She was a young star — as one of the much-loved characters of the TV show Hip Hip Hurray! — and now she’s watching her first-born, Sara, take her first steps in acting — with Srijit Mukherji’s Uma. Nilanjanaa Senguptaa shares the emotional moment with t2 ahead of Mother’s Day

April 28. I will always remember this day. The trailer for Srijit Mukherji’s Uma dropped that day and the world saw Sara, our elder daughter, on screen for the first time. On May 9, Aaloshyo, the second song of the film dropped, and I couldn’t hold back tears.

We have not seen the movie yet. We are also seeing the film’s visuals for the first time. Jisshu (Sengupta) and I were crying when we saw the song. It was a very emotional moment. And Sara was like, ‘What are you guys doing?! Stop crying. What is wrong with you all?’ Of course she couldn’t understand why we were crying.... It was so overwhelming.

When I saw Sara for the first time in the trailer, I felt my baby belongs to the world. I felt the bird has flown out of the nest. It was almost like... after I had Sara and Zara, there was this trailer.

The shooting experience in Switzerland and Calcutta was magical. Sara was very happy. She made a lot of friends. Her friends have always been my friends or Jisshu’s friends. Her level of maturity, ideas of goals in life are very different from other people. And she was very serious on the sets. When she is at work, she is very committed. She is very focused on whatever she loves to do. Everyone is talking about her expressive eyes, and the way she emotes... we don’t know how she has done it. We have no clue.

Sara has always been inclined towards the performing arts but she had never shown an interest in acting in films. She is glued to National Geographic, Animal Planet. She wants to be a wildlife conservationist. She listens to a lot of music. She learnt the piano and violin for some time.

How Uma happened

Sara had got offers to act in films from production houses in Bombay and also for ad films. But we said no. Our reason was that she would make her own choices and not get carried away by what was being offered to her. Also, we wanted her to stay focused on her studies.

When Srijit first told us that he wanted to do a film with Sara, we said no. But she wanted to do it. So we told her to sit and hear the script first. As parents, we also wanted to listen to the script. I told Srijit, ‘She doesn’t have the patience to sit through a narration.’ Srijit said that he would like to try once. One day they met in office… and I thought she’d get up after 10 minutes. She sat through the entire narration and till the interval, she did not move.  And she was like, ‘I want to do the movie.’ She has so much confidence in Srijit. She has seen Srijit in our house, and seen the relationship we share with him. She sees him as Jisshu’s friend, and for Sara, Jisshu’s friends are her friends. Jisshu and I had nothing to say. Srijit gave us the reassurance… he said that he’d treat Sara like his own child. He and his team made sure Sara was comfortable. They took her under their wing and took care of her.

As told to Arindam Chatterjee