Lisa Rani still rocks

There is a kraftwerk song, think that’s what the group was called and it went something like this, “She’s a model and she’s looking good... I’d like to take her home that’s understood.” Yup, really corny but I was at a corny age with my corny friends and when Lisa Ray came on the cover of the Gladrags magazine that was the song that became a national anthem with us friends. It became the most meaningful song that I knew at that point of time, so deep!

Years later I would laugh at the shallowness of that kind of depth but Lisa Ray remained the icon for us twenty somethings. Then came Ghulam and after that I was ready to make Kasoor. Mukesh Bhatt said Lisa Ray and I said yessir. The first time I met Lisa I was more impressed by her mind than her obvious good looks. She asked the right questions and took her time to decide. She agreed and then I thought to myself that in all the preteen memories I had not given a thought that Lisa did not even know Hindi and she had to play a lawyer! Well done Mr Bhatt !

She was the most conscientious actor when it came to that. She would get up at three and four in the morning and have her lines pat. She was an absolute delight to work with on the film. I remember so many funny stories. One in particular when Lisa had to say a line in a packed courtroom and the line was “apne use har ghante phone kiya, dus baje, gyara baje, bara baje, ek baje!” And Lisa lost in her hindi went on to say “gyara baje, bara baje, tera baje!” The whole courtroom burst out laughing and she was a real sport to take it on the chin and went to deliver a perfect second take.

Kasoor made box office success and what a lot of people don’t know is that Lisa was playing Bipasha’s role in Raaz. We even shot for three days but then Lisa had a problem and we could not go further. Lisa has always been a very private person and I never really found out the reason why she could not do Raaz and I admit that our parting post the Raaz scenario was not all together pleasant. We drifted apart and lost touch. Then a few years back she was in town and she got in touch and we had lunch together.

She was the same or rather it was the same between us. She called me Vikramji in the true filmy style and I would call her Lisa Rani, a fact that popped out of her passport, in equally filmy style. She was really hell bent on keeping the Rani part a secret.

Today her name on Twitter says Lisa Rani Ray. She has accepted a lot of things very bravely. She is terminally ill but when I last spoke to her last week she seemed still full of beans. She will fight it. She’s a model and she’s still looking good!