Apparently Satya Bhabha who plays the hero with the long nose and Tamil superstar Siddharth Narayan who is cast as Satya's foster-parents' abandoned child who grows up hating his life in the slums, both had a pitched battle going on.
While Satya's character has an extra-long nose (which came naturally to him since he's a Parsi) Siddharth's character Shiva has extra-bulky knees with which he tries to subjugate Satya.
Though it's Satya Bhabha who occupies centrestage in Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children apparently it the Rang De Basanti actor Siddharth who has made a very strong impact.
A member of the team on condition of anonymity said, "Among the male members of the cast, and that includes brilliant performers like Anupam Kher, Ronit Roy, Vinay Pathak and Rahul Bose, Siddharth is the clear stand-out performer. Satya, a relative newcomer to cinema had many tough confrontation scenes with Siddharth who's virtually a veteran of Tamil, Telugu and Hindi cinema. "
So did Saleem and Shiva the two rival characters from Midnight's Children, who are like Shashi Kapoor (the long nose and all) and Amitabh Bachchan in Yash Chopra's Trishul, actually end up hating each in real too?
Incidentally the same source from the Midnight's Children team tells us that among the female actors Shriya Saran emerged the most powerful. This, with Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas and Shahana Goswami in the cast, is saying a lot.
When asked about Siddharth and Shriya stealing the show Deepa Mehta laughed, "I love all my actors. But yes, these two are brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. "
