Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who Are You Fighting After All

[Music]

hello

sorry wrong number

you guys must be wondering

um actually i make sure i answer all my

calls from known unknown all numbers

or if i’m unable to receive a call i

make sure that i call back

[Music]

anyway

film actor i’ve been doing marathi films

almost for last 14 years

but for me

it’s been like living a dream

dream

i remember when i went to a theater to

watch a cinema first time in my life

i must have been like five six years old

and to watch that screen was mesmerizing

since then i started dreaming of being

on that big screen one day myself

since then

i established

product had my first relationship

at the age of five or six

and that was

with my mirror

so like most of you sitting here

i was absolutely clueless about film

industry

my parents come from governments of

servants they are like my father was in

the army my mother worked in uh central

northwest depot so basically absolutely

no filmy background a very humble middle

class background

they met here in dehu road and got

married in arandi which is why rnd is a

very very special place for me

nobody had anything to do with film

industry apart from watching films

no it’s not just a filmy dialogue i can

prove it

so this is my mother

she was pregnant with me for four months

this was the last time she performed on

stage and i danced into the world

so i’ve been dancing doing

drama

everything since then on stage

but i never thought i would make it into

marathi film industry

we never spoke marathi at home because i

also studied in an army school so i

never learned marathi language

technically apart from the very little

exposure i had from my aji or azoba but

trust me it was really very very little

so how did i land here

when i entered my teens

i would go for

various auditions in pune

and there was this beauty pageant

edition one fine day and i thought

there’s no point going because you can

see how tall i am

only five two

but my mother forced me

i went for the audition and uh to my

surprise i was selected

not just that i ended up winning the

runners-up with 5 out of 7 subtitles

which i believe was a history

but that was my moment when i realized

you know we restrict our own selves

so

that’s where i realized okay now onwards

i am going to go for everything that

i can

probably go for like auditioning for

films

television show

modeling and films not because i thought

i could do it all

but

i did not know which route to take to to

reach my dream destination so i was like

let’s knock

let’s see which door opens

and that’s how i ended up for a marathi

television show audition

i took half an hour to read half page

dialogues

but my makers were looking for a dancer

and they thought you know this girl can

speak marathi because it’s not greek for

her so we’ll give her the opportunity to

learn

yes after that obviously i worked hard

on the language tried to learn it

reading listening speaking practicing

now this was something i could do or

change about myself or improve about

myself but there were other things that

i couldn’t change

or wouldn’t like to change given an

opportunity

for example my voice

so when i did a film garba salanga where

i had only two scenes

i wasn’t allowed to dub for my own

scenes because my makers thought

i can prove that to you

can you have the clippings

[Music]

anyway but today very recently i got an

opportunity or an offer to dub for the

biggest indian cinema bahubali in

marathi language for the uniqueness in

my voice but

here i realized again that sometimes

the

qualities that you think are inferior or

you might think are weaknesses for

yourself can eventually become your own

strengths or identities

okay

so there’s one more thing that i chose

and decided not to change

that is

my name

how many of you know any other sachin

tendulkar wanting to become a cricketer

have you heard of it

i haven’t

my husband says there is a shahrukh khan

who plays for an ipl team

do you know which team

punjab

okay i’m not very sure i don’t follow

ipl but i’m sure that shahrukh khan

doesn’t want to become an actor so he

has a safe life

but

when i began in

doing mainstream cinema and marathi when

my first film was launching

a lot of people suggested i should

change my name to avoid all the

confusion in future but my parents who

had given me the name

uh and my maker who decided to launch me

said kaisnaya she’s from a different

generation so there’s not going to be a

clash don’t worry just go with it

but trust me after that what happened

was not so easy to face

a lot of embarrassment confusion awkward

moment

i used to get calls for auditions events

uh meetings just to know that they were

looking for the others

in fact at one event they had a huge

poster of sonalita

and when i was entering they played

[Laughter]

[Music]

