Jigyasa Singh on playing a trans woman in Shakti Astitva Ke Ehsaas Kii: ‘People warned me against it’

Jigyasa Singh talks about what made her take up Shakti Astitva Ke Ehsaas Kii, despite being advised against it.

TV actor Jigyasa Singh, who essays the titular role of a trans woman in Shakti Astitva Ke Ehsaas Ki, has said people warned her against taking up the project telling her that she would not be “shown beautiful” on the show. However, looks are not important to her when sending across a social message.

Jigyasa Singh replaces Rubina Dilaik in Shakti Astitva Ke Ehsaas Kii.

Jigyasa replaced Rubina Dilaik recently and now essays the role of her adopted daughter. The show also features Kamya Panjabi and Vivian Dsena.

Speaking with Times of India in an interview, Jigyasa said, “Many people warned me against taking up the role of a transgender. They told me don’t play such characters, you won’t be shown beautiful, but somehow I never looked at it that way. I always wanted to play roles which are unique and give some social message to society. I knew about Shakti and about Rubina’s character I just said immediately. There was no if’s and but’s for me. I just accepted it. Initially, I was a little apprehensive about how I will do it. But then again Rubina had already played this role and people had accepted her in the role. So, I was kind of comfortable accepting the offer. As of now, I haven’t started playing transgender, I am shown as a normal girl. Even I am waiting how the story will unfold in the coming days.”

Responding to rumours of the show going off air, Jigyasa told the daily, “It feels worse when you get to hear that shows are going off-air so you feel sad. In fact, initially, we were also nervous as to what is going to happen. But we knew that Shakti is a big, popular and an old show so it will stay. Somewhere I knew that nothing would happen to our show. We all were constantly in touch with each other.”

Jigyasa had earlier said she was apprehensive about picking up the part of Heer. “I don’t want to be artificial about it and say I am not apprehensive about playing a transgender person on screen. I had so many ifs and buts. I wasn’t even relating to the character initially. You can’t put yourself in a transgender person’s shoes because you don’t know what they must have gone through. Their struggle with their identity is really difficult to fathom. It’s really unfortunate that others mistreat transgender people. It’s a sad state of affairs. They go through a lot and deserve equal rights as citizens of this country. We all deserve to be ourselves. At the same time, I also believe that it would be any actor’s dream to get a role as path-breaking as that of Heer,” she had said in an interview in January.

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