Actor Sonali Bendre says she had decided to pack her bags and leave the film industry if she was unable to do a good performance in the song “Humma Humma” from Mani Ratnam’s 1995 movie “Bombay”.Bendre, who was barely five films old in the industry, said she was often “slammed” by choreographers for her moves until she got a breakthrough for her stint as the female dancer in the superhit track “Humma Humma” alongside Prabhu Deva’s brother Raju Sundaram. The 49-year-old said she wanted to give dancing a shot as the song was choreographed by the legendary Prabhu Deva.“I’m not a trained dancer. When I got into movies, I really got slammed by dance directors for my dancing. ‘Badi heroine banne chali hai, dancing nahi aata’. So, if you couldn’t dance, you couldn’t be a heroine. I was going through all of that so whatever time I would get before and after the shoot, I started to train in ‘Bollywood dancing’, as it’s called.“This was more like, ‘Let’s do this’. The actor, who later went on to feature in ‘90s hits such as “Diljale”, “Major Saab”, “Sarfarosh”, “Zakhm” and “Hum Saath Saath Hain”, said Prabhu Deva’s father and choreographer master Mugur Sundar was so impressed by her skills that he gave her a reward of Rs 100.“The best part was I was dancing with Prabhu Deva’s brother Raju and Sundar master ji, their father was (also) on the set. Mani Ratnam sir always did huge long shots, so we did everything in one go. After we did one of the things (shots), Sundar master ji took out 100 bucks and gave it to me and said, ‘You did so well’. I was like, ‘I don’t need a certificate from anybody else, I’m here’.”
