MUMBAI: At times, actors go to great lengths to prepare for their roles. While there are physical changes they undergo at times, there are times when they need to work on other skills. A similar thing happened to actress Gayatri Shastri who played Parvati on the show Om Namah Shiva that is now being shown on COLORS. Dheeraj Kumar of Creative Eye Limited who directed the show revealed how Gayatri, the actress who is from Chennai did not know Hindi at all, learned the language from scratch to play Parvati on the show. 

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Talking about it, Dheeraj Kumar of Creative Eye Creations reveals, “The casting was very challenging for Om Namah Shivay because of the number of characters we had on the show. For the character of Parvati, we needed a girl who looks like a Devi, who was a skilled dancer and had a very fresh and energetic look about her. We got all of that in Gayatri. She was perfect. The only problem? She could not speak a word of Hindi! She was a Tamilian. She had a completely different way of talking, and here was a show that used chaste Hindi. But she was extremely diligent. She told me to give her time. She told me, ‘Sir, you can start shooting and dub my voice, but I promise you I will learn Hindi’. I agreed because she was a very dedicated actress. We relocated her from Chennai to Mumbai where she stayed with her mother. And let me tell you, within a few weeks, she learned Hindi to a great extent. For a Tamilian to learn Hindi is no easy task, so I was really amazed.” 

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