By Radhika Bhirani
New Delhi, April 11 (IANS) What started out as a mid-air conversation five years ago is now culminating into a wedding for "Masaan" and "Haraamkhor" actress Shweta Tripathi and actor-rapper Chaitnya Sharma aka SlowCheeta on June 29.
SlowCheeta, as he prefers to be called, is five years younger to Shweta, but the actress quips she looks younger at 32.
"We met because both of us were stepping in for other actors. So, from Bombay (Mumbai), we met in Delhi to perform and hardly spoke throughout. On our way back, we were seated next to each other. It was a 5 a.m. flight, so obviously the plan was to doze off. But we started talking and that was that," Shweta recounted as she broke the news of her wedding to IANS.
The proposal was rather romantic -- and much in tune to what both of them love -- theatre.
"He proposed at a place called Cuckoo Club, which is a performing place in Mumbai. He wanted to do it on stage because that's how we met -- for a play. He had told me he has a new play, so I went to see that... But it was the proposal," said Shweta.
SlowCheeta, who has a tattoo of Shweta's name and stands tall at 6 ft, delivered a monologue in front of a full audience about the journey that has led to the new journey they are ready to take.
"They say you fall in love, and I fell hard, from about 36,000 feet! Up in the air, into her heart and she already had mine. Relations start from the ground upwards, mine started in the sky. We spoke about whales and the ocean and everything we know. She found me, and I found Nemo."
The wedding will take place in Goa with "closest" family and friends in attendance.
Shweta -- daughter of Delhi's former Chief Secretary P.K. Tripathi -- came to Mumbai over a decade ago. And her aim was not to become a Bollywood actor.
It was her love for theatre since her childhood days that brought this National Institute of Fashion Technology alumnus closer to a world that she has now made a place for herself in.
Shweta has a theatre group which goes by the quirky name of AllMyTea Productions. Before her film journey, she featured as the lively Zenia Khan in Disney channel's "Kya Mast Hai Life", did a couple of short films and advertisements.
"Haraamkhor", the film in which Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays school teacher to her, was to be Shweta's debut feature film. But Neeraj Ghaywan's "Masaan", in which she essayed the innocent, poetry-loving, small town girl Shaalu, released first and brought her into notice.
Her upcoming project is the web series "Mirzapur", apart from feature films "Gone Kesh" and "Cargo".
As for SlowCheeta, his latest song "Kripya dhaan de" from the film "High Jack" was launched last week. He was also one of the four rappers to have collaborated with Bollywood star Ranveer Singh for a single. This apart, he has two songs -- one with Papon -- for the feature film "Karwaan".
(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)
