'I could not sleep all night...'
Talking about 7/11, Preity Zinta says it's time Mumbai stopped getting used to periodic attacks
Subhash K Jha
The day after Mumbai rocked to serial blasts, Preity Zinta can't get over the suddenness of it all.
"7/11 will go down as one of the darkest days in Mumbai," she says. "I was in court for the second hearing of my case against a tabloid, so I had no clue what was happening. Even when I was caught in a traffic jam, I didn't suspect trouble. There were ambulances on the road. Also, my phone was jammed. Since no one could call me, I had no idea about the blasts. It was only when I returned home and switched on the television, that I realised what had happened. I couldn't sleep all night after seeing the blast images last night."
"It's time we did something drastic, like New York did after 9/11," adds Preity. "NY has lost its rough edges now. Earlier you couldn't walk freely in certain parts of the city. But the streets are safer now… Mumbai shouldn't be such an easy target. It's so sad to see Mumbai's people hit so badly. Visuals of severed limbs will remain with me forever. You feel so helpless. We seriously need to think of the city's security. Instead of dealing with real problems the government shuts down discs and pubs after such a tragedy. How does that help anything?
You need to clamp down on the root causes of such happenings. I can't imagine terrorists sitting in pubs after committing the crime!"
Preity feels, like many others, that Mumbai is getting used to such periodic attacks. "There should be special time-conserving courts for terrorist cases," she says.
Meanwhile both her delayed films Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (KANK) and Jaan-E-Man have been finally wrapped up, within a day of each other. "Both my films got delayed together. Both continued shooting, almost together. Both ended with me shooting for a part of a song. My dates did clash. But I sorted them out. KANK will release in August and Jaane-e-Man later," she says.
Preity has just shot a song for KANK. "The film is complete," she says. "We just finished shooting a song. I danced with Amitji and Abhishek. They're both so tall! I had to really crane my neck to keep up with them. This was my first song with both of them."
She is wistful about not being part of the Salaam Namaste team a second time around. "Their film is called Tara Rum Pam Pam. That was meant to be the title of my first film. Siddharth Anand has Rani this time. That's okay. I'm doing Shaad's film Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom with Abhishek. Rani was in Shaad's last film." After the premiere of Alvidaa, Preity leaves for London to shoot for Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom.
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