Manto actor Rasika Dugal: The hard part isn’t getting a break, but staying here

Actor Rasika Dugal started her career in Bollywood with the Shiney Ahuja-Esha Deol-starrer Hijack (2008), and as she completes a decade in the industry, she says that a lot has changed, including how she responds to challenges.

“When I started out, there were many insecurities. I won’t say that I’m not insecure anymore. That’s still there. But now, I know how to manage that and it has become easier. In every actor’s life, insecurities are something that you have to take along with you. They’re there and they stay. We work with so many different people and there’s so much dependency — [for] getting a role, and [for] things that are out of control. You want to have control over things, but that doesn’t happen,” says Rasika, whose next film is Manto with Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Manto, the biopic of the author Saadat Hasan Manto, directed by Nandita Das, has made it to Un Certain Regard, a section of the Cannes Film Festival’s official selection. The Cannes Film Festival starts on May 8.

Rasika, who has acted in films such as Tahaan (2008), Kshay (2011), and Qissa (2015) — all three are films with a powerful story — believes that endurance is key in Bollywood. “I think the harder part is not getting two or three [big] breaks, but sustaining oneself in the industry. We have to adapt constantly. I’ve learned how to deal with my insecurities and be open to a lot of change, which is one of the most important things in this career,” she says.

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The actor shares an experience that made her learn about patience: “We had a teacher at FTII (Films and Television Institute of India) in Pune, who’d constantly cancel and reschedule classes, and I used to get really perturbed by that. One day, I asked him, ‘Why do you do that’ and he said, ‘This is how you learn that this is how your life is going to be in Mumbai.’ That was a very important lesson.”

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