I’M NOT COMPETING WITH ALIA, SHRADDHA

Sonakshi Sinha, who has a passion for singing, recently found herself in a recording studio, doing actual playback. Earlier this year, the actress had crooned a few lines for the animated macaw Jewel in the Rio sequel. Actor Imran Khan, who voiced Jewel's winged partner Blue, had accompanied her then. This time another Imran Khan, the singer of the hit, Amplifier, kept Sona company. In an earlier interview to Mirror (March 13), she had described the Rio experience as "super fun." "I love singing and I'd have loved to sing more but unfortunately, I'm just a bathroom singer,"she said.

Well, the bathroom singer has graduated into playback singing with the recently released Tevar track, Let's Celebrate. Speaking from Chandigarh, Sonakshi informed that the popular Pakistani-Dutch singer Imran had flown to Mumbai to record the song."But he arrived without a female vocalist. After listening to him sing, I wondered aloud who would be recording the female vocals and he told me bluntly, 'You'. I thought he was joking but I quickly realised that he was dead serious," the actress reminisces. Professional singers spend days rehearsing to get their sur and taal right. Not Sona.

After just four hours of practise, she was ready to face the microphone with the confidence of a veteran. "I'm not a trained singer. So, Imran would croon his lines first, and I'd follow. He told me to copy him exactly, and I was a really devoted student," she laughs. Her contemporaries, Shraddha Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, have both demonstrated their singing abilities in films like Ek Villain and Haider, Highway and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania respectively. Did she feel the pressure of expectations? "Not really. Both Shraddha and Alia have sung really well, but I'm not competing with them. I've always loved singing but no filmmaker ever asked me to sing. For me, this song is just a one-off experience, I don't intend to sing in all my films. We have great singers like Shreya Ghoshal, I'l never be able to match her beautiful voice. I'm just a kid in front of her," she smiles.