As requested by some of my readers, here is how I was offered a role in Chithi serial.
It was in the year 2001. After completing my +2 exams, I went to my sister’s place in Madras to spend my holidays. In Chithi serial, do you remember a house in which Radhika and family used to stay and opposite to which one mechanic shop will be there? Deepa Venkat would fall in love with the mechanic? That house is 2 minutes walk from my sister’s house and the house owner is known to my uncle. Whenever there is a shooting we used to go there and watch.
They will not allow everyone to watch the shooting. Since we are known to house owner we can go and watch. One day when we went, the shooting was almost over and everyone started leaving one by one. Our neighbor aunty who was a huge fan of Ajay Ratnam in that serial, asked us to get an auto graph from him. We were waiting for him while watching awesome looking Deepa Venkat removing her jewels.
Suddenly someone called me, I turned to see a man standing there with a huge shoulder bag. He introduced himself as an artist co-ordinator and straight away asked me whether I can act in a small role. Initially I though he was joking. Then he told there is a role, in which I would be a receptionist in Yuvarani’s (from serial) office. My sister got scared and started urging me to leave. We told him that we are not interested and started leaving from there. He stopped us and handed over a card which had his number and asked me to get back after discussing with family. Also, If I am ok with this, I will get chance in some other serial as well. We left taking the card and without taking autograph from Ajay.
On the way back home we didn’t speak a word. After going home we were laughing so hard and we informed everyone about this without knowing what we are going to get.
My grandpa was there at home when we broke this news. He got tensed and started shouting at me like how can I even think of such things, (‘koothadi aga poriya?’) how dare is that person to ask such things to my grand daughter (‘yaaru avan? Chinna pullainga kitta vambu panravan?’)etc. He was very angry. I was struggling to control my laughter after seeing my grandpa’s reaction. I controlled myself and told sorry to him and told I am not going to act.
The next day I called the person and told I am not interested. He went on talking for 5 minutes on how I missed a chance of acting with Radhika and how I misses acting in a serial which is number one in TRP rating (at that time I didn’t know what TRP is) etc.
And this became the topic to pull my legs for the next one month in my family 🙂
Bingo’s Mom 