What do they do?
What is it that takes you to the rainforests of Malaysia and brings you to a moment in which you, after downing a scorpion and a lizard, find yourself staring at a rat, knowing it’s next on your must-have menu?
Guts and a passion to make it big in showbiz. And young Mona Wasu, winner of the reality show, Sony’s Iss Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao, the Indian version of the popular British reality game show I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here, has plenty of both. Bitten by the acting ka keeda (bug) long before she was required to bite into rodents, Wasu has taken the hard and long route to making a name for herself in showbiz... and the reality show has been a means to get there.
Don’t, however, mistake it as the only way to make it big in showbiz, warns actor Ram Kapoor, who has hosted Swayamvar I and II (NDTV Imagine), in which a groom and bride were sought for TV stars Rakhi Sawant and Rahul Mahajan (respectively). “I don’t think a role in a reality show guarantees you instant success. You have to work hard to make it big here, and you have to be pretty sure that this is the career you want to be in. You can have your moment in the limelight but sustaining yourself in this business is tough,” adds Kapoor.
Wasu agrees completely. Success has not been handed to this feisty twenty-something on a platter and she continues to work hard to achieve more. Daugher of writer and zen trainer PS Wasu, she had a “faint idea” in school that she wanted to do theatre. Her father encouraged her, even while her salon-owner mother remained apprehensive. After graduation, Wasu joined Delhi’s National School of Drama (NSD) and then worked with VK Sharma’s Khilona, a theatre group for children. Assignments with Shabnam Hashmi’s Sahmat and the Antara group followed. Big offers plopped in to her lap when she moved to Mumbai, rented paying-guest digs, got a directory with the numbers of photographers, film and TV producers and directors (“most of them wrong”) and started calling them up.
Operation Gold on Star Gold, Miilee on Star Plus, Raadha Ki Betiyan Kuchh Kar Dikhayengi on NDTV Imagine followed. The adventurer in her jumped at the chance to travel to the Malaysian rainforests after Miditech called her for Iss Jungle... To remain in isolation, away from newspapers and TV with a group of people who did not know each other and survive on bare minimum food, with clothes constantly wet from rain, changed Wasu’s perspective on life. She felt vulnerable being constantly in front of a camera. At times, one lets one’s guard down. “That could be terrible knowing so many people and your family were watching you,” she says.
And no, the performers were not coached to play their roles. “When they are interviewing you for the show they try to assess your personality to find out if you have something which can add an interesting angle to the reality story. That’s how fights break out or romances blossom. And they keep creating situations. For example, my co-actor Akash and I were not talking once and they made sure we did an activity chained to each other. We were laughing about it at the end of the day,” she says.
“Remember, this show should not become your entire life,” says Kapoor, acknowledging that at as host he has felt bad eliminating people and has often had to lend a shoulder to people to cry on.
Wasu feels she is a lot less hyper now. “I have become a lot calmer now after the hardships I endured in Malaysia. The jungle has also taught me that people behave in a certain way for certain fears they have. You accept other people for who they are and can’t hate them.”
