Ayesha Takia dubs for a baby cheetah

By Subhash K. Jha

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Strange things keep happening to the unconventional Ayesha Takia. Last year, she was meant to play only one role in Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking. She ended up playing two roles. Ironically, this year, she plays a dubbing artiste in Rohit Shetty's Sunday and she will also be dubbing for a baby cheetah in Nikhil Advani's animation film.

"It's all so strange," Ayesha laughs, "when I decided to be part of Sunday, I just wanted to have fun after the serious Dor and even more serious No Smoking. And I did have loads of fun. But initially, we hadn't chosen a profession for my character. When Rohit suggested a dubbing artiste, I jumped at it. I don't think any heroine in our films has played a dubbing artiste."

Being a natural mimic, Ayesha worked hard on getting her voices right for the role. "I watched a lot of cartoons. But I found the voices very shrill and unnatural. I wanted to bring in a more natural tone to my voice. A professional dubbing artiste Vikas and the veteran sound recordist Rakesh Ranjan helped me with getting it right for my dubbing artistes' role."

Ayesha had great fun doing a number of voices in Sunday. But even more fun is her role as the baby cheetah in Nikhil Advani's animation film. "I get to speak for a cub named Yuvraj. Nikhil wanted me to dub in my natural voice. That was more fun than assuming an unnatural pitch. What added to the fun of this whole experience is that all of us who speak in Nikhil's animation film-Akshaye Khanna, Boman Irani, Govinda and me-sat together worked on our dialogues at rehearsals and then Nikhil designed the film on our voices."