Heeramandi
the Revolt of 1857 to the Non-Cooperation Movement in the 1920s. “My mother, Vidya
Rao, is a Hindustani classical singer trained in thumri and dadra,” Aditi says. “She also received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation to study gender and musical form. In her conversations, I have heard stories about the courtesans and their role in our Independence struggle.”
The language of Heeramandi is old-world Hindustani with an emphasis on its Urdu register. There is also a fair bit of Punjabi in the script. The actors had a total of four dialect coaches — Muneera Surati, Sarfaraz Arzu, Azmeri Aftab Hah and Sunita Sharma — overseeing their every inection. “Muneera ma’am would be sitting there with her headphones, listening to us like a hawk,” Sonakshi recalls. Any
nuqta we missed, she would scream out in disapproval.”
“Hindustani is not only a poetic language but also makes for beautiful communication,” Aditi adds. “We have stuck to a spoken word style. There is a weight to it but it doesn’t feel heavy.”
Sharmin Sehgal, Bhansali’s niece, has assisted him on lms like Goliyon Ki Raasleela
Ram-Leela (2013), Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022). In Heeramandi, she collaborated for the rst time with her uncle as an actor. She plays Alamzeb, Mallikajaan’s younger daughter who aspires to become a poetess.
Asked about her uncle’s meticulousness, Sharmin relates a telling anecdote from the shoot of
Bajirao Mastani. “We were framing a wide jib shot of 300 people standing in the peshwa’s
darbar. There was one junior artiste in the crowd with his shawl held the wrong way. My uncle noticed it through the monitor and made me run down to have it xed.”