Hey! Ram
Beware! Lest it happens again...

When Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead at point blank range by Nathuram Godse, 13-year-old Mohini Mathur was just 20 feet away from the scene of crime. Now aged and wrinkled, the eye-witness agreed to act in Kamal Haasan’s Hay!Ram. She plays Haajra, the mother of Amjad Ali Khan Kamal(Shah Rukh Khan) in the film. Delhi’s Birla Mandir was recreated by art-director Sabu Cyril.

Haasan’s period piece opens in the Mohenjodaro digs in 1946 and culminates inside a Chennai sewage construction site in 1999. Shot in 130 shifts at various locations in Chennai, Calcutta, Delhi and Varanasi - Hey! Ram, maker-actor Haasan explains is not an attempt to gain recognition through icon bashing. “It’s an honest look at those who perpetrated the biggest political divorce of modern history,” elaborates Kamal.

It’s not the b.o. appeal of Shah Rukh and Rani Mukherji that prompted Haasan to cast them in his film,”I thought Shah Rukh Khan would be an apt choice not because he’s a big star but because of his family

background - his dad was a Pathan who migrated from Peshawar - that would be reflected in his performance,” reasons Haasan. A die-hard Haasan fan, Shah Rukh says he’s done what he’s never done before for this one. Singing a song for instance and sporting a beard and moustache. “Kamalji is a very organised director. He knew what he wanted but he wasn’t ever assertive. He would just let me be and act naturally. That helped a great deal,” opines Khan. As for casting Rani Mukherji in the role of his wife, Kamal says,”Being a Bengali herself, she would lend an authenticity to the character of a Bengali haus frau.” Rani herself has no qualms about being seen in a deglam avtaar,”I like to do performance oriented role. That’s why I am fascinated by my role in Hey! Ram,” says Rani.

An Iyengar Brahmin himself, Kamal essays the role of Saket Ram in the film,”But that was purely a coincidence. I am not a practising Brahmin in real life,” he argues.

The film is a family venture with brother Chandra Haasan as the co-producer, wife Sarika as the costume designer and beti Shruti crooning for it.

So from the man whom you can always expect the unexpected comes Hey!Ram.