![]() Raj Kanwar's previous film 'Humko Deewana Kar Gaye' had tanked at the box office and he was very excited at the prospect. He set up a meeting with Raj Kanwar and Shahid Kapoor, a young promising actor then, on the pretext of developing a project together. When I told them about my contract, Bhushan Kumar came up with a plan. (Once opened, then it's her destiny.)Ī year later, John Matthew Mathan, a respected filmmaker and Bhushan Kumar, a film producer and owner of a music label, approached me for a film they were making with then-popular singer Himesh Reshammiya in the lead. 'Ek baar khul jaaye, toh aage uski kismet'. 'Nayi heroine band mutthi ki tarah hoti hai' (A new actress is like a closed fist), he would say. My big 'Bollywood' debut ran into roadblocks when Raj Kanwar, a filmmaker who'd signed a 10-film contract with me, did not start work on his films nor did he allow me to work on any other films that I was offered. Other than my sister, I also supported a younger cousin that came to live with me and dreamed of becoming a singer in the Hindi film industry. I now had a social life, dated a young aspiring actor from Juhu, signed a film contract and began to feel at home in Mumbai. Work flowed in I endorsed various brands, my face was on billboards and covers of magazines. Along with the other winners, I flew around for sponsor visits, press meets, fashion shows and hosted a reality show on television. The Times group, organizers of the Miss India pageant, made sure they got their money's worth by working us around the clock. Since I was lair-skinned' and 'photogenic', I chanced upon jobs in the burgeoning beauty industry that was beginning to thrive in the early 2000s. Law and order were tools reserved for those who had access to power. Your caste background, economic conditions and political affiliations determined that. Depending on which part of the city you lived in, the extent of the abuse varied. I moved to New Delhi for higher studies as a teenager, and soon began to realize that daily harassment on roads and public buses, ragging on college campuses, catcalling by anonymous men and rape threats by stalkers was considered normal behavior something women who grew up in the city learnt to navigate from early childhood. Sent to an all-girls boarding school in the hills early on provided a much needed escape. Their tumultuous marriage and everyday violence that was normalized within the family gave me an opaque understanding of what constitutes love and what constitutes abuse while I was growing up. An alliance was formed through a Times of India matrimonial ad in the early 1980s. My father is from Uttar Pradesh, and my mother from Rajasthan both belong to untouchable communities. I've had to discover myriad ways to disengage, break patterns, forgive, heal, and reclaim my strength in order to survive, grow and find peace. ![]() Each time I've tried to extricate myself from one abusive situation, I found myself caught in the vortex of another.
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