Lal Juto

Shweta Merchant was at her wit’s end when her chosen child actor came down with fever on the day of the shoot. It was monsoon and ‘all the girl I saw thereafter began showing similar symptoms,’ says Merchant. And then, by a happy chance, she found’ the sweetest girl who fitted so well in the film’ just fifteen minutes before call time. Since Merchant’s Lal Juto is about the first stirrings of romance in a fifteen-year-old boy’s heart for his otherwise annoying fourteen-year-old neighbor, the serendipitous moment of discovering the child actor fell in line with the theme of the story.