Are Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Athiya Shetty a match made in hell?

Acclaimed Indian actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui had just finished filming the second season of the hit web series ‘Sacred Games’ when he walked onto the sets of his romantic comedy ‘Motichoor Chaknachoor’, out now in the UAE.

Siddiqui, who has won several best actor trophies during his prolific career and can boast of hits such as ‘The Lunchbox’, was unusually nervous.

“I had to be careful that Ganesh Gaitonde’s bad habits didn’t seep into this role of Pushpinder Tyagi. What if I began swearing in front of my mother here?” said Siddiqui in Hindi in an exclusive interview with Gulf News tabloid!.

“My first thought was that if this was Ganesh Gaitonde [the potty-mouthed, dreaded gangster in ‘Sacred Games’], he would have resolved this issue in a few hours and what if his ghost continues to haunt me,” said Siddiqui with a laugh.

In his latest comedy ‘Motichoor Chaknachoor’, also starring Suniel Shetty’s daughter Athiya Shetty, Siddiqui plays a desperate 36-year-old virgin who wants to marry a woman primarily to enjoy carnal pleasures.

In the trailer, his character Tyagi is shown as a blue-collar worker who used to work in Dubai and how his personal life took a hit as he was too busy supporting his family financially. Expats who work in foreign countries often get married hastily during their annual vacations to a woman chosen by their parents. Parents or relatives going bride shopping is a reality in countries from which men go abroad for work.

“When I heard the script, I instantly related to it. I have seen many people around me who want to marry, but they don’t have any choice or option really. They tell their parents: ‘I just want any girl. Just marry me to anyone.’ … There are many people like this in our society.”

His character’s desperation stems from his fear that he will remain single all his life.

“Most of his life, he has been a responsible adult, but he’s tired of doing his job day in and day out. He just wants to have a companion and settle down with a woman. Such things happen in lower middle class families where men don’t have time for themselves. It’s complex of sorts,” Siddiqui said.

He finds his match — mismatched by several notches — in Anita Awasthi played by a winsome Shetty. She’s desperate to escape her native town in Bhopal and wants to experience the Dubai dream.

“We belong to two different worlds. If she’s tall, I am super short. We are mismatched on all counts — be it personality or otherwise. In romantic comedies, it’s such a good device to be an unlikely pair,” the actor said.

Shetty describes her character as ambitious yet naive.

“Annie [Anita] doesn’t care who her groom is as long as long as she gets an opportunity to go abroad. She wants to do more with her life than just be in Bhopal. She is desperate to get out of Bhopal and seek new experiences … I hate to admit it, but she’s a gold digger of sorts but she justifies it by saying she wants to have a life abroad,” said Shetty in a separate interview over the phone.

Shetty, who grew up on a steady diet of romantic comedies like ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ and Karan Johar’s romances, believes that both characters are nut jobs of a different kind.

‘Motichoor Chaknachoor’, directed by debutante Debamitra Biswal, is a comedy of errors stemming from an unholy marriage of convenience by an unlikely pair.

“They both are desperate to get married — but for different selfish reasons. And once they get married, the madness begins … ‘Motichoor Chaknachoor’ is a coming-of-age film where these to grow and mature as human beings,” said Shetty.

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