Lyricist and comedian Varun Grover has something to say about the unrelenting attacks by Rajput groups on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat, previously titled Padmavati: The parrot did it.
The period drama, starring Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor, will be released on January 25 in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Advance bookings for paid previews of the 3D version on January 24 have opened in a few multiplexes across the country.
In the video titled Padmaavat and the Parrot, Grover, who is also a member of the comedy group Aisi Taisi Democracy, begins by saying that he would be as outraged as the Rajput protesters because of the designer jewellery on display in the trailer. He goes on to take digs at the protesters and Shahid Kapoor, who plays Maharawal Ratan Singh – “When Shahid saw that effigies of Deepika, Ranveer [Singh] and Bhansali were burnt, he must have wanted his effigy to be burnt too thinking, ‘Hey, even I am in the picture.’”
Grover then narrates the story of Padmavat, the epic poem written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540 that forms the basis of Bhansali’s film. He points out that the real culprit of the Padmavat saga is Hiraman, the talking parrot that is Padmini’s only friend, but is ordered to be killed by Padmini’s father. Hiraman flies away to Maharawal Ratan Singh and praises Padmini’s beauty so highly that the already married king is smitten. This spawns a chain of events that forms the basis of the Padmavat epic.
“If the parrot was killed right in the beginning, today, Bhansali’s 180 crores wouldn’t be on the line,” Grover concludes.