Mumbai: Shreyas Talpade’s character of Mahadev in UTV’s Welcome To Sajjanpur is about a letter writer who sits outside the GPO to help illiterate people reach out to their near and dear ones by writing letters for them.
Directed by Shyam Benegal, he plays the only educated man of the village Sajjanpur who writes letters for the villagers. Talpade performed the same act in real life too. He visited the Mumbai GPO and became Mahadev for a couple of hours. Braving the torrid heat and pigeion beet, he wrote letters for the people out there and earned Rs. 10 per letter. He also interacted with Shakeel Ahmed who has been a letter writer there for the past 30 years. Ahmed shared his experience with Shreyas and also gave him tips about letter writing.
Shreyas said, ”I enjoyed playing Mahadev in the film, and now performing the same act in real life is more fun. It is interesting to see that even today at this age of mails and text messages there are people who are dependant on letters to reach out their loved ones. This is one of my most memorable experiences.”
