Actor Tamannaah Bhatia, who is also an ambassador for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was recently felicitated at the Rashtrapati Bhavan for her contribution to the initiative. She has recently been in news for her performance in blockbuster Baahubali. While some liked her turn as a warrior, others found the character’s sudden discovery of her feminine side because of the hero, problematic.
Excerpts from an interview:
What encouraged you to join Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?
Cleanliness is something that I’ve been doing since I was a kid. It started at a very small level when we had a sensitivity club in our locality in Mumbai. All kids between the age group of 10-15 used to get together make dustbins and beautify the area around. So you know I’ve grown up with these ideas but yet was not completely driven to do this because there was never any propelling factor till the Prime Minister launched the Swachh Bharat movement last year. It was very encouraging and it felt like a mass movement.
I was the youngest person in the conference. I met Sachin Tendulkar, Kamal Hassan, Amala ma’am, Kapil Sharma and Ramdev Baba. It was an amalgamation of different people from diverse fields under one roof and it was really interesting to meet them, to know their individual journeys, what they’ve contributed to Swachh Bharat and how they turn on to contributing more.
Are you planning to start something to promote cleanliness at an individual level?
Yes, I will but I want to give it a thought before I get into anything and I want to involve a lot of people of my age group because I feel this is the age when we have least responsibilities and there is so much of energy and enthusiasm and that’s not been tapped appropriately.
I also think that cleanliness needs to be made a little more fun and if we can make it more interesting I think it will be able to attract lot of people. If schools start giving marks to students who do social service or people who contribute towards cleanliness, it would really motivate children to take up this initiative seriously.
Talking about your journey in film industry,Baahubalihas been a big hit but your character Avanthika got lost somewhere after an electric start.
The film has an ensemble cast and we all had very distinguished roles to play. I feel the film is beyond a single character. Moreover, I would like to say that despite being an out-and-out war film, all the women in the film have really strong characters – be it Sivagami’s or Devasena. And that’s actually a rare thing to see in a big commercial film. So I think quite contradictory to what the critics say Baahubali has highlighted women in a very beautiful way.
The love making scene in the film has been interpreted as molestation of Avanthika by some writers. How do you see it?
I think everyone has an opinion and critics are entitled to their opinion but at the end of the day the movie is made for entertainment and that’s what I think people should go to the movies for. The ones who have an opinion can have their opinion, I have nothing to say to that but according to me, the movie has highlighted women in a beautiful manner and we should not dig so deep into such intricacies as the movie is after all only for the entertainment and not for analysis.
We’re all excited about Baahubali II. What’s going to happen in the second part?
I wish I knew so that I could share it with the fans but as of now I have absolutely no idea (laughs). We’re going to begin shooting in a couple of weeks and I can assure you that the second part would be bigger and better. Right now I’m also working on two more projects so we can just wait and enjoy the anticipation that’s brimming inside us.
