Janhvi Kapoor celebrates her birthday today (Photo: Instagram/ Janhvi Kapoor) In 2018, Janhvi Kapoor made her debut with Shashank Khaitan’s Dhadak, a remake of the Marathi film, Sairat. It was also the year when her mother, Sridevi, died suddenly, leaving a grieving nation in her wake, just a couple of months before Janhvi’s debut. She had only managed to see snippets of the film, and not the final version.
However, Janhvi showed steely resilience at the time and returned to work, soon after her mother’s death. As she later said, work is what kept her going during that period of intense emotional upheaval and trauma. The cast and crew did their best to ensure that she remained comfortable on sets, without overtly sympathising for fear of leaving her more affected.
Shashank Khaitan had told Mumbai Mirror at the time had said that they tried to keep the atmosphere ‘as normal as possible’. He said that they were aware that the more they tried to sympathise with Janhvi, the more the situation would affect her. “We kept the focus on work and not on what had happened knowing that time is the best healer. I salute her courage,” he said. He also mentioned that they didn’t make any ‘special effort’ to reduce the 12 hour working day or go slower, and added that he had a personal and professional commitment to Janhvi. While he knew her family well, he had also a responsibility towards others on the set.
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Janhvi had told India Today that it hadn’t been an easy experience, and that work, had in fact, ‘saved her’. “My work and my family have given me the strength to go on. If it wasn’t for coming back to the sets of Dhadak or being able to act, I think it would have been much tougher than what it is now. I am very thankful that I had the opportunity to work in the film and act. It saved me in many ways,” she had said.
While she resumed working for Dhadak in full swing, it was more challenging as she was under intense scrutiny, something that she didn’t pay attention to, as she admitted regretfully later. The devastating personal loss also made her feel ‘disconnected’. She said that she wished she had been more engaged, so that she could have made more of an impression. “I was getting a certain amount of attention, but my mind was somewhere else altogether,” she had mentioned to Elle India.
The year 2018 was a ‘mixed bag’ for Janhvi as she said, she lost her mother, saw the success of her debut film, and came closer to her half-siblings, Arjun and Anshula, who emerged as pillars of support during the turbulent time and later became her biggest cheerleaders for all her films. She has often mentioned that she feels an instant security with them and they’re slowly evolving as an organic family unit.
Janhvi has several projects in the pipeline, including Good Luck Jerry and Takht.
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