Dancing diva, Urmila Matondkar looks back at the experience of judging Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa that concluded this week
Urmila Matondkar has been pretty much off the Bollywood radar in recent months. Her time has been consumed primarily by her first major television stint,which she seems to have enjoyed to the hilt. Here the actress takes a emotional look-back at Jhalak Dikhla Jaa (JDJ) and her dancing friends.
You seem to have enjoyed judging JDJ?
I'm ecstatic. I was facing participants and audiences for the first time. There were no written lines, no cues, no second chances. Either it worked for you or it didn't.
It required a lot of quick thinking. I liked the concept. The participants were celebrities in their own right. But I didn't sugarcoat my comments. I was frank. And it was tough.
The toughest part of judging?
It wasn't easy to judge people who were far more senior and sometimes much more accomplished than me. I had to show I was only doing my job. It required a lot of mental presence. The comments were all extempore.
As an expert dancer, was it difficult to amateurs?
I never looked at the dancers as amateurs, though admittedly some of them were really nave when they started the contest. When someone said that Mir Ranjan Negi looks ridiculous dancing at his age, I wondered what age had to do with it! For him to even get out of the green room when he had never lifted a leg to dance required a lot of guts.
For me, taking up challenges has always been important. I had to encourage and correct them. People didn't expect me to speak up so knowledgably on dancing. I want to ask them if they always thought of me as a pretty airhead.
You've never trained as a dancer though, right?
Yes, I've never been trained in dance. I had it within me. Dancing isn't just about getting it technically right. For me it's about expressing oneself beyond words. I've performed many dances on screen without even a choreographer by just feeling the music and its rhythm. I never strove to be a perfect dancer. But whatever dance was given to me I made it my own. The urge to dance will remain with me until the day I die.
You often broke into a song on the show.
I know! It was a conscious effort to lighten the load of some of my stronger comments. Sometimes a song expresses a bitter truth far more effectively and inoffensively than mere words. It was certainly not the channel's idea that I sing. Everything I did on the judge's chair was my own decision.
You openly said Sandhya Mridul deserved to win after Prachi Desai's victory.
Why not? I felt Sandhya would and should win. When she didn't, I felt terrible on her behalf. I thought it was my duty as a judge to state my opinion on the potential winner. I know not many people on the hot seat would be so vocal.
But when I saw how moved Sandhya was at my words I felt I had done my duty. My greatest victory was when at the after-final party, Prachi's mother congratulated me for balancing out the trio of judges on the show.
You managed not to cry at all during the show. Comment.
Yes, I never cried on camera though there were extremely emotional moments. Thank God I haven't lost touch with my human side. When Mini Mathur, Tapur and Sudha Chandran got eliminated I was very disturbed. And Sonali Kulkarni… I really hated it when she was eliminated. I hated shooting on Saturday mornings when we shot the elimination rounds.
I had become a part of their dreams. When Mr Negi was ousted I could feel his dream shatter. I had seen my parents' reaction when I lost out as a child at a dance competition. I didn't have to make super-human efforts to connect with the participants.
Has the show changed you?
I see life in a different light. I think judging Jhalak has made me a better person. There was so much genuine emotion between all of us. I remember being very depressed when Sonali Kulkarni was eliminated. Shiamak came to my van and entertained me. I've realised that despite the fact that the deserving and the hard-working participants were left out, the show in itself must go on.
source--mid-day
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