you work hard kind of so my mom's like that uh i uh my dad's been uh like for the major chunk of my once i came back to hyderabad every day i would wake up and uh my father would be sitting in the hall and i had to sit with him and he would give me a two three hour lesson on life just every day this was the thing did you enjoy it then i didn't enjoy it initially and every day felt like okay i know what's coming and i would tell my friends my friends were like where are you what i would like dad's taking a class and they all knew that he's gone for two three hours and he would just talk like about he had a lot of angst in life he saw a lotof struggle he was seeing a lot of struggle and he didn't want me to go through that and he did know how what else how else to take this out and to make sure I didn't go through it and he was somebody who believed in you can learn in life like you can put your finger in fire and learn that it burns or you can watch someone putting their finger learn it burns and don't go near it he was like the second thing is easier so it was like learn as much as you can without having to first-hand experience it because it's an edge so he would tell me read as many books because all these people have experience in life read as much learn from it so you don't have to do the whole journey of physically experiencing each thing and learning from it. So it would be like learn that was one thing you would say and somehow both my my dad would constantly tell me that you're meant for something big I have no clue what I wanted to do I was one aimless kid like everyone else just watching cricket playing cricket doing aimless stuff for a lot of life but somehow constantly hearing that you're meant for something big you're ment for something so i believe words parenting what you say to the kids is forming things in their head and i began to believe that i'm here for a purpose and i have i have to do something big also i think he believed it specifically because a lot of things happen in life like us being born is a miracle if we talk about it just the whole biological process of one sperm hitting an egg from millions on a particular day of the month it could be anybody but you were born out of millions it's it's one biological miracle that any one of us is even born and then like how my dad met my mother uh how their wedding happened is like a very almost like a supernatural bunch of events that led to it so my dad somehow believe that it was very strange like it was not his decision nor my mother's decision a whole bunch of things were parallelly they were from two villages nearby a whole sequence of events were happening in his village which pushed him to being married a whole series of events were happening in my mother s life where they were desperate to get her married and she was returning coming from somewhere in a bus and my father was coming going to his village and at some point both got onto the same bus and My father was like he really needed to take the decision quickly was like if I have to marry there's this girl I saw in that bus find out and because my mom's parents were really desperate because of a whole bunch of strange incidents which is like a which is like a story in itself they were like okay let's do it if any like multiple things had to happen for this he was like even if one of them didn't happen we wouldn't be married and you wouldn't be born right and so he would constantly believe that he would tell us when we were kids that either you or your younger brother is born here for a purpose i don't know who live up to it kind of thing so i think hearing that just subconsciously puts a responsibility on to you that i need to do something also you don't want to live that life man like life with no money is no fun it's hard really hard so i was like i really want to change it i will either change it drastically or pack my bags and disappear i don't live in this social structure in this life i'll i'll deal with it i'll just vanish kind of space i was in and things happened yeah but we lived with a lot of confidence that's something I had from you never felt growing up I never felt the hard life I knew that I was never getting the cricket bat that I wanted or I didn't have a cycle for many years when all my friends had and I had to ride theirs or we didn't have a TV for very long but there was so much love and we were always entertained with that old bat we were playing cricket for hours my dad would play with me and my brother and you didn't you don't think so much as long as you're engaged and you have love when you can sleep on your dad's arms and hug him and your mum is and grandmother are pampering you don't think of all these things you always they brought you up yeah you're happy and they brought you up with confidence my dad would always talk big things even though if you had nothing you were like I'll build a house in Jubilee hills which is really big yeah my mom would be like save money and buy a land here it's it's really cheap right now in some from the city 50-60 kilometers and I now live there my house is there so they talk like all these things he would always talk he would talk big his delusion passed on to me that's the thing like words have power and parenting is so important that no matter what you are doing no matter what your mother and father is conversing about the child is taking it they're listening to everything listening to everything and shaping them and the thing is you i feel like he genuinely got his confidence from his dad and mom and like i just sometimes sit and think about we are both actors we're doing the same films and you know working in the same industries but his way of thinking and my way of think are very different and i more so often keep thinking why do I think like this where is it coming from and then it goes back into childhood it's like you know back then this had happened and that's why hence it's engraved in my brain to think a certain way and I'm very proud of the woman I am today but a lot of things that I have to work on is rooted from back then so it's so incredibly important how you parent a child it's insane Even the content you watch, the podcast you listen to, the videos you watch Everything is shaping who you become I don't like to watch films about losers or watch series about Psycho killers and losers and all I like Heroic stuff Yeah I like documentaries of sports people Dude, I love that stuff love that stuff yeah michael jordan documentary i'm like why do i watch this sad victory or something i'm giving this much time and it's all like if you see horror films i remember watching a horror film like when i was in my 10th or 11th you watched in 11th some korean cds ring kuch kuch tha i couldn't sleep for like months alone like it would scare i hate then i was like why do i have to watch horror put it in my head scare myself where it's affecting me it's shaping it's effecting everything that i consume is like shaping something in you So cut, so aisa kuch bhi useful nahi lagta, kuch productive nahi lagta toh, cut, cut. Tell me about the project. Oh, hum Rana Bali ke baarein kuchbhi baat nahi kiya. My job is to get you lost in your story and then be like, oh, film promotion. Tell me what the movie. I mean, this is an awesome set. I've been here a couple of hours. um i can talk about it but i'm a useless idiot when it comes to talking about things i don't belong in you tell me tell me about how did you decide to do it what do you like about it whatever you can say because you know i don'T want to pry see i was uh this film came to me i was listening to a podcast called empire which was suggested by someone it's a history podcast a history broadcast on on how the english traders east india company came and became an empire that settled down in india and and everything the whole journey of how that happened and i was so mind blown by it i was so affected by the information and my own history and i was like and i didn't know any of it and it's a beautiful podcast i recommend everyone to watch it but by the time i was done with it i was feeling a sense of anger i was i was wanting revenge in a way even though it this is something that happened 150-200 years but over 200 years being ruled and what all happened to our country I was I was seeking revenge and like a couple of months later Rahul my director Rahul Sankrityan comes to me with the story about an episode of the Madras famine it's a film set from in the village he's from and he's form a region called Rayalseema in Andhra Pradesh and they're like really rough people there. They're hardcore. A lot of politicians come from there and they have a history of being... you don't mess with them essentially. They are little on the edge violence kind of guys. So he wrote a story set in 1876 in Rayalaseema where the British want to come and lay tracks first for me knowing about the madras famine i just on the podcast heard about the bengal famine and it disturbed me and then he was telling me about madras family i was like one more and when i went into reading about it looking at the images from these famines looking at the whole story of why the indian railways was built we were all told that the railways was built by the british but no one told us why it was built and on whose backs it was built and at what cost it was built and i'm like we all i know about hitler and i know what happened to the jews i know i have visuals and i feel sympathy for them i don't know my own story and so i was excited that this is a story this is knowing our history is really important i believe for anybody knowing their story i was telling somebody that it's scary to be a 60 year old and not remember your 20s and 30s and 40s like imagine yeah you don't remember that whole episode it's like a scary thing and it's also scary because you cannot tell your kids like my dad passed on so much knowledge to me from his life he will pass it on to his grandkids as well so if you do not know your history how do you ensure it doesn't happen again and and setting history right is really important because history in a way is propaganda it's a narrative of who did what and this and it's going like 200 years back history we're reading now we are going to read it 300 years later we at least need to correct it now so that the next generations know what actually happened what we survived what we did and i think it's important to tell this at school that's one layer educating them at school but cinema is is a great medium to to correct the buried history and to correct narratives that were said so that's one part that really resonates resonated with me to be able to do this and of course the the world that is set in the characters like ryle seymour characters in itself are very interesting because of the kind of people they are and the culture they come from and how this culture has kept us together through all kinds of dark chapters and highs and lows in our history yeah so when said through all these mediums it was packaged really nicely and it felt like a responsibility to do it and it also felt exciting for me to take it on so i was like i'm in let's we should do this i should do this i would like it in my film filmography it's a film that i would really like on my filmography how did you come across the movie what did you think so i remember that rahul had mentioned spoken about this film to Vijay and he came home and he spoke about this film to me and when he spoke the Madras famine the thing is see I was never good at history in school okay marks getting marks for me for history was a huge because the dates and the names are really hard yeah and for me I don't remember what happened yesterday so for me back in school also I wouldn't remember anything uh i would mug up mug up and forget just before writing it right but i knew about this madras famine i knew about the bengal famine but when you get into the story of it no saying okay a british were what a building railway for us convincing us saying we're bringing food to help you know people of famine or people who are affected but railways also could be taking food away from the affected right then it's there's two ways to it and then what they told us to what they actually did are two different sides of the coin so hence when you get into reading about all of this you start understanding that this has happened to your family like your great grandfathers and the you know our ancestors it's happened to them and today like example in india okay we'll take over the present today i just used to keep wondering that dude i work out so much i am on my diet but i feel like if i look at food i'm you know going to put on weight the sad reality is that our dna remembers what happened to our ancestors so our bodies have learned to sort of survive right so right now it's in a fight or flight state where it's like okay the famine might come so we need to be prepared so any little thing that you eat or you breathe or anything it's saving your body from the calamities that might come so these are the things right so when you learn a lot more about your history you know okay this is why it's happened all the things that's happening in the present is happening now the only thing is you need to learn history so that in the future you can protect yourself and protect your people and just can be prepared for what's to come if at all it's going to come so i feel like it's important like that i just feel like its an important thing to speak about these things in our history so that you understand a little more as to why what's happening and what might happen yeah actually that's a fantastic setup for like any asking you anything more is going to probably reveal too much um but guys i should say thank you so much for being so real and so playful throughout this it's been a blast if you're ever in delhi and you need somebody to hang out i've had so much fun um thank you if you have any questions for me if you have something to say to the audience the mics are all yours have a good life i wish you well May the God's blessings be with all of you. Likewise. Yeah, likewise. No pressure. I hope, I hope. Yeah, be happy. Sukh raho. Kush raho! Kush rahon. I'm glad for you trying in Hindi. It's a good look, it's a great look. Well, thank you so much. I've had so much fun. Thank you so many. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Yeah, well, I'm so glad. Thank you, I guess. Since you've watched this video till the end, YouTube algorithm is suggesting you to definitely watch this one as well. You'll definitely like it. And yes, don't forget to subscribe.