A week after stepping in to help the family of one of her building’s security guards, who died in a road accident, actor Nia Sharma explains why “the heartbreaking incident” hit her so hard. “I’ve been through this, too. I have seen how it is to lose the breadwinner of the family. I just want to help (the guard’s) family in any way I could,” the 34-year-old tells us.
On September 10, Nia took to Stories to share an emotional note (see right), a picture of the late guard’s wife and child, and details for those wishing to contribute to the family, writing, “Two kids, wife and parents left behind.” She also shared a video of herself walking through narrow lanes to their modest one-room home, captioning it, “This side of the world too.”
Her daily interactions with the guard were brief but familiar. “He was a lift operator and our only interaction was while coming and going out of the elevator,” she recalls, adding, “When you see a person every day, you get used to it. And in a jiffy, he’s gone, never to be seen again. It does hit you, and this hit me very hard.”
The tragedy stirred memories of her own childhood: “I lost my father as a kid, my mother and we siblings were left in this world to ourselves. Till date, I remember who came to meet us and sat with us, comforted us, shared our pain... I wanted this family to know they are not alone.”
{{/usCountry}}The tragedy stirred memories of her own childhood: “I lost my father as a kid, my mother and we siblings were left in this world to ourselves. Till date, I remember who came to meet us and sat with us, comforted us, shared our pain... I wanted this family to know they are not alone.”
{{/usCountry}}Now, her focus is on raising funds for the children’s future. She shares, “I want to mainly work for the kids’ education; that will be challenging for the family. For me, this is the beginning of something I always wanted to take up to a bigger level.”
Nia also expressed her sorrow over the family’s inability to pursue legal action. “The person responsible for the accident was out the next day,” she says, adding that the matter is “under sub-jurisdiction, so we can’t talk about it too much.”