Avinesh Rekhi on Choti Sarrdaarni: It’s the first time in Indian TV that the lead is a turban-clad politician!

After coming up with supernatural shows like Vish and Kawach Mahashivratri, Colors’ is now coming up with a brand new show titled Choti Sarrdaarni. The show is set in a Punjabi backdrop and deals with pre-marital pregnancy and women empowerment. While Tu Sooraj Main Saanjh Piyaji fame Avinesh Rekhi will be seen the male lead, model-turned actress Nimrat Kaur Ahluwalia will be seen playing the female protagonist of the show. Apart from these two, Hitesh Bhardwaj and Anita Raj will be seen in supporting roles in the show. 

In an exclusive chat with India Forums, Avinesh Rekhi gets up, close and personal about the show, his character, controversy around it and much more. 

Tell us something about the concept and storyline of the show Choti Sarrdaarni.

Basically our show is based on women empowerment. It’s a story of an Amritsari girl that how she tackles all the problems and situations to become a strong and empowered woman. In society, we have a lot of stereotypes set for women and the show has tried to break them. As per the stereotype males are supposed to be the protector of the family, but in this show we have shown that a woman too can play that role equally efficiently. 

Tell us something about your character and it’s attributes.

I’m playing Sarbjit Singh Gill, who belongs to a royal family, is a politician, an agriculture minister whose main focus is on development of agriculture and creating employment opportunity. He is also a single parent and has a young son named Paramjeet Singh Gill.

It’s the first time that you are paying a sardaar on screen, so how did you prepare for your role?

Well, I’m a Punjabi myself so the language and dialect was not much of a problem for me. The only I had to go under a training of was tying a turban. It’s the first time in Indian TV that the lead role is a turban-clad politician. We have seen sardaars in TV but not as the lead. So I trained for two months to tie the turban, wear it and retain it for a long time; I used to wear it for 5-6 hours daily. 

Indian Television has always had strong female characters, be it supernatural shows or saas-bahu dramas, women are leading it all the way. Do you think the male protagonists get overshadowed sometimes?

See I believe that a single person cannot run an entire show. There are a lot of other characters and elements that are needed to run a show, so I don’t think there is overshadowing by anyone. 

Sikhs and Punjabis are usually stereotyped as loud, how is your reel family?

As I told, I belong to a royal family so we are not loud, we have a standard and a stature in a society to maintain. We have tried to show an authentic Sikh family, so no stereotypes here. 

One of the promos of the show created a controversy and certain members of Sikh community were offended too, questioning the authenticity. What do you have to say on that?

Yes there was a controversy which was raised, but we never wanted to hurt anyone’s sentiments. Our main focus was always to glorify the culture of Punjab and the makers of the show were fully aware of this fact. I think the makers handled the whole issue quite gracefully and peacefully. 

The show is slated to release from 1st of July on Colors. Are you excited to watch the show? Let us know in the comments section below.