Dance is a form of worship for reel-life goddess Shantipriya, who plays the role of Durga Maa in the Sahara One show, Mata Ki Chowki. The dusky south-Indian actress plans to open a dance school in collaboration with her sister, Bhanupriya, who is also an accomplished actress. “Bhanu and I don’t want to open a school and not be around to teach kids,” says Shantipriya about the school, which the sisters have been planning to open for a long time. “Once my sister decides where she wants to stay, we will open the dancing school.”
Bhanupriya is in the US with her daughter and visits Chennai for a few months every year. “The school is close to becoming a reality now,” says Shantipriya. Shantipriya, has been essaying the role of Maa Durga on the Sahara One socio-mythological drama for almost two years now. And she says the character has brought her closer to the Goddess she believes in.
So much that, “sometimes, when people see me in denims and tees they are a little taken aback,” she chuckles. She gives out that though she has never been an adventurous dresser, now people react to her clothes. “I dress up according to the occasion but I’m not into skimpy clothes. I didn’t wear such clothes even when I was young,” says the actress adding that today she also has to dress up like a mother of two children.
“My kids have been missing me and want me home with them,” she says, ruing the fact that given her cut-to-cut schedules for the one-hour specials of Mata Ki Chowki, she has hardly been able to spend time with them. “My elder son Shubham is in class 10 this year. So, apart from being the on-screen mata, I have to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother off-screen too,” she says.
{{/usCountry}}“My kids have been missing me and want me home with them,” she says, ruing the fact that given her cut-to-cut schedules for the one-hour specials of Mata Ki Chowki, she has hardly been able to spend time with them. “My elder son Shubham is in class 10 this year. So, apart from being the on-screen mata, I have to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother off-screen too,” she says.
{{/usCountry}}“I’m going to be after him now that he has to start preparing for his exams. Shubham insists that I come home in my mata get-up to give him more time. Let’s hope after Navratri, I can make some time for him.”