It was overwhelming to play Captain Vikram Batra's fiancée, Dimple on screen: Kiara

Captain Vikram Batra’s biopic, Shershaah, would seem incomplete if one did not speak about the woman he was in love with and had promised to marry.

- Rachana Dubey

Dimple Cheema and he were in a committed relationship when he was martyred during the Kargil War in 1999. Their larger-than-life love story blossomed in Chandigarh in the late ’90s. However, Dimple chose to remain unmarried after Captain Vikram Batra was martyred on the battlefield.

Kiara Advani is essaying the role of Dimple Cheema in the Vishnu Varadhan directorial that premieres on Amazon Prime Video on August 12; it is jointly produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions and Kaash Entertainment. The actress met Dimple at a hotel in Chandigarh back in 2019 when she was in the city for another professional commitment. That conversation, Kiara insists, was the most important part of her preparation to play the role. “Towards the end of the narration I cried. I went home and I wanted to pour it all out to my parents and my brother. We were kids when the war had happened. I had very little understanding of it. News from the battlefront would play out on television and would be in the newspapers. I couldn’t understand what was going on. And now, I was going to become a part of a film that’s an ode to a braveheart, who was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, and to all the other war heroes of Kargil. I feel grateful for the freedom we have, thanks to these officers who protect our borders at all times. This film made me understand the emotional turmoil of a martyr’s family; they, too, make so many sacrifices,” she says.