'Veere Di Wedding' revolves around four high school friends played by Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Swara Bhaskar and Shikha Talsania.
The writers of this film Mehul Suri and Nidhi Mehra told SBS Hindi what inspired them.
(L to R) Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Shikha Talsania and Swara Bhasker - Azhar Khan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Source: Azhar Khan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
"Nidhi and I have been friends for a while. We met because my childhood friend and her childhood friend were good friends. We were kind of one gang, and through us, Nidhi and my best friend met and decided to get married. We have always been influenced by our friends. They have been a strong support for us, so we decided that this is the best way we can pay tribute to them.
"Our school gangs are pretty solid, we have been friends for 20-25 years. You know that phase when friends become family, that’s what our friends mean to us and that has been our inspiration for this film. We wanted to capture our take on friendship in this film. In short, this film has been inspired by our own real life", they tell us.
Nidhi told SBS Hindi that "whoever says that the characters in the film seem a bit unrealistic, they should spend one weekend with her friends and then they will feel that the characters in the film are a toned-down version!"
On comparisons being made to TV series ‘Sex and the City’ and films like 'Bridesmaids' and 'Bachelorette', Mehul says,
"I honestly had never seen 'Sex and the City' but when people started talking I decided to watch it for the first time to see whether there are similarities. After seeing that show I realised that problems faced by women and indeed human beings are universal. What a girl is experiencing in New York or Melbourne, a modern girl in Mumbai is having similar experiences."
"I used to religiously watch 'Sex and the City' and use to like it a lot but having said that this story is inspired more by our friend’s lives than 'Sex and the City", says Nidhi.
Mehul tells SBS Hindi,
Mehul Suri, Nidhi Mehra Source: Mehul Suri
"In the last two-three years, people are talking about a sexual revolution in Indian cinema in terms of what women are saying and talking about with films like 'Lipstick Under My Burkha' and 'Lust Stories' on Netflix. So there is a trend now and people are talking about these things".
Mehul Suri completed his Bachelor of Business from Monash University.
"My course was not related to film writing in any way but I would like to say thank you to Australia. You know how Indian kids (17-18 years old) grow up in a protected environment. When I came to Australia for the first time and saw life, when I cooked Rajma chawal (rice) for the first time and paid my own electricity bill, I had that feeling of independence. I think it's only because of that growth in character, that I have become a writer today because I have seen a little bit more of life which I probably may not have seen if I had stayed in India."
Nidhi Mehra was quite confident that the film will do well.
"I knew in my heart that the film will do well because we wrote the characters with so much love that there was no way that people would not have liked it and I am glad we were both right about that. We have written this film from our heart"
