Akash Bhatnagar (BOMBAY TIMES; July 20, 2019)

Malaika Arora recently stepped into Dance India Dance 7 filling in for friend Kareena Kapoor, the regular judge on the Zee TV show. After watching a performance on her Dil Se song “Chaiyya Chaiyya”, she turned nostalgic, admitting she’d been really nervous during the shoot.

“With Shah Rukh Khan, Mani Ratnam sir (director) and Santosh Sivan (cinematographer) who have achieved so much around, I felt really small,” she reminisces. “But thanks to the love of the team, I did not miss my family.”

Speaking about the challenges she faced dancing on a moving train, she admits she fell several times, swaying right and left due to the wind. “To avoid this, they looped a rope around my waist and tied it to the train. When I removed it, I had deep cuts which were bleeding. But then, everyone took good care of me, someone pressing my feet and someone else feeding me,” she says completing her trip down memory lane by going “Chaiyya Chaiyya” again.