AYUSHMANN WASN’T SQUEA DOING SHUBH MANGAL, REVE

Shubh Mangal Savdhan has opened to glowing reviews. And its director R.S. Prasanna can’t stop heaving sighs of relief.

“We were very sure we weren’t making a sleazy nudge-nudgewink-wink film about a man who can’t get it up. It happens to so many of us. But no one talks about, not in real life, not even in the movies,” Prasanna laments.

Luckily for him, Ayushmann Khurrana agreed with him. “I had absolutely no problem in convincing Ayushmann for the role. He was my first choice. He had earlier done Vicky Donor. So he wasn’t squeamish about addressing sexual themes. The redefining of the screen hero comes naturally to him. He knew he wasn’t playing the typical hero. He wasn’t afraid to show himself as vulnerable.”

Shubh Mangal Savdhan was first made in Tamil as Kalyana Samaya Sadham. But the two versions of the same theme are completely different. “I made sure our writer Hitesh Kewalya didn’t watch the original Tamil film. I just gave him the essence of the original. When I made the Tamil film, I wanted to do a story set during a big Indian wedding. I wanted to show a crisis that the couple faces as the celebrations are on. While the Tamil version took us 45 days to write the Hindi version took 8 months. I wanted Shubh Mangal Savdhan to be bigger on every level than the original.”

How did the idea of an erectile dysfunction come to Prasanna, we ask. “We normally don’t address sex-related pro men. There isn’t even a term for men with se ments whereas, for wo have gynaecology. Wh so coy about men wit