"I never regret what I do"

All she will say is that "I never regret what I do." Thus, she never regretted quitting the ramp for Bollywood and Bollywood for nothing until marriage happened to her. The latest to happen to her is Tellywood. But how did this metamorphosis of a model into a film actress, into private citizen, into a celeb wife, into a television actress (pant) happen? Again, she’s not exactlytelling. Talk of her long forgotten modelling career and subsequent transitions and she tunes out. "Everybody knows about it," she claims. Really? But later, somehow, she does talk about the transition. It was the ramp that opened up avenues for her. Rajiv Rai noticed her and offered her a project, which Bijli baby was quick to decline. Reason: she’d heard tales of the big, bad industry and its dark ways.

However, Rai was successful in convincing her to accept his offer. "He had a love story in mind," recalls Sangeeta. But it translated into the block-buster, Tridev. Sangeeta had to share the screen with five other leads but she’s not complaining.

Sangeeta was not able to match Madhuri Dixit’s dancing prowess but she could shake to the rhythm of Oye Oye pretty well. "I was an athlete and I’ve learnt dance kathak," she reveals, suggesting that the training helped her. And the Oye Oye film led her to an important role in the film Jurm as the other woman in Vinod Khanna and Meenakshi Sheshadri’s lives, whois the sole witness of a gruesome murder. The film was fairly well appreciated. And so was Sangeeta’s performance. After Jurm, nothing happened and Bijli faded from the silver screen.

When she accepted the role in Chandni in 1996, she joined the band of silver screen discards who throng television. "I didn’t want to join television either," she admits, "It was producer-director Prashant Chotani who was persistent in his requests. `I’ve made a project with you in mind’ he said.’" Such flattery: how could Sangeeta resist?

But the look that Chandni gave her was rather uncharacteristic for a model, for the Sangeeta Bijlani we knew. A blunt cut on her now healthy frame makes the ex-Miss India look stubby. "That’s because I’m out to avenge my mother’s death in the serial. I have to look different so that the other characters recognise me." The serial has a revenge plot and all the ingredients one can think of mystery, vengeance, romance.

So now Sangeeta has now graduated from the stage of not wanting todo television to the position that television offers "more female-oriented roles". "There aren’t many female-oriented films," she feels. This doesn’t mean that she’s open to more television offers. "I don’t want more work. I’m not very ambitious," she says, "If I was ambitious, I would have been doing films." She adds that she’s got no time for more work and that she’s busy "running from pillar to post".

Now pillar is one cricket match venue and post is another. But hear that from the horse’s mouth, you won’t.