Vaibhavi Merchant made her debut as a choreographer with the film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, and received her first National Film Award for it for the song Dholi Taro Dhol Baje in 1999. Now, 26 years later, the choreographer has got her hand on the prestigious award again, this time for the song Dhindora Baje Re from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, and she is ecstatic about it.
Starting off with a joke, she says, “I hope it’s not my last,” adding, “I won my first National award when I was 21, and now I’m getting it after years and I’m now 49. The first time when I won it, I did not know the magnanimity of that award because I was too young. I was working nonstop and then you start to miss it. Then I was really hoping that I should be doing something substantial for me to deserve that award again.”
Sharing her take on awards, Vaibhavi Merchant says, “I would always love winning an award which is deserving and not manufactured. For me, this National Award is extremely important. I’m still dealing with the shock that I’ve actually won this after all these years, and I’m only grateful for this feeling that I’m feeling right now.”
The choreographer is also excited about the fact that she has won the same year her best friend Rani Mukerji has won her first National Film Award for Best Actress in Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway. “I’m away right now from my best friend Rani, who’s also won it this year. But it gives me such great joy to know that she’s won her first while I win my second, and I’m just too elated. All these years that we’ve been there together, we have been aware of each other’s work and this is just too special. I can’t express it in words,” she says, adding, “I don’t know if I would be so happy to get it on an item song honestly, which is what the norm is. It’s a very populist mindset of giving the award to a popular item song than the choreographies. So, this time I’m happy that the craft of the song was given an award and not a popular song.”
Ask her about the love that Dhindora Baje Re has got, and Vaibhavi says, “Dhindora, for me, became something very unique. Right before that song, a lot of people called me even for Dola Re Dola, the Kathak version between two male performers. So many classical Indian male performers came up to me and told me how happy they were with the way we did it. The fact that I made Ranveer Singh and Tota Roy Chowdhury, who are not classical performers, look like that, they were very impressed.”
For Vaibhavi, this National Award is a tribute to the classical art form. “People who have worked in the classical art forms have been doing it for years, I have done Bharatnatyam for 10 years and still continue to be a student of the classical art form. It’s so important that you understand the sanctity, the gravitas of those art forms and what we hold– our heritage, our culture. There’s so much we can do with what we have, and when that recognition is given on a Karan Johar platform where so many people come in to watch it in the cinema hall and you’re able to showcase that art form, it’s amazing. This award only means that this art form is being recognized. This art form has been given the tribute it needed to be given and so, this is just too special,” she says.
