Almost famous Dhaniya!

Post the portrayal of Dhaniya in “Peepli Live”, Shalini Vatsa has become quite famous. But hold on, it’s Dhaniya alone that keeps her away from the fan frenzy. Well, that’s because her look in the film makes her unrecognisable on the streets, in the crowd, in fact anywhere off the silver screen. She says, “I had gone to watch “Peepli Live”... and saw the theatre full of people save the first two rows, which were empty.” So, did people recognise her and come screaming for autographs? “No,” she says, “No one could recognise me,” she adds.“In fact Omkar, who played Natha, says that I should start wearing saris on streets so that people can recognise me. He can easily be spotted and recognised na,” says she. On her recent trip to Delhi for a talk on art, culture and governance, she got talking to us about the capital itself.
“I keep coming to Delhi, as many of my friends and relatives live here,” she says. Is there anything that she misses about the city as she lives in Mumbai now, we asked. “You know, I never thought seriously about food when I was in Delhi. But later when I shifted to Mumbai I started realising that there is nothing like Delhi chaat and gol guppas. I love to eat in Bengali market, CP and eat matke-ki-biryani served near Pragati Maidan. I relish biryani prepared in Old Delhi too,” she says.
Delhi will be special for Shalini even if she has Mumbai dreams and that’s not just because of its food! She found her love, Himanshu Tyagi, the man she later married, here in the capital. “We first met when IP and Hindu colleges came together for a theatre production. He had come to direct us. Then you know how things are on campus, we met for fests, workshops, other activities and then one day he proposed me in DU itself. Later we both went to JNU for our M Phil, we have quite similar profiles as we joined similar theatre groups and institutes,” she says. However, there is one difference. While Himanshu went to the USA to study theatre, Shalini didn’t. She says, “I would like to study theatre abroad but then I didn’t go because acting is all about playing culturally rooted characters. And I don’t think going away to a foreign institute would have helped in that. But now I think I should go in order to become more disciplined.”
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