For viewers who grew up watching Sonali Bendre Coming to light on the song-driven era of Hindi cinema, it may come as a surprise that the dance numbers filled the actor with dread. From chartbusters like Humma Humma to Aankhon Mein Base Ho Tum, Bendre became one of the most memorable faces in the music scene of the 90s and early 2000s. However, behind the glamour, he says the songs were the scariest aspect of filmmaking.“The song was a nightmare situation from the movies. I can’t tell you what a nightmare that was. I’m not a trained dancer,” admitted Bendre. While he enjoyed the songs that blended naturally into the story, the pressure of the choreography would have left him with great concern. “Most of my songs are like stories rather than part of the narrative. And I liked the songs as long as they were part of the story, because that didn’t give me so much anxiety: “You have to dance.”It still gives me nightmares. I can’t sleep all night because of the anxiety because I don’t know how to…”Despite these fears, Bendre featured in some of the most popular Bollywood songs of the time. However, he said that there was never any effort. “Trust me, it was no effort at all. It was fear.”He recalled that a major turning point happened in the English-language Babu Desi Mem, starring the protagonist Shah Rukh Khan and directed by Praveen Nischol. Before signing the film, Bendre said it was due to her lack of dance training.“When I did ‘Babu Desi Mem English’, I realized I didn’t know how to dance. So when I heard the story and the script, I said to Pravin Nishcholi, ‘Okay, I really want to do it, but I don’t know how to dance, what are we going to do?'”The aftermath left a lasting impact on the actor. The legendary choreographer Saroj Khan He didn’t seem surprised during their first interaction. “That was my first time, and Saroj ji said, ‘Heroine ko toh naachna bhi nahi aata’ (the heroine doesn’t even know how to dance), and Satyam left the hall, saying, ‘Who is this? I can’t teach this’.”Bendre admitted that the incident shook his confidence in the early days of his career. “But that was the ambition. When he said that, ‘what the hell?’ You start to struggle with impostor syndrome.’Then he was a choreographer and filmmaker Ahmed Khanwho was helping Saroj Khan at that time, helped him. “Ahmed Khan would pick me up early in the morning before going to the set. We would rehearse together. He would bribe me with chocolates and do chores for me. And then I would go to the set, and that’s how I started learning what I had to shoot in ‘Babu Desi Mem’ in English.”Over the years, Bendre says, fear gradually turned into motivation. Instead of striving for perfection, he focused on improving with each performance. “The movie that once terrified me was getting better with every rehearsal and every song.”
