Manisha Koirala recalls her legs were covered with leeches during Bombay song shoot: ‘It was tough’

India- Mani Ratnam’s Bombay recently completed 29 years. The film’s female protagonist, Manisha Koirala, remembered how difficult it was shooting for the film as she had to walk through a forest filled with leeches. She also remembered shooting amid giant waves hitting the rocks which filming the song “Kehna Hi Kya”, composed by AR Rahman.

Talking to O2 India, Manisha, who debuted in Tamil films with Bombay, remembered how she had had a sty on her eye and was in pain while shooting “Kehna Hi Kya”. She said, “I do have this memory of Kehna Hi Kya, I think we shot it in Mysore or one of the areas we had gone. I remember I had a huge sty on my eye and I was thinking the shooting will get cancelled and all that, but no, I think Rajiv Menon was the DOP (Director of Photography) at that time and I explained to him, that I had a big stye in my eye, but he just asked me to put some make-up and said, ‘don’t worry, I’ll look into it, I’ll take care’. Nobody notices the sty in my eye.”

“So, I feel that when you are working with an entire team which is excellent, they churn out good things despite all the roadblocks,” she added.

Yet another song from Bombay which continues to receive love from music lovers was ‘Tu Hi Re”. Sharing how difficult it was to shoot this song in a forest filled with leeches, Manisha shared, “Tu Hi Re was a very difficult song. There was one chunk, two places, which were extremely difficult (to shoot in). One was on the rocks and the sea hits on those rocks and big splashes come, that was pretty dangerous, but somehow we managed to shoot that and we got it right and everything was ok. The other place was… I don’t know which area that was, we were in the midst of a thick jungle and it was full of leeches.”

“So, if you walk one step also, a little distance, leeches would be all over your leg. (For the song) I had to wear a skirt, that blue skirt and I had to run through the jungle… It was full of leeches, there was a lot of difficulty. But then you find a mechanism, we were told, you put salt, someone we wore boots. We figured out how to navigate in a tough situation,” Manisha concluded.Mani Ratnam’s Bombay was released in cinemas in March, 1995. The film tells the story of an inter-faith family in Bombay during the Bombay riots. Music of the film was composed by music maestro AR Rahman, and the album of the film is one of his most loved works.

Source: IndianExpress