Bharat Ahlawat said – There came a time when there was no money left in the pocket, flatmate paid the rent

Delhi’s Bharat Ahlawat initially just wanted to become famous. School and college friends had made the assumption that if Bharat is handsome then he/she will definitely become an actor, but when he/she came to Mumbai to become an actor, it took him/her one and a half years to understand the people and the ways. The struggle to prove oneself lasted a long time. Met good and bad people. he/she faced a lot of pain, which he/she kept suppressed within himself, but along with all this, he/she got experience which taught him/her many things in a short time. After playing many excellent characters one after the other in a short period of time, he/she now has an uneasiness towards acting. She has started getting up. These days Bharat is seen in the show ‘Jaane Anjaane Hum Mile’. When he/she came to Lucknow recently, I got to know a lot from him/her about his/her journey of becoming an actor.

Initially I just wanted to be famous

Initially I just wanted to be famous. My school and college friends thought that if I was good looking, I would become a star in the future. I am not calling good looks a plus point. If you want to become an actor then you should also understand it. Acting has nothing to do with good looking. As I progressed further, I gradually realized that I started enjoying it. Anyway, I go after what I do. I did it with interest and learned everything, became a part of its process and now I am doing my third show.

I came to Mumbai in April-2019. My struggle period was long. When one has to stand on one’s own feet, one has to make a lot of efforts. Mumbai is a slightly different city. It took a year and a half to understand the people and the ways here. Then I felt that if I didn’t want help from my family, I would have to do something. I started modeling. I shot referrals at the rate of Rs 200-200 per t-shirt change, in which I don’t know how many t-shirts I used to wear and change quickly. There came a stage when there was no money left in the pocket. Flatmate paid the rent. There were some days when he/she fed me two meals a day.

Even wiping tears has a price

I had understood in Mumbai not to express my problems to anyone. Yes, it is true that the industry is a bit boastful, still do not tell your problems to anyone. If you do this, the other person will start taking advantage. Will start looking at you from the same perspective. That is why it is said that that is a time of great anxiety, where you cannot tell anything to anyone. There is a saying that even wiping tears has a price. If you tell your problem then everyone will start judging. I met both good and bad people in this journey. Met some bad people with whom the experience was very bad. I understood that friends can be both good and bad. Always remember my mother’s words that if you always keep your eyes and ears open, all things will come to light.

I started feeling anxious about not being able to do well.

We cannot live with different types of thinking in real life, but in acting we can definitely live with different types of thinking personalities. This aspect attracted me a lot. Now I am doing acting as a responsibility. Gradually the experiences are increasing. The anxiety of not being able to do well has started rising. Good characters can be lived better in front of the camera only if you have experience. In fact, all the characters come from us and you. From there they are created on paper and then we try to realize them in the same way. I have not done theater but have done many workshops in Mumbai and Delhi.

Every day we get to learn something from TV.

TV is such a medium through which an artiste gets to learn something every day. With this you can improve yourself every day. Everyone thinks that doing TV is easy but one has to devote 12-13 hours a day to it. Your personal life becomes nothing. How many times do I not even get time to call back? When we get time, we have a big script in hand, which has to be memorized and we have to understand how to speak. TV is hard but if you enjoy it, there is nothing better than this.

Grandparents were also married according to the Atta-Sata tradition.

I came to know about my co-actor Aayushi Khurana’s grandmother in the show that her marriage also took place under the Atta-Sata system. My family has also gone through this tradition. My grandfather had four brothers. My grandmother was there, she had three sisters. All three were married in our house and one grandfather was married somewhere else. Earlier there was not much scope for finding relationships as to where to find a girl or a boy. At that time the circumstances became such that they got married according to this tradition. This makes it clear that this practice existed somewhere.