Another Albela chartbuster, Shola jo bhadke, to follow

Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 15, 2015)

Mirror (September 10) had reported that Vidya Balan would play yesteryear actress Geeta Bali in a Marathi film titled Ek Albela, a biopic on the late actor-filmmaker Bhagwan Dada. We have now learnt that Vidya will also be grooving to Geeta Bali's evergreen chartbusters from the 1951 film, Albela. The two songs, which have been short-listed for her are Lata Mangeshkar and C Ramchandra's Bholi soorat dil ke khote and Shola jo bhadke.

Post interval, the biopic touches on Bhagwan Dada's struggle to make Albela and director Shekhar Sartandel points out that Dada really struggled to shoot these two songs, one of them being the non-availability of background dancers during Shola jo bhadke. "So these songs are important to my script," he reasoned, pointing out that Vidya's training in Bharatanatyam was an added advantage.

The actress wrapped up Bholi soorat dil ke khote last week after three days of rehearsals. "It's a retro Indian number. We've replicated the steps and the costumes of the original. We have even rerecorded both the songs as I don't like remixes. Vidya's grace and facial expressions were bang on. She followed choreographer Stanley D'Costa's instructions to the T," raves the director.

Interestingly, Shekhar adds that Vidya's grand father-in-law had been a Samba tutor to Bhagwan Dada.