New Delhi: Pankaj Tripathi couldn’t resist asking his wife, Mridula Tripathi that to whom she was texting during an event at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, leaving the audience in laughter.
During an interaction at the festival, actor Tripathi noticed that Mridula was constantly typing on her phone. Sitting on stage, he could clearly see her screen, and the audience started laughing as he called her out for texting while he was speaking.
“Who are you constantly typing to? My eyes keep going there. I can see it,” Tripathi said jokingly in Hindi.
He then turned the moment into a playful reference to their long marriage. “I have to see the reaction of the beautiful woman whom I married 25 years ago, but she is on the screen,” he said, drawing more laughter from the audience.
Tripathi then noticed that she appeared to be typing about their conversation itself.
“You’re typing my conversation. Please tell our daughter, ‘Pitaji programme has been started,’” he joked.
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Hindi medium student
Recently, another video of Pankaj Tripathi from the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne went viral. During an interaction with the audience, when Tripathi began speaking in Hindi, Rekha playfully stopped him and asked him to repeat whatever she said in English, becoming the actor’s impromptu English tutor.
“Main Hindi medium ka chatra hoon, galat bol dunga. (I am a Hindi-medium student, I will make a mistake),” he said.
Rekha then began dictating the sentence to him, saying, Tripathi followed her, repeating the sentence line by line as the audience laughed.
The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne is billed as one of the largest annual celebrations of Indian cinema outside India. The 17th edition began on 14 August and brings together artists from across India’s regional film industries, including Rekha, Pankaj Tripathi, Rima Das, Rishab Shetty, Dulquer Salmaan, Anupam Kher and Sharib Hashmi.
The festival is also looking back at different eras of Indian cinema, with screenings of films including the restored version of 1942: A Love Story (1994), 52 Blue (2025), Aadu (2015), Amar Comrade (2025), and Rudaali (1993). The festival is scheduled to conclude on 23 August.