SRINAGAR: The Bhaderwah beauty, Sadia Khateeb who gate-crashed into Bollywood as the lead actress in Vindhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara, has turned to be her co-star Akshay Kumar’s tutor for Kashmiri. A small Instagram reel shows that the actor is asking Kumar to say something in Kashmir and the senior actor praises her.
“Akshay sir, can you say something in Kashmiri,” Khateeb asks, as the video sahot in a car shows. The car has three other co-stars who work for Rakhsha Bandan with Kumar, a film being screened across India on August 11. “Sadia Khateeb cha wariya asal koor,” Kumar responds. And Sadia adds: “very good girl”.
Rakhsha Bandan star-cast is busy promoting the film across India. The flick is a family drama that revolves around the brother-sister relationship in wake of dominating dowry mess.
This is Sadia Khateeb’s second major film ever since she jumped on the Bollywood bandwagon. Sadia was pursuing engineering at the Government College of Engineering and Technology, when in 2017 when she was just 20 years old, Indu Sharma, a casting director from Mumbai named, rang her up. A few meetings over a few weeks later, Sadia was chosen to play Shanti in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara against Aadil Khan. Sadia was born in 1997.
For three years, she was busy filming for the movie based on the migration of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir at the peak of militancy in the 1990s. Earlier, it is interesting to mention, that she was approached to work for Imtiaz Ali’s Laila Majnu, an offer she mistook as fake believing that nobody in Mumbai can cast her. That is perhaps why she says Shikara was a fairytale for her.
“I clearly remember that while I was promoting Shikara, one journalist told me that I would face difficulties and hardships in getting my second film but I didn’t really bother about it,” she was quoted as having said recently. “I waited for so long and then Raksha Bandhan came my way. I picked it up because back then, it was the best offer amongst others but when I saw the film recently, I just thanked Allah miyan for sending this film to me since this is exactly what I wanted.”
Sadia has claimed that Raksha Bandhan was a very special film in her career because her father suggested her to do it. “I have more reasons to be happy as my father, who was battling with Covid-19 came back home recovered and said, ‘Go do Raksha Bandhan’. Now I can only thank him for this advice,” she has stated.
Interestingly she is from a non-film family and had never acted before she got a lead role in a film. She gives all the credit to her brother.
“Even though I wanted to do acting and wanted to change my base from Delhi to Mumbai, convincing my parents was a task. It is my brother who told my parents that they should support me to achieve my dream of becoming an actress. Of course, I am young so my parents were worried about how I will manage alone in Mumbai, so my sister came along with me. In my personal life, I really celebrate the sibling bond that we have,” she has said in another interview.
