Gulzar sahab started asking me questions. My classes were getting over and I knew that if I went back no one would let me come back. In 1994, I came to know that Gulzar sahab was directing Maachis and via someone I knew, I went to meet him hoping to assist him. My father suggested that I come back to Delhi after every 20 days to spend 10 days with them before I went back and that really helped me for a lot of years. Of course, my family supported me throughout both emotionally and financially. My family thought that I wouldn't last for even 15 days given the change in my lifestyle, but I did. What I most liked about Mumbai was that I could start my life on my own here and I decided to join Roshan Taneja sahab for his acting classes and was there for a year-and-a-half. Prior to coming to Mumbai, I was always known only by my family. My cousin kept brainwashing me and I started watching Hindi movies.

Other than my dad Satyajit Singh Shergill, who does painting as his hobby and his bua who was the famous Amrita Shergill, I had no connection with the world of art.

I would laugh it out as I never watched Hindi films apart from Sunny Deol and Sanjay Dutt’s films as I was a big fan of both of them. He convinced my father how he thought I should get into movies. He owned this store where he sold collections of the top designers in Delhi and thus in some way he was well connected to both the designers as well as well-known people who would buy from his store. Right from my childhood, I have always looked up to him and living with him got both of us even more attached to each other. He spoke to my father and wanted me to be with him for a while in Delhi and so, I moved to Delhi for a while. As destiny would have it, his father, who was very close to me and my father, was murdered all of a sudden and my cousin felt all alone. I have this cousin Suminder who is my bua’s son and is ten years older who lives in Delhi. I completed my B.Com from Patiala and wanted to do MBA. We also have a house in Patiala in Punjab. My family owned distilleries and agricultural land. We are sardars and I come from a big joint family from Sardarnagar in UP. Over an hour-long conversation ahead of his upcoming film Fugly, he speaks to Pune Times about the pampering of Gulzar sahab, the strictness of Aditya Chopra and his connection with the famous Amrita Shergill. While he looks up to Irrfan as an actor, he idolises Gulzar sahab as a director.

He is either comfortable working with directors he is close to, be it Tigmanshu Dhulia, Raju Hirani, Shoojit Sircar or Neeraj Pandey, or being in his cocoon at home with his wife Priyanka and son Veer. Jimmy Sheirgill, 43, is emotional, lazy and moody.

Bond with me jimmy