Your date with gender equality on weeknights at 10 pm

How does it feel to inspire someone to walk out of a bad marriage Rupali Ganguly takes a deep breath soaking in the responsibility that sits on her shoulders as she continues to drive Indian women to reclaim their space in the sun every week night at 10 pm One of Indian televisionrsquos biggest stars currently Ganguly who some reports claimed commands a R3 lakh per day fee says that the daily soap life doesnrsquot give her the time to even realise the enormous presence she holds among viewers Itrsquos 14 hours straight of shooting on set returning to her home only to sleep ldquoOn most days I canrsquot find the time to check social media It was when I had women visit the set and hug me breaking down that I realised how popular the show had becomerdquo Ganguly 45Husband Ashwin K Verma says Ganguly was happy to hold fort at home and take care of son Rudransh 6 when she was picked for the partWe are in her room at Set No 17 at Goregaonrsquos Film City where she spends more than half the day every day playing Anupamaa Shah now Joshi The saree is yellow the blouse pink in her characteristic contrasting style The hair is done up in a braid that she brings to the front over her right shoulder giving it a symbolic tug each time she makes a win of some sortGanguly is sipping on Thumbs Up while a stray nuzzles up to her He is one of the several she has informally adopted around the set Itrsquos lunch time and she has a few minutes off before shersquos back to being the servile homemaker who finds the strength to live life on her own terms when her masochistic husband marries another womanAnupamaa a mother of three finds love again after her husband abandons herMinutes before she was sharing a laugh with her prickly former husband Vanraj Shah played by Sudhanshu Pandey as the two took pictures for an online teaser They are hardly the enemies they must play on screen And itrsquos this simple reality that viewers she says taken in by the power of entertainment tend to forget For them she is Anupamaa the woman they canrsquot be but secretly hope to emulatemdashthe one who finds love after she is abandoned the one who returns to her passion for dancing and turns entrepreneurldquoI was in Gujarat acting in a play when they the showrsquos creators called me I was a last minute casting choice They asked me to send a video test and overnight I was inrdquo she recalls The showrsquos top boss veteran producer Rajan Shahi last directed her in 1999 for her first television stint Dil Hai ki Manta Nahin Ganguly isnrsquot a stranger to fandom Her last hit show the comedy Sarabhai vs Sarabhai catapulted her and much of the cast including Ratna Pathak Shah Satish Shah and Sumeet Raghavan to stardom After ParvarrishndashKuchh Khattee Kuchh Meethi in 2011 she took a sevenyearlong break Until 2020 when this role landed in her lap ldquoI told Ashwin husband Ashwin K Verma this is a good character He asked me lsquoSo do you play the herorsquos motherrsquo I said lsquono I am the protagonist and she is as old as me 42rsquo In the years before that I got offered to play women younger than me or way older Here I would play my age My husband thought I hadnrsquot got my due as an actor and said hersquod take care of the houserdquoVerma seemed to have had the right hunch In fact Ganguly says that Shahi wasnrsquot sure if the idea would work and had planned to give it three months ldquoI was chubby when the show launched and wanted to lose weight before we shot but he said lsquotherersquos no timersquordquoThe show that began to air at the start of the lockdown is now a top ranker The Broadcast Audience Research Council India which releases TRPs every week placed Anupamaa at the top with a TRP of 35 as recently as last week the closest second was Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin It was the week when Anupamaa decided she would marry her college friend Anuj Kapadia played by Gaaurav Khanna It was also the week she uttered the now iconic monologue on marriage ldquoYeh dadi ab shaadi karegirdquo Itrsquos no wonder that the show is set to make its way to the OTT platforms with a prequel titled AnupamaNamaste America where the early life of its protagonist will play outAsk Ganguly if she is anything like her character and she says ldquoThe only thing we have in common is our love for loving everyone For me like her it doesnrsquot take much to be nice to someone but it means a lot for the other personrdquo That her character is an undertheradar feminist was always the point of the show ldquoItrsquos not about waving a flag Itrsquos about changing how people think Itrsquos about asking them to think in the first place Itrsquos also the story of every household in some way All of us know an Anupamaa somewhererdquo she says trying to put her finger on the reason for its humungous popularityThe scriptwriters are clear that they will put Bharatiya sanskar front and centre in every episode but Anupamaarsquos new avatar allows her to be progressive in thought The show tackles gender stereotypes using its only daily soap language with Anupamaa always clad in cotton sarees her nemesis Kavya in Western wear lsquoWill you wear tracks to the officersquo she asks Kavya in one scene ldquoItrsquos the debate not about the clothes Thatrsquos not being modern Itrsquos about how you think and reactrdquo she says alluding to a scene where her daughterinlaw says despite her plain Jane lifestyle Anupamaa is the only one in the house to have told her that the decision to have a child can only be the motherrsquos ldquoMy nani was Muslim and she married a Marathi man She embraced his culture We grew up seeing this My father was a feminist He never distinguished between my brother and I He encouraged us to think and set our own standards for morals I am married to someone who is looking after the home and my sixyearold son He doesnrsquot need my money he wants me to enjoy the recognition And then there is a man like Rajan who created Anupamaa I am surrounded by the right peoplerdquoDoes she then have any say in how her character behaves Can she on a given day not agree with what the writers have planned for Anupamaa to say or do ldquoNo The actor never knows the character the way the writers do they bring in the twists I donrsquot interfererdquo she says During the monologue that she performed last week stretching over 32 pages she says they granted her the freedom to do it as she deemed fitShe is called in for the next shot We return to what she said at the start of the interview about her responsibility towards the audience ldquoItrsquