5 min readMumbaiUpdated: Jun 8, 2024 06:03 AM IST
Sunita Rajwar is on a roll and is winning hearts with her bittersweet characters in web space today — from Panchayat’s Kranti Devi who hopes to be the new sarpanch and Gullak’s ‘Bittu Ki mummy’ who is the repository of the town gossip. The actor recently returned from the Cannes film festival where her film Santosh, co-starring Shahana Goswami, was premiered.
In a conversation with indianexpress.com, Sunita calls herself an actor from the time she was a child and is lucky she got a chance to make a career out of it. However, she faced a roadblock when she was typecast in the roles of a domestic help, forcing her to take a break from acting. “Dhang ka kaam hi nahi mil raha tha (I was not getting any proper roles),” she sums it up as she reflects on her current roles.
Sunita as the ambitious Kranti Devi, Banrakas’ wife in Panchayat, has a separate fan following, with her memes are all over the internet. She says she feels blessed playing Bittu ki mummy, the nosy neighbourhood aunty in Gullak.
“I feel blessed that I took the break and people have accepted me now in different roles and different characters. I am also getting a chance to do something that I love and am able to make the audience happy with my work. I think it is very difficult to get the audience’s love especially nowadays where there is so much criticism and judgement. I am very happy that the audience is accepting me, and even the people from the industry have changed their perception towards me and are offering me work accordingly,” she says.
“I am very happy with my journey because I have achieved something. Everybody has a different journey, their goals are different and their starting point is different. With the way my journey has panned out, I don’t think I could have asked for more,” she adds.
Sunita remembers the phase when she gave up acting and promised herself she will not play ‘maids’ anymore. “I had decided that I’ll not play a maid anymore. As an actor you are open to do any kind of roles but people build a different notion about how a certain type of character would be. I have gone through a lot, I didn’t want to keep doing the similar type of role again. I have been saying no to such roles for some time now, that’s also why I took a break in the first place,” the actor explains.
Reminiscing her journey as an actor, Sunita says that she was an observant child, and an actor from the time she was a little girl, but didn’t know how to make it her profession until she found a mentor.
“I think everybody is an actor because when a child doesn’t want to go to school or accompany their parents to a relative’s house, the child acts and some of them act so convincingly that parents would cave in. Now nobody is teaching the child how to act, it’s there in them. Not everybody grows up to be an actor though, some of us are the selected ones who get the chance and privilege to make it our profession. If I recall, I have been very observant from childhood. Whenever I’d visit anyone with my family, meri nazar sab pe hoti thi (I’d keep an eye on everyone). I’d observe everyone, that is how in fact I came to this industry.”
She recalls how during her theatre days, she’d learn every actor’s lines and would act instead of them if they were absent. “I was doing a play for the first time with the late Nirmal Pandey in Nainital. I was a part of his group Yuggmanch. They had given me a very small role. So I used to watch that play memorised the lines of all characters, their actions, entry, exit, everything. So whenever someone was absent, I’d be their proxy. Nirmal Pandey got so impressed, he said that I should join National School of Drama. I didn’t know what NSD was, I had no clue. So then he prepared me for NSD. I feel if I was not observant and if I didn’t have a keen interest in noticing people and catching their antics, maybe I wouldn’t be an actor today,” she concludes.
Sunita Rajwar's characters in Panchayat 3 and Gullak 4 have been receiving a lot of love. (Photo: Sunita Rajwar/ Instagram)