Normally when you hear South Indians speaking Hindi, the first reference point that comes into your notice is the heavy Tamil or Malayali accent. And the case of Keralite Pallavi Purohit , who essays the role of Madhubala’s mother Padmini in Colors’ Madhubala, speaking Hindi with élan, was no different in the beginning. “When I arrived in Mumbai way back in 2006, my Hindi diction was only a tad better then how Prabhudeva speaks the language today. My acting guru had once told me ‘you have everything that an actor requires but you need to work on your command on the lingua franca of the nation.’ Accordingly, I got to work; started reading Hindi papers and paid a lot of attention on my pronunciations and over the time got the hang of speaking the language. But even today, I bring my work home and keep repeating my dialogues loud so that I get the right pronunciations,” she informs. Besides Madhubala, this cute lady has enacted in several other shows such as Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kasamh Se, Karam Apnaa Apnaa and Bairi Piya among others; her last outing being Sapnon Se Bhare Naina. The hard work that Pallavi put in earlier is paying off today, so much so that the actress corrects the Hindi of the Hindi speaking people when they pronounce certain words the wrong way. “It gives me a great high when I am doing that. However, here I would like to confess that despite so much efforts, sometimes I still goof up on my tenses and the poor director screams that I am going wrong,” Pallavi observes. What do you feel about the Hindi dialects of your co- stars? “While the diction abilities of senior artists like Shagufta Ali, Raj Zutshi and others are excellent, the language skills of the younger lot are only average. They may be good actors, but their Hindi speaking is just okay. The young kid Khushboo stands out among this crowd for her Hindi is too good,” the actress concludes.