Divya likes change of role

Divya Dutta is happy with her performance in Vijay Ghatge's Shobhayatra. She confesses that she did not know what she was getting into when she had started working for the film because she had not seen the eponymous play on which the film is based.

"When he approached me with the role, he also told me that though he would love to cast me in his film, he felt that I was too young to play the role of a young mother who decides to act as Jhansi Ki Rani especially because I have this bubbly image as an actress. I took up the offer as a big challenge to the actor in me," Divya says.

Vijay feels that his subject is to be seen as a satire. He says, "The censors came down heavily on the scenes I had shot with Divya Dutta and Denzil Smith who is playing the role of Jawaharlal Nehrusss . They told me to delete the dialogues because they did not want me to show Nehru flirting with Jhansi Ki Rani, who comes alive in the new millennium."

Though he had a harrowing time with the Censor Board, Mahesh Bhatt intervened on his behalf and helped him get the censor certificate.

According to Ghatge, Shafaat has written the film in such a way that even though it has an unusual structure, it will be easy for anyone to understand what happens that night.

Vijay Ghatge had earlier made the telefilm Ganuraya based on a novel by the renowned author C.T. Khanolkar. After spending the next 13 years in what he calls "a futile and empty space" working on scripts that did not see light of day, he pooled in resources from friends and family to make Shobhayatra.

Vijay says that he knew that he was getting into a different and difficult situation because it was difficult to adapt the play into a film, especially since the play did not have many characters.

Through his film, he says that he wanted to bring alive the problems in our society. "It is sad that we take politicians, corruption, underworld etc for granted and turn a blind eye to reality around us."