By Priyanka Bhadani Shedding away her avatar of a child bride, Anandi from Balika Vadhu that had made her a household name, actor Avika Gor took a more mature role — that of Roli — in Sasural Simar Ka in 2011. Her stint with Balika Vadhu ended when the show completed 515 episodes and was set to take an age leap. That time, Gor had never imagined she would ever work in any series for longer than that; 515 episodes were a milestone achievement for her. Cut to the present, her current show crossed the 1000-episode mark earlier this week and the actor didn’t even realise it’s been so long. At no point in time over these three-and-a-half years has she felt that she was stagnating doing the show. After working in BV for such a long period, she had thought that anything longer than this would bore her, especially because she is a very ‘twisted one’. "I am not sure what I want. At one moment, I would love to eat chocolate ice-cream and at the same time I would also want to eat vanilla flavour," she says describing herself. Despite that, on the sets of Sasural., she did not realise how time passed. She reasons that that could be because there were many variations in the part she is playing. "There was a double role track introduced in the midst of the show where I played Jhumki, a rustic character, and then there was an alternate track where I got to play the stylish and sophisticated Vidya," she says as she recalls how she has played a woman disguised in burqa to an old NRI Punjabi woman in the course of the show. It has been an enriching experience for the teenage actor, no doubt! But time and again, child actors like her are criticised for pushing their studies to the back-burner after being influenced by the glitz and glamour of showbiz. Quiz her about it and she is quick to remark, "Study is a need, while acting is a hobby. Need comes first and that's why I have always put it in the forefront." In fact, Gor has been juggling between television and films (South) and has still managed to sit for all her exams. "I was in class six when I started doing Balika Vadhu in 2008, I am in class 12 now, so I have been pretty consistent," she says. Talking about her experience with the Telugu film industry where she delivered a hit — Uyyala Jampala — earlier this year, and is shooting for another film, Lakshmi Raave Maa Initiki, she says it has been equally enriching. "I have learnt a lot about the process of film-making. I have seen the technology there. It has had such a big influence on me that I have started paying more attention to the camera work and I am making short films now," says the actor, who also confesses how she thought South-Indian means "Madrasi" before this first-hand experience of living and working in the film industry down South. "Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are way different from each other," says the actor whose myth was busted recently when she started working on the Kannada and Hindi movie — Care of Footpath 2 — and learnt the language. Interestingly, after her successful television stint, the actor had got few offers from the Bollywood industry as well, but she chose to turn South because the roles she got there were more on the lines of what she wanted to do. "What I got here was too old for my age. Even if I am doing the character of Roli — a grown up woman — it doesn't require me to do any intimate scene, while the movie roles required that," she says and further adds, "The fact is that, I would not do anything that I am not comfortable in watching with my family." The actor would continue doing Sasural. for now and keep looking for more interesting offers in the film arena, but if given an opportunity to go behind the camera, she wouldn't mind taking it up. She would, in fact, opt for a course in film-making if fate favours.
