'Badai Ho' To Sanya Malhotra

It’s time to congratulate Sanya Malhotra for her blockbuster outing Badhaai Ho. Raghuvendra Singh meets the girl of the moment

She played the reel-life goldmedallist, wrestler Babita Kumari Phogat in Nitesh Tiwari’s Dangal in 2016 and walked away with accolades. The Aamir Khan production threw Delhi girl Sanya Malhotra into the arena of fame. And she wasn’t going to take it for granted. She wanted to display her acting chops in her next venture too. After a two-year wait, she regaled audiences with Vishal Bhardwaj’s comedy drama Pataakha, alongside debutante Radhika Madan. “It was my dream to become an actor. It was my dream to give interviews like this. So when you sort of achieve what you’ve always been dreaming of, you either go mad or you can choose to calm down and enjoy the process. I chose the second one,” says she explaining the two-year gap between her debut and second film.

Based on the short story Do Behnen by Charan Singh Pathik, the film set in Rajasthan revolved around two sisters who’re always at loggerheads. Both Sanya and Radhika reportedly stayed in Ronsi village near Jaipur and learned the Rajasthani dialect. They also imbibed the nuances of a pastoral life – milking buffaloes, thatching roofs, plastering walls with dung and carrying matkas. “I’m

a huge fan of Vishalji’s work from Maqbool to Haider. I was shooting for Badhaai Ho in Delhi when he came to meet me. I could read the doubt on his face when he saw me. I guess he found me too calm to play the role of the feisty Chutki,” she smiles. “I gave an audition on my birthday February 25. It required me to be loud and forceful,” says the soft-spoken actor.

What’s more Pataakha gave her a friend in co-star Radhika Madan. “We’re different and yet similar. We like the same kind of music,” she says adding, “She has a layer of calmness to her. She’s a positive person to be around. She’s so caring.