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INTERVIEW SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2012
Leaving life to chance
It was touch and go for Rasika Dugal until she stunned audiences with her outstanding performance in Karan Gour’s Kshay. We find out more about this powerhouse of talent HEMANTH KUMAR
hemanth.k@postnoon.com Tell us a bit about yourself and how did acting happen? I was born and brought up in Jamshedpur. After my schooling, I moved to Delhi to study Mathematics at Lady Shri Ram College (LSR). Back then, I had the opportunity to act in a play which was directed by Anamika Haksar; however, I didn’t take up acting seriously. After college, I moved to Mumbai to study Social Communications at Sophia college which led me to work as a academic research assistant under couple of professors from MIT and Yale in Lucknow. They were trying to understand the co-relation between development and corruption in UP. Soon, I joined another research organisation Pukar and worked on a project on gender and space. After a point of time, I didn’t know
It’s tough for everyone who’s trying to make a career here because we are leaving life to chance. You have to make a choice. Sometimes you try very hard but nothing happens and sometimes it just takes a phone call to bag a great role.I acted in several tiny roles in lots of films including No Smoking and Agyaat, despite being advised not to do so. To be honest, I am very instinctive when it comes to making decisions. I took up whatever I got. One fine day, the roles stopped exciting me. Moreover, you hardly get screentime and the director’s attention is quite less too. That’s when Kshay happened.
How did Karan Gour approach you? What were your first thoughts when you read the script? Nikita Anand, who eventually played my neighbour in Kshay, had worked with Karan before. She suggested my name and I auditioned for the role. Karan is an interesting director to work with. Frankly, I had low expectations on how well it’ll do if it releases but I was very quite positive about how it was going to be made. Kshay was shot on an extremely low budget and we had to shoot in some of the dingiest locales in Mumbai. We shot the film over a period of two and a half years. On the other hand, I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time talking about the script with Karan. Since we were shooting in digital, we could experiment a lot more.
How did you prepare for the role? Did it affect you psychologically?
if I could grow in this field. That’s when I saw that FTII was introducing its acting course after 26 years. Since I had taken up a filmmaking course in Sophia college, I knew that I was interested in acting.
How was the FTII experience? Did it have a huge impact on you? I must say that the admission process itself was quite rigorous. Out of 500 people who applied, only 20 made it. It was a two year course and three months into the course, I knew that this was my true calling. It opened a whole new world for me and learnt a lot about improvisation.
Was it tough to find a breakthrough in the film industry after college?
I played the lead character Chaya, a housewife who becomes obsessed with a sculpture of Goddess Lakshmi and how it wrecks havoc on her life. Such roles are rarely written for actresses. It took me a while to understand the character and I had very little experience to build the full character. I was clueless in the beginning and I had to apply everything I learnt in FTII, acting workshops and films. Karan was extremely helpful too. Preparing for the role was more of a process. If you see the film, nothing much happens except for what Chaya thinks all the time. I am trying to understand the process and study the technique. I don’t like romanticizing my work.
You have got rave reviews for your performance in Kshay. What next? I want to be known for my work more than anything else. I have already finished shooting for my next Hindi film where I am playing one of the lead roles along with Irfan Khan and Tisca Chopra. I always find it tough to say no to people when I am offered a role. I just hope I have a long career in the industry and that’s a huge challenge for any actor.