The late actor Om Puri’s ex-wife, Seema Kapoor, was enlisted by Sridevi and Boney Kapoor to help train their daughter Janhvi in language and diction. This was before Janhvi made her acting debut with Dhadak in 2018. Seema said in an interview that Sridevi was very particular about Janhvi being fully equipped before making her acting debut, as she responded to the criticism that Janhvi has received for her Hindi. She said that it is immature to target someone over their language, and revealed that Janhvi even sent her a self-composed poem once.
In an interview with Galatta India, Seema recalled how she came to be appointed as Janhvi’s teacher. She said, “I feel very happy seeing how far Janhvi has come. I played only a very small role in her career. She’s a hard-working and sincere girl. Rumi Jaffrey is like my brother; he’s a very well known writer in the industry. He recommended my name to Boney Kapoor and Sridevi, because my Hindi is quite refined.”
Seema, who has recently published her autobiography, said that Sridevi was alive when she was appointed as Janhvi’s teacher. Sridevi died of accidental drowning in 2018, only a few months before the release of Dhadak. Seema continued, “Sri ji and Boney ji asked how much I’d charge as fees, and I said, ‘Ghar ke bachche…’ And it’s not like I’m a professional teacher. I was going through a difficult period in my own life back then, and this took my mind off my troubles.”
She said that Janhvi even shared a self-composed poem with her, which made her very happy. “I told her to write more, as it would only help her become more expressive.” Seema was asked about the trolling Janhvi faced early in her career for her perceived lack of Hindi-speaking skills. She said, “I think it’s childish and immature to target someone over their language. It’s not like I can speak French or German. Language is a form of expression; before language, we used to communicate through hand gestures, and we survived, didn’t we?”
Seema and Om Puri got married in 1991, but they separated and divorced two years later, when he confessed to having fallen for another woman. Seema has spoken in detail recently about the turmoil that she went through, before reuniting with Om Puri in his final years. Janhvi was last seen in the film Devara: Part 1. She will next star alongside Varun Dhawan in Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari.