i still went on the stage and made kasa

made a speech

this is a funny funny story so at my

first about show where i was nominated

for my first film bakura namdee khotari

and i meet a senior actor who comes and

tells me

your name is sonali kulkarni

you look like varsha’s gawker

my dear what is your originality

and how are you going to craft your own

career

that was heartbreaking

i didn’t know what to react

so i was like

clueless

and my thought break

with an announcement

which said the best actor for this

evening female actress

when i went on the stage i did not know

how to react because i was still lost in

the previous thought

and i was like

breaking through the films getting

introduced

is not everything

i needed to create my own identity for

my existence

i think when you say this uh that

says

then the universe starts conspiring for

you

something like that

unreal happened for me while i was

receiving the award somebody sitting in

the audience a filmmaker called ravi

zadhar

decided to cast me in nataranga

and we all know what happened after that

absolutely became my

primary introduction

and i know that it will be my

identity forever it’s been over a decade

since nadrang released but i’m still

basking in the glory of that nymph the

apsara the diva

that’s it

end of my journey

actually no

it’s just an interval here

imagine you are standing on a beach okay

uh not moving an inch still

just near the sea where the wave is

touching your feet

what is going to happen

let me tell you what happens you will

think

yeah

you will sink under your own weight

if you remain still it’s a sand

gravity

okay and but if you decide to take a

step further

will you leave a footprint behind

which will again get washed away with

another wave my dear friends

so what do you do

keep walking

keep creating more footprints

and that is exactly how i decided to

take my career ahead

that wasn’t easy it’s not like walking

on the beach in reality you know it’s

like if you want to break out from that

box and the type cast image as an actor

it takes a lot it’s a risk of losing

what you’ve already created there are so

many people wanting to replace you no

work waiting uncertainty blah blah blah

but i decided to take that risk

i waited for two years for the kind of

roles that i wanted to do and not do

keep repeating stuff like what i was

already doing

imagine 10 years out of my career two

years i was waiting which is 20

off

my peak time and they say heroines have

a very very limited screen space or

screen

career

but then i took the risk in fact

i thought let’s use this time

to work on your own skills because i was

never trained in anything i never

learned dancing acting filmmaking any

drama modulation whatever i did not get

any technical training so i was like a

blank slate

i decided to utilize that time in

developing my own skills

and when i thought the wait was too long

i started approaching filmmakers on my

own who i believed would experiment

and at that time when i was trying to

find my foothold in the industry

i was fighting a lot of stereotypical

ideas about how a marathi film actress

should or should not be

for example glamour stardom

uh

diva dancer all these things

were never associated with a marathi

female actor

for example beauty now the concept of

beauty can differ for you and me but

stereotypically beautiful girls

were only meant to be shobhichabhali and

not substantial actors

so i had to now fight my own beauty

the topic mirror mirror on the wall who

are you fighting after all

everything i was i had to fight

prove redo myself

so i decided

those two years like i said i was

waiting and then the wait was over by

approaching filmmakers i should do films

which would break my identity

starting from my looks

i did a film called ajinta with nitin

desai and experimented with my look

i did a film called hampi where i went

for a tomboy look without any glamour

quotient in it i decided to do a film

like drama mother where i wasn’t drama

which means i wasn’t playing the title

role or i wasn’t even the heroine of the

film i was playing a very very um

supporting character who had a lot of

gray shades in it

in fact a lot of people asked me why

would i do this at the prime of my

career but

my only answer to that was i wanted

people to now take seriously

me as an actor

it’s like

you draw a line

and without touching it

or editing it

how do you make it look insignificant

you draw another line parallel to it

which is bigger and brighter

that’s quite simple but it’s not as

simple when you’re fighting your own

career

but these little steps that i took from

ajintha

to rama mother

took me there

to my dream role in poster girl

poster girl is a film which was based on

a true story

about female feticide fertility of women

and soil and it spoke about a lot of

issues that were very important in the

society then it made a huge impact in

the society as well as

winning a lot of accolades for me and

the film as well it went on to became

the biggest super hit of that time

here i’m proud to say that a very big

stereotypical myth

got shattered

that female-centric marathi cinema do

not do well on box office

in fact the film

left a huge impact on the society

for instance a man from nashik called

saying

um

he went and got his abandoned wife and

daughter back

because he had left her

i’m very proud to say that in india

today we have managed successfully to

reverse the girl child ratio which is

fabulous

how many of you imagined me as hiragani

none of you don’t shy away even my

producers did not

nobody thought this

urban girl could look like harikani

but then i went back went back to my

relationship

my mirror but this time i was not

enacting

anyone else’s part

in fact i looked in it

saw myself as hiragani

believed that i could be hircani

started working hard on becoming that

it’s always always it starts from you

imagining yourself first

then working hard on becoming that

person or that thing

and then my dear friend

you shall be seen

exactly how you want to be seen

i worked very hard to become the hair

candy that we all had heard of since our

childhood

i lost five to six kilos now we do that

that’s not a big deal

but i gave up on beauty regime for

almost a year imagine no eyebrows no

haircuts no nail manicure pedicure

facial bleach almost for a year

and i work in the most presentable

industry so it was very tough for me to

do that

in fact

i also learned how to milk cows because

i was playing a milkmaid

the most important and difficult part

was to develop

motherly instincts

every mother says

i had to become mother on screen

that was tough

but i spent a lot of time with my baby

the on-screen baby

anyway so all that really paid off

hilton he did amazingly

well on the box office critically

acclaimed we loved we got everything we

got all the love

one hearts thanks to chatrapati shivaji

maharaj

most importantly

i was talking about the footprints that

i wanted to leave behind

that started

coming into picture

thankfully these footprints don’t get

washed away because we as

a film industry people have the

privilege to create our films and

characters

that remain forever even after we are

gone

remember the call that i was talking

about

you know he actually called

i actually thought i was sitting on the

hot seat for for at least a minute

but then he called and asked me

to become a part of his family

now he does not have another son and he

was not asking me to marry

marry him but

he did

a short film in the pandemic to support

indian cinema representing tamil telugu

malayalam punjabi bengali and hindi

and he asked me to represent

marathi

the fact that i tried to retain my

authenticity while creating my new

identity

and this will inspire me to go ahead and

work in the same manner in future

but this wasn’t possible without the

industry support

so here i want to take you take an

opportunity to thank the entire marathi

film industry

for giving me the opportunity teaching

me keeping patience all the films i did

all the characters i played

current otherwise

thank you so much