A yesteryear Bollywood actress has revealed that “she ate Bombay onions” before a kissing scene because her opposite actor was pompous, Indian NDTV reported.


The Namesake director Mira Nair, who’s political thriller The Reluctant Fundamentalist opened the Venice Film Festival last week, has an amusing anecdote from her college days in New Delhi’s Miranda House.
Mira Nair, Indian export to Hollywood and known for films like Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding, was a leading light of college theatricals with her contemporaries Lillette Dubey and Shashi Tharoor.
She told The Times of India : “I used to eat onions before my love scenes with Shashi Tharoor because he was so pompous.”
She also revealed that well known author Amitav Ghosh had once played a langoti-wearing slave to her Cleopatra. Confessions that neither men – one a former Minister of State for External Affairs, the other an award-winning author – would perhaps not welcome being made public knowledge!
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, starring Kate Hudson, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi, tells the story of a young Pakistani man dealing with a career on post-9/11 Wall Street. Mira Nair previously won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 2001 for Monsoon Wedding.