Kamal Haasan sat before his computer in Chennai. Pretty New York-based Pooja Kumar switched on hers across the seven seas and they talked over Skype. After Sonakshi Sinha stepped out of his Vishwaroop (Vishwaroopam in Tamil, it’s a bi-lingual), Kamal had to hunt continent to continent for a replacement heroine. He saw Pooja’s work online and set up a Skype audition with her.

“Five days after that audition, I was on a plane to report for shooting,” Pooja narrated her dream-come-true experience.

The Skype audition was very new age and began on a funny note. “Hello, I’m Kamal Haasan,” said the actor-producer-director-writer-lyricist of Vishwaroop from Chennai. “I know who you are. Who doesn’t?” replied his New York-based candidate.

“He is the Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck of India,” Pooja later described him. “With a doctorate, a Padma Shri, a place in the Guinness Book of Records, Kamal Haasan could very easily sit back on a chair and take it easy. But he still wants to do something different, keep trying out something new. That’s what’s so great about people like him and Mr Amitabh Bachchan,” Kamal’s bright new heroine remarked.

Pooja, whose parents are from UP, is a true-blue New Yorker and Kamal has cast her as a Tam-Brahm, an Iyengar. “We shot in Hindi first which was a breeze,” said Pooja, “and then we’d shoot the same thing in Tamil.” In the last few months, she has picked up quite a bit of Tamil and says, “nandri” (thank you) at the end of the conversation. Although her portions will be dubbed by a professional in Tamil, Kamal insisted on Pooja getting her lines right while picturising the regional version.

“Living in America you don’t hear so many languages,” Pooja rued. “That’s an advantage one has in India where so many languages are spoken everywhere.”

Biting Rani Mukherjee’s backside, and smooching her and Vasundhara Das in Hey! Ram, are all scenes expected in a Kamal Haasan film. But Vishwaroop, a thriller-suspense with Kamal playing a dancer in it, will have none of his usual stock of steamy scenes.

“No, there’s very little romance in it,” admitted Pooja who plays his wife in it. “But maybe there will be some of it in Vishwaroopam Part 2. Yes, he’s planning it,” she disclosed.

Kamal Haasan and Aamir Khan have always had a lot in common — both cinema-savvy with a strong script sense and willing to keep raising the bar for themselves as actors. They are also height-challenged but very successful in their different roles as actor, producer and director. Coincidentally, Kamal and Aamir picked up a suspense thriller each around the same time (Aamir’s Talaash was released in November 2012, Kamal’s Vishwaroop will be in Jan 2013), and both films have nothing steamy in them.

There is something to be said about coincidences and the right time. One hadn’t heard of Kamal or Shekhar Kapur for a long while and now they are both making news. Actor-director Shekhar, whose first love is acting, has a part to play in Vishwaroop — interesting that he’s acting in a film that has been made by another actor-director. And then he will be back behind the camera with Paani, producer Aditya Chopra’s first foray into the big budget arena of world cinema.

There’s another point worth noting: Kamal had teamed up romantically with Zarina Wahab in the late 70s. Zarina now has a senior role to play in Vishwaroop while Kamal is still very much the hero of the show.

Pooja Kumar turning Tamil Iyengar in the film reminds me of Vidya Balan, the real-life Tambrahm who rules Hindi cinema today. Taking a leaf out of the Bachchan book of etiquette, Vidya wed Siddharth Roy Kapur without show and pomp. A la the Bachchans, they have now sent out huge 4-in-a-box laddoos with a neat card that reads: “As we set out on our journey together, we seek your good wishes for a lifetime ahead. Warm regards, Vidya Balan & Siddharth Roy Kapur”.

Thought to ponder: Last year, this day, Rajesh Khanna’s family had rallied around him to give him the birthday of his life — his last one as they all knew. For the first time in her life, daughter Twinkle Khanna alias Mrs Akshay Kumar, who shared her birthday (December 29) with her dad, celebrated it solo yesterday.

Neglected in his last years even by “wife” Dimple who re-discovered her proximity to him only when he was terminally ill, Rajesh Khanna’s name is now being exhumed after death with clamour for a posthumous Padma honour for him. He could well be singing, “Yeh kya hua, kaise hua?” from somewhere up there.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal