Shweta Basu Prasad in prostitution racket. - Page 3

On World Music Day, the Makdee girl takes centrestage with a documentary on classical music.

Shweta Basu Prasad, the name may not immediately ring a bell. We are talking about the 11-yearold whose double role in Makdee won her the National Award for Best Child Artiste.

Subsequetly, she was seen in Ekta Kapoor's soap, Kahani Ghar Ghar Kii, as Shreyas Talpade's sister in Iqbal and in RGV's Darna Zaroori Hai. She then moved down South and disappeared from the Bollywood skyscape.

Turns out that in the interim she has co-produced a short film featuring Naseeruddin Shah with a friend whose name she's unwilling to reveal and directed a documentary on classical music titled Roots.

It features the who's who of the music world, from sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Aman and Ayan, violinist L Subramanium, Kathak guru Birju Maharaj, vocalists Pandit Jasraj and Shubha Mudgal, Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hari Prasad Chaurasia, to B'town biggies like Imtiaz Ali and Muzaffar Ali, composers Shantanu Moitra, Amit Trivedi, writer-lyricist-composer Gulzar, Oscar winner AR Rahman and her mentor-director Vishal Bhardwaj.

"I started work on Roots when I was 20 and it's been the focus of my life for the past three years," says Shweta who studied Hindustani classical music which her friends dismissed as boring. "So I started researching, attending seminars and concerts, and came up with the idea of a 90-minute docu-feature which explores the visibility of Hindustani and Carnatic music."

Her trips to less known corners of the country opened her eyes to the unfair taxes levied on the makers of musical instruments while Bhardwaj rued that many Bollywood composers opted for electronic music over live musicians, rendering the latter jobless. The classical touch that Shiv-Hari brought into music they composed for Yash Chopra is missing too, with commercial chartbusters ruling.

These and other issues will be discussed in Roots that will unveil towards the month end. "I'd like to screen it at schools, colleges and film institutes, take it to film fests and then try for a satellite and theatrical release," says Shweta who now wants to return to her acting career. "I haven't received any offers yet but I'm open to them."

As for music, well, she'll continue to play the sitar but as a hobby.