Was longing to do a war drama: Mohit Marwah

Mohit Marwah

Mumbai, July 28 – Actor Mohit Marwah, who plays a pivotal role in “Raagdesh”, says doing the film made two of his wishes comes true — the desire to work with director Tigmanshu Dhulia and to essay a war hero.

Talking about his first meeting with Dhulia, Mohit told IANS here: “He (Dhulia) is a man of few words, so when I met him for the first time, I wanted to say so much and I think we just exchanged 7 to 8 sentences.

That was an experience – meeting Tigmanshu Dhulia for the first time. However, saying yes to ‘Raagdesh’ was quite easy as I was longing to do a war drama and also wanted to work with him.”

The story of “Raagdesh” revolves around three Indian Army National (INA) officers and the historic Red Fort Trial of 1945. Mohit is playing the character of Prem Sahgal, who according to Mohit, was a quite different, smart and flamboyant person.

“If you look at the journey of Prem Sahgal, it’s pretty interesting. He comes from a well-to-do family, his father was an influential man.

“After completing his education Sahgal joined the military. The change happened when he got caught as a war prisoner and decided to join the INA, though he had the opportunity to lead a normal life. That was the turning point of his life,” said Mohit.

“Most of our freedom fighters and war heroes somewhere lived with the passion to bring the change in country as they grew up seeing things that affected them… Whether it was Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shah Nawaz Khan or others.

“But this man (Sahgal) choose to lead a comfortable, luxurious life that he easily could effort. He dedicates his life to his countryathe story is fascinating.”

Born and brought up in Delhi, Mohit is the cousin of Sonam Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor. He got exposed to the big world of Bollywood cinema after shifting to Mumbai at the age of 17.

Starting his career with the film “Fugly”, he acted in two short films named, “Strangers in the Night” and “Love Shots”.

As his character in “Raagdesh” is set in the 1940s, was it tough to deal with Sahgal’s personality?

He said: “I was doing coming-of-age boys’ stories, and wanted to do something way different that has to do with love stories. So, this film is for that. As an individual, I choose the unusual.

“So, no, it was not… In fact, there is a similarity, so there was no problem of making the character, my own. He was a charmer… He will rather use his smartness and charm to handle an interrogation before a British officer instead of getting angry or upsetahe never loses his cool.

“So do I… And he is a romantic guy.”

The film released on Friday.