In Hindi-Vindi, Mihir Ahuja plays a young musician living in Australia who has lost touch with his mother tongue — Hindi. So, when he gets on a call with his grandmother (Neena Gupta) back home in India, the two cannot communicate with each other; he doesn’t know Hindi, and she cannot speak English. In a bid to speak with her, he decides to learn Hindi. Although the film talks about the Indian diaspora, exploring the loss of language in the new generation, there is much to resonate for those living in Northern India as well.
A lot of Hindi-Urdu words are not heard in Bollywood films today. Neena feels that society is changing in a way that is affecting the films as well. “People in Mumbai don’t read in Hindi as much, they prefer reading in English. Hindi is looked down upon,” she says.
Neena adds that the younger generation is drifting away from the language due to social media. “They have a different lingo altogether. For instance, I have never really understood what LOL means,” she quips. This generation gap is also at the centre of Sydney-based director Ali Sayed’s Hindi-Vindi, which is set to be released in Australia on February 27. In the film, Mihir, known for his role in Zoya Akhtar's The Archies (2023), carries a seamless Australian English accent.
He had to take training for over four months to understand the distinct pronunciation. When he went to Australia for the shoot, he would walk around and observe how people spoke. “If I had doubts about certain words, I would ask them to read it for me,” he recalls. His character in the film has difficulty speaking Hindi — however, in real life, Mihir speaks the language fairly well. “I am from Jamshedpur and although my family is Punjabi, we speak Hindi at home. I also read some Hindi literature in school which helped a lot too,” he says.
According to Neena, it is only in the metropolitan cities that the local languages are not engaged with prominently. “If you go to Kerala, people there read and write in Malayalam.
And their literature is so rich,” she says. The actor recently starred in the Malayalam series 1000 Babies and during the shoot, she faced difficulty conversing with her cook, who only spoke and understood Malayalam. “She didn’t know Hindi at all; not even what haldi (turmeric) and namak (salt) are.
And I don’t know Malayalam at all,” Neena says. That’s when technology came in handy. She used her phone to translate it to her. “I would say my cooking instructions in Hindi to the phone and make her read the Malayalam translation,” she smiles.
A similar moment takes place in the film, where Neena’s character is trying to learn English with her phone, which irks her grandson. Neena has played the role of a mother and grandmother before in films like Badhaai Ho (2018), Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020) and Uunchai (2022), among others.
How does she make a similar character appear different in each film? “Once I wear my costumes, read my dialogues and get convinced about what I am saying, it automatically becomes different. All I need then is concentration, which is the most difficult thing to do on a set,” she says.
It is also learning a new dialect for a certain character that helps her differentiate. For instance, her character in the comedy-drama series Panchayat speaks Hindi with an earthen flair. “I always joke about it that by the time I finish one season, I get so consumed in the language but then it gets over too soon,” says Neena.
Post-2017 was a career resurgence for the actor, who had not been getting much work before. That changed with Badhaai Ho as she went on to star in more films and shows over the years. However, Neena feels there’s a lot more to do and that she is greedy for roles. “I am enjoying the work I am doing. It saves me from getting old,” she says. The actor wants to do a comedy film soon. “I also want to do some action with a mix of romance,” she concludes.
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