It was a regular Thursday afternoon for Kriti Sanon. Until it wasn’t. Seated in a meeting at her home that day, the actor gave in to an unrelenting caller after ignoring multiple calls from the number. She remembers the next few minutes vividly. “I got the news that I had won the National Award for Best Actor. I froze for a few seconds. I got almost teary-eyed and ran to my parents’ room to break it to them,” recalls the actor, who won the honour for her performance in Mimi (2021) as the 69th National Awards were announced last week.

Sanon views the honour not only as an acknowledgment of her craft, but also as the realisation of a personal wish. “This was one of the dreams that I wanted to fulfil in my career. I had written it in my personal diary. Not many actors get to live this moment,” she says.