Article: On-Screen character (Ragini)

A channel spokesperson calls a successful TV soap a wonderful prison. It's hardly off the mark when you see an actor go up on stage dressed in his rural character's garb, and thank God and his parents in a boorish tongue. Did the character that audiences love just kill the actor, and the person, asks Janaki Viswanathan.

It's pouring sheets in a tree-fringed lane that skirts Goregaon's Film City that transforms magically into a street somewhere in Agra. A young woman with a newborn in her arms, rushes out of a taxi (do they have black-and-yellow cabs in Agra?) followed by a frantic father. "Cut!" calls the director. An army of umbrellas pop open to shelter the cast as they rush for cover.

Alok Nath, one of the Hindi film and television industry's most senior stars takes a sip of his tea, laughing at a joke that Ragini, his on-screen daughter played by Parul Chauhan has just cracked. "Sometimes, I feel these two talk like Ragini and Babuji even when the camera is not rolling," whispers Rajan Shahi, producer of Sapna Baabul ka Bidaai. The show, now three years old, is one of the top TRP baggers on Star Plus. Just then the make-up man arrives looking around for "Ragini ma'am". Her make-up needs to be touched up. And we get what Shahi means.

What's true, what's not?
Two weeks ago, Ragini got up on stage at the glitzy Star Parivaar Awards, maneuvering the pleats of her heavily embellished sari, mangalsutra and sindoor in place, to receive her awards for Favourite Bahu and Favourite Bhabhi. Chauhan is actually just 22, single, and lives alone in Mumbai like several other young, independent women. She doesn't share half the tragedy of her on-screen counterpart.
But for Bidaai fans, the lines between fiction and reality, Ragini and Parul, have blurred. "When I walk into a mall wearing jeans and a tee, people stop when they recognise me. Sometimes they say, 'Aap aise kapde pehenti hain (Are these the clothes you wear?)'" laughs Chauhan. An explanation is always in order. "I tell them, 'Auntyji, Ragini is married. Parul isn't. So I can dress this way, can't I?'"
Chauhan comes from Lakhimpur in Uttar Pradesh, a small town she left three years ago. "When I landed in Mumbai, I realised yahaan bholaapan nahin chalta. I had to change. And as the episodes built up, Ragini changed too; she became more confident," Chauhan recalls about her character, the dark-skinned sister on the show.

Myself or screen self?
Actors need to acquire permission before making any public appearance, even a ribbon-cutting. "Then we figure out what kind of event it is, and whether the artiste is going as himself or the character," says Shahi.