Gashmeer Mahajani is a well-known face in Marathi cinema. His lead role in the TV show Imlie has made him a household name. Gashmeer in his recent interview with BT talks about his transition from Marathi cinema to Hindi Television.
“I haven’t taken a single off ever since my show went on air, apart from the national holidays. I like to work, and I barely sleep for four and a half hours daily. I don’t treat this as a 9 to 5 job. I am not just acting in this serial, I also do a lot of improvisation and give a lot of inputs in the scripting. So this working on TV has become a process similar to making a movie for me. In fact, every morning I wake up and watch every episode of mine that has gone on air. I haven’t missed a single episode,”
When asked how he manages the balance between his personal and professional life, especially taking time out for his two-year-old son, the actor said, “Yes, that is one thing that I am missing the most, spending time with Vyom.”
“I generally had my wife coming on to the sets of my movie before the Coronavirus outbreak, and had planned to have my son too on the sets of this show had things been normal. I am just waiting for this pandemic to die down so that I can get my son on the sets and spend more time with him. As a ritual, I wake up him every morning before going to the shoot and once I come back from the shoot, I put him off to sleep. So that is the only time I get to be with him and I love that. I read him a story every day. A child always has an inborn bond with the mother but we dads have to go an extra mile to build a bond with them.”
Gashmeer who has won Filmfare Award for Best Debutant Actor in 2016 for his films Deool Band and Carry On Maratha, is dreaming it big for Marathi cinema. “I have already signed my next Marathi film along with doing this daily soap. So, I will always remain very active on the Marathi cinema front even if I do this daily soap for any number of years. I am shooting for the film in the night and for the serial in the morning,” says Gashmeer. “Marathi cinema has come up in a big way in the past five years. But it still has a long way to go. Now the onus is on us, the younger generation, to keep the good work going. It needs to rub off all boundaries. We need to have good scripts earning good money. Having a Sairat every 4-5 years will not help Marathi cinema. The next few years are crucial for Marathi cinema. Plus, there is a very strong need to build heroes in Marathi cinema, just like they are in Bollywood and down South. Faces should bring in money. We are having biggies investing in Marathi cinema but they are not getting the return.”