Saba Azad opens up on nuances of Kashmiri accent in her new film

Mumbai, Aug 30 (IANS) Actress Saba Azad, who can be seen in the recently released streaming film ‘Song of Paradise’, has shared her experience of trying the Kashmiri accent in the film.

‘Songs of Paradise’ is inspired by the life of Padma Shri awardee, Raj Begum. The lead character is portrayed by Saba Azad and Soni Razdan across two time periods. The film offers a peek into the life of the Padma Shri awardee.

Saba Azad spoke with IANS during the promotional run of the film, and said that she was privy to the Kashmiri accent but the film demanded nuance of a certain degree from her when it came to the phonetics.

Saba Azad is also a voice artiste, and was acquainted with the accent from some other part of Kashmir. However, the role demanded the accent from Srinagar. The actress shared that cracking the diction of the character was not exactly a cakewalk for her.

She told IANS, “It wasn’t a cakewalk, there was definitely a challenge. There's a tendency to go a little overboard always because everybody has kind of heard the accent. We're Indians, we've got so many different languages and you hear all accents all the time. We live in a metropolis, we come across people all the time, someone is from West Bengal, someone is from Punjab, someone is from Kashmir, so you're hearing all sorts of accents at all times. So all of us have it in our heads somewhere in our subconscious”.

She further mentioned, “But I think the challenge is really to not go overboard, which is where Danish (the director) comes in, he was really reining me in at all times because I think I was more familiar with another region of a Kashmiri accent. He was like, ‘You need to come back to this region’”.

“So it was a very enjoyable experience for me, I really, really enjoyed sinking my teeth into it and honestly like more work like this to all actors”, she added.

Presented by Excel Entertainment and produced by Apple Tree Pictures Production and Renzu Films Production, ‘Songs of Paradise’ is available to stream on Prime Video.

--IANS

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