Shahid Kapoor’s upcoming film, Batti Gul Meter Chalu, addresses the issue of inflated electricity bills and its impact on common people. Directed by Shree Narayan Singh of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha fame, the film is scheduled for release tomorrow. It has been shot in Tehri, Uttarakhand and also stars Shraddha Kapoor, Yami Gautam and Divyendu Sharma.
Asked about the subject of the film, Shahid says, “There’s some confusion about the main issue in the film. It’s not about electricity theft. It’s about rising and unaffordable electricity prices. My co-star Divyendu Sharma’s character, Sundar Tripathi, is a young entrepreneur from a small family whose company (a printing press) is served an absurd electricity bill of 54 lakhs. When he tries to address the issue, he has nowhere to go and no one to help him.”
Speaking about his own understanding of the problem, the actor adds, “It is something everyone grapples with on a monthly basis. You expect a bill of `20,000 and it comes in at `50,000, throwing your monthly budget off. Small and medium companies bear the brunt of this problem on a bigger scale. People who are self-employed, which is a large part of our country, face this problem regularly.
At a residential level, everyone feels frustrated that they cannot fight the system and are eventually bullied into paying the bills. Electricity is a fundamental need in our lives; you cannot function without power supply in today’s world. I have faced this problem too. I live a comfortable life now as an actor, but when I was a kid, I lived a very simple, middle-class life where electricity bills could make your life hell.”After Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Shahid will be seen in the Hindi remake of the hit Telugu film, Arjun Reddy. He will also be starring in a biopic on boxer Dingko Singh.