Puri Jagannadh has roped in Devshi Khanduri for a special song in his upcoming film Iddarammayilatho. Postnoon gets talking to this newbie who has a lot going for her these days.
A chance meeting with Puri Jagannadh last year gave her a new window of opportunity to enter Telugu film industry. Meet Devshi Khanduri, who’s all set to sizzle in a song in Puri Jagannadh’s upcoming film Iddarammayilatho. “I met Puri Jagannadh at a party in Mumbai and we got along pretty well. He saw the work I had done in the past and offered me a chance in Iddarammayilatho,” Devshi reveals. Born in Delhi, she spent all her life in Dehradun where she graduated in Psychology. “I was modelling right from my school days and after graduating from college, I moved to Mumbai along with my family. My parents have been quite supportive about my ambition to act in films. I have also done several ads for brands like Clinic Plus, Fair & Lovely,” she says. Her first film as an actress was Dev Anand’s Chargesheet, which turned out to be the last film he would direct before he passed away in late 2011. Ask her why she chose to make her debut in a Dev Anand’s film, considering that fact that most of his films were huge flops in the last decade, she confesses, “I am a big fan of Dev Anand saab and it was my dream to work with him. I think a lot of people dream about working with Dev Anand at least once in their lifetime. Even an actor like Naseeruddin Shah was part of the cast. The film might have bombed at box-office, but I’ll always cherish the fact that I was Dev Anand’s find.” She’s currently shooting for couple of films and one of them is going to be directed by award winning filmmaker Sunil Babbar. “Sunil liked my work in Chargesheet and offered me lead role in his next film titled Taj. It’s about honour killings and Jeremy Marr Williams is playing the other lead role,” she reveals. Another film The City That Never Sleeps is going to be directed by Haroon Rashid and she says that it’s a multi-starrer film which captures the spirit of a metropolitan city like Mumbai.
So how was the experience of working in a Telugu film? “It was fabulous. I am donning a hippie look in the song titled Run..Run..Run and we shot for few days in Barcelona. Puri Jagannadh and Allu Arjun are great fun to work with. It was Puri Jagannadh who suggested that I should start off with a song before moving on to bigger roles in South Indian cinema,” she says, admitting that she could easily relate to the style of dancing in a Telugu film. “There’s a lot more energy in a Telugu song, compared to a song in Hindi. The choreographer, Ganesh master was mighty impressed with my work and I hope I get a chance to do more work in Telugu and Tamil in near future,” she signs off.