“Being good is not good enough”
Sukhmani Lamba opens up about her Bollywood Dreams …..
While growing up, I always got inspired by Poo… aka Kareena Kapoor’s character in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. She made girls realize that it’s every girl’s right to look a diva and no one can take that away from her. I believe that its the director’s job to make the girl look like a fantasy so that everyone would want to be like her and imitate the way she dresses, talks, walks and her of course just be like her in any possible way.
Well, only if Poo was real.
I don’t think you need to be a ‘Poo’ to crack a dream, but yes you so need to have the right attitude and intent to convince others that you are capable of achieving what you believe in and the rest will follow.
Living reality like a fantasy ain’t for the ordinary!
Dreams are to be lived by those, who put in discipline, determination and ethics before them and take life not as it comes, but they drive the journey of their lives in the direction they want to head towards. Dreamers are many but not everyone can transform their dream into a living reality.
Our cover girl, Sukhmani Lamba, is the new talent on the block. Her appearance in “Badrinath Ki Dulhania” as Kritika, Alia Bhatt’s sister, has raised some eyebrows for sure. She tells us how an ordinary girl having an extraordinary passion to act can take you from being a no one to ‘someone’.
She dreamt of being a ‘Someone’.
Coming from a humble background, this Delhi girl was a dance junkie, all she wanted was to twirl in her pretty dress and dance to some tunes. As we know that creativity has no boundaries, Sukhmani experimented with her creative genes at a very early age. She started doing theatre when she was in school and apart from being a good actress she was also a dancer, an athlete and also a sportsperson. Little did she know, she would emerge out to be good theatre artist, Sukhmani is trained under her mentor, Dilip Shankar, whom she looks up to like her guru.
“In theatre, your whole body is involved and you give yourself fully, emotionally and mentally. Theatre gives you space to go beyond your standard convention of confirming to any set rules, it gives you the space to diversify your art and experience the true freedom of expression,” says the actress.
It was almost 6 years back when Sukhmani auditioned for the lead role in Zangoora, a show at Kingdom of Dreams and there has been no looking back since then. She has been playing multiple lead roles for this extravagant show and has been well acclaimed for her acting capabilities. She attributes her sense of discipline and perfection to theatre. “Theatre gives you only once chance and there is no retake, what you do on stage is totally different from what you do on screen because that requires ultimate perfection and that only comes with practice”, says the 25 year old.
Sometimes when you least expect good things to come your way, they do come your way and then you think, is this what I was waiting for?
For Sukhmani, good things came with a lot of mental baggage. Sukhmani’s sister faced a life threatening accident, which moved her family in the most dreadful way. Being very close to her sister, she was not just moved emotionally but her perception towards life took a turn where she started seeing things to be fragile and temporary. But she was strong enough to transform this pain into an innate sense of power and used it in a positive light to create something beautiful.
“Earlier, I was very ruthless with my relationships; I was involved in my work to an extent that I didn’t come back home for almost 5 days in a week, while being in the same city. This accident has been life changing and I feel my sister’s accident has gives me enough strength to deal with so much that I feel like a changed person now”, says Sukhmani Lamba
While Sukhmani was dealing with the dreadful accident situation back home, she got the good news of having bagged a substantial role in “Badrinath Ki Dulhania”. What followed after that phase is now history but she made the most of this opportunity and followed her dreams to take her acting career to a new heights.
When we asked her about her character in the movie, she said that in real life, she resembles Alia’s character more, which is ambitious and fearless. Also, talking about the feedback she got from her co-stars, it has been only positive. “ They told me I am too confident for the first film but that really helped me,” she said.
It’s a well-known fact that no matter how good you look, if you can’t act well, you can’t survive the tough competition in this industry. We have enough examples from the industry to prove this point right. From leading actors and actresses to models that have tried their luck in showbiz, we have seen only those survive who have their acting skills on point. For Sukhmani, her theatre experience has played an integral role and helped her gain some real accolades from movie buffs.
