‘We wanted a girl who looked like a doll.’
Photograph: Kind courtesy Shefali Jariwala/Instagram
Vinay Sapru and Radhika Rao were the ones who discovered Shefali Jariwala and introduced her to showbiz more than two decades ago.
The directors of her breakout song, Kaanta Laga, which released in 2002, they had discovered the then college-going girl on Linking Road, northwest Mumbai.
Vinay Sapru goes back in time and tells Subhash K Jha, “From an engineering student to the nation’s heart-throb, it was an amazing journey.”
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Shefali Jariwala’s sudden death has shocked the entertainment industry.
She was our closest and dearest protege.
Her death has saddened the industry and I can see the reaction everywhere.
We switch on (television) channels, newspapers, Web sites, and it’s ‘Kaanta Laga Girl, Kaanta Laga Girl’ everywhere.
How did you get to know of her death?
Divya Khosla messaged me at 1.30 am. She was the first to convey the sad news.
From there on, it’s been a floodgate of memories, which is so tough to cope up with.
IMAGE: Shefali Jariwala in Kaanta Laga.
Tell us about your association with Shefali Jariwala.
We wanted a girl who looked like a doll.
We discovered her at 19, and have been in touch since the last two decades.
Doesn’t her death expose the difficult side of showbiz?
Yes. Maybe this happens in other people’s life but Shefali was never like that. From the time we spotted her on Linking Road till now, she was a bundle of energy and a bundle of dreams and hope.
She was never a victim of a circumstance.
What happens when death is so sudden and so young, one always tries to see this part of the life, that maybe the person was a victim. But it was never like that.
She was a positive person, always dreaming about the future.
Every time we met her, she was always so well turned up and well groomed.
Photograph: Kind courtesy Shefali Jariwala/Instagram
I believe she was religious.
Apne ghar mein Ganpatiji rakhti thi, Nauratre ki deviyan rakhti thi aur bulaati thi.
She was happy with everything that she got.
She was very content with being the Kaanta Laga girl.
She became the heartthrob of the nation.
She took it on and lived it to the fullest.
How much was your version of Kaanta Laga influenced from Lata Mangeshkar’s original rendition?
When you’re recreating a song, you can always tamper with the rendition of the vocals.
But our brief was that, don’t tamper with the rendition of the vocal because that was sung by the Goddess herself.
I said, yes, we are recreating the song, but there cannot be anyone who can render it better.
So you will see that the arrangement has changed, the music instruments have changed, but the vocals have been kept the way Lataji immortalised them.
Lataji has been an inspiration.
IMAGE: Vinay Sapru and Radhika Rao with Shefali Jariwala. Photograph: Kind courtesy Vinay Sapru and Radhika Rao/Instagram
But Shefali was not able to make much headway after Kaanta Laga.
See, I’ll tell you what, when you have such a big success and such a big iconic thing.
When we designed the DJ Doll album and made the Kaanta Laga song, we mentored Shefali, groomed her and prepared her for something that was close to our heart.
She worked hard, the rehearsals went on for almost three-and-a-half months.
Then the result was for everyone to see.
Shefali was the face of Kaanta Laga.
I still remember the Bombay Times cover. She was featured as the girl who was breaking all records with this song.
She came to our office with some 10 copies of Bombay Times and was saying, ‘Sir, I’m on the Bombay Times cover!’
Full of life, full of positivity, full of dreams in her eyes.
It’s not that she didn’t do more work in all these years, or didn’t do anything else.
But this was the one iconic thing she did.
Was she happy with what she had?
Yes. She used to do shows all over the world.
She used to drop in at our office, happy and prosperous.
From an engineering student to the nation’s heart-throb, it was an amazing journey.
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
