New Delhi, April 6 (IANS): From gorging on lip-smacking samosas to heart-shaped cutlets among many other mouth-watering delicacies, ‘Sharmaji Namkeen’ is a film that makes one hungrier, agrees promising young actor and food impresario Sanjay Raina’s son, Taaruk Raina, who got a chance to share screen space with late veteran actor and a “complete foodie” Rishi Kapoor.
Going back in time and recalling the days of shooting for the film, Taaruk, who made his mark in Lionsgate Play’s college life drama ‘Jugaadistan’ and the coming-of-age romantic comedy ‘Mismatched’ (Netflix), fondly reminisced about how the food spread out on the table helped him to connect with the two acclaimed stars of the film — Rishi Kapoor and Paresh Rawal. “Rishi Kapoorji was a massive foodie. You could talk to him about food for hours. So, I think it helped. Food was the central topic all the time. It made us blend easily,” Taaruk, who plays Vincy Sharma, the Rishi Kapoor character’s son, said. Rishi Kapoor played Brij Mohan Sharma, a widower laid off from his job who discovers (and so does an admiring world) his talent for cooking. Other veteran actors
Food runs in Taaruk’s DNA. His father, who first gained prominence in the 1990s as an Indipopper, is regarded as one of the finest exponents of Kashmiri cuisine, which he serves at his restaurant Mealability in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi.
“The film makes you hungrier,” Taaruk recalled about ‘Sharmaji Namkeen’ in his conversation with IANS. “Everything that was shot was so beautifully done. Everything looked so appetising. Food was at the centre of the film. There was a lot of eating on sets. We were eating in almost every scene and there was a lot of food involved.”
For a young and talented actor, though, it was not only the experience of eating a lot of good food that made ‘Sharmaji Namkeen’, which is streaming on Prime Video, so special.
The actor still has to pinch himself to believe that he really got to share screen space with Rishi Kapoor and Paresh Rawal, who completed Kapoor’s role after his death in 2020.
