Gehraiyaan intimacy director Dar Gai says 'my grandmother wants to fight' amid Ukraine-Russia crisis

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Ukrainian filmmaker Dar Gai, who is best known for her work as intimacy director in the recently-released 'Gehraiyaan,' lives in Mumbai with her husband Dheer Momaya. But her family is in Ukraine. Given the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis, Dar says she hasn’t been able to concentrate on work in the last few days. In a recent interview, the filmmaker, who hails from Kyiv, revealed that she is worried about the safety of her family members as they are hiding in various parts of the war-torn country. She informed that although her parents have now shifted to a safer place from the Ukrainian capital, it is her grandmother, who refused to leave Kyiv. 

Speaking to ToI, Dar said, "My parents tried to leave Kyiv for several days, but they couldn’t because there was a lot of traffic as many people were trying to get to safer places. However, they later went to our village, which is around 45 minutes away from Kyiv. My grandmother, who is 78, refused to leave from there because she said, ‘Who will fight here? I want to fight. I don’t want to leave. So, she is in there with my stepfather."

Further, Dar added "My mother and brother travelled to the border to send the women and kids across. They are on their way back to stay with my grandmother. However, the bridge that connects our village to other roads was bombed, so they cannot get to the village. They are stuck somewhere in the middle of Ukraine, trying to find out if there’s some safe way to go back to Kyiv."

Dar Gai revealed that her friends in Ukraine are spending eight to nine hours in the bomb shelter, but none of them wants to leave. "There are also many friends who I have studied and worked with who are in Kyiv. They spend eight to nine hours in the bomb shelter. They want to fight because they say that we don’t want to give up our country to an invader," she concluded.