Mahie Gill recalled how she nearly skipped her iconic dance moves in ‘Tauba Tera Jalwa’ song in Dev.D, until director Anurag Kashyap convinced her to go ahead.
When Anurag Kashyap‘s Dev.D exploded onto screens in 2009, it shattered every cliché of the traditional Bollywood romance with its bold storytelling and raw energy.
For Mahie Gill, playing Paro wasn’t just another job; it was a homecoming. In a recent chat with The Hollywood Reporter India, the actress shared that the role felt deeply personal to her.
“We shot in Chandigarh, which is my hometown… the character of Paro is a lot like me,” she recalled.
One of the most famous moments in the film is her character’s spontaneous, joyful dance during the song ‘Tauba Tera Jalwa.’ Ironically, the scene that audiences now celebrate as a symbol of Paro’s independence was one that Mahie initially tried to avoid.
The actress shared, “I was like, the bride shouldn’t be dancing… but Anurag was adamant.”
Anurag Kashyap’s filmmaking style has always been about experimentation, even if those experiments don’t make it to the screen. During the making of Dev.D, there were sequences that were built with immense effort, only to be discarded at the editing table.
One elaborate set piece had Paro turning into a goddess in Dev’s hallucination. It was shot at great expense, costing nearly Rs 5 lakhs. Despite the beauty and expense of the shot, Kashyap stayed true to his vision and cut it from the final edit.
As a re-imagination of the classic tale of Devdas through a lens of drug-fueled modern angst and defiant female agency. Dev.D remains a cult classic that still speaks to the audience. The film is re-releasing in selected theatres on April 24, 2026.
Starring Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill and Kalki Koechlin in leading roles, the Anurag Kashyap directorial follows the self-destructive spiral of a man caught between his obsession with a lost love and the unexpected solace he finds with a young woman in the dark underbelly of Delhi.
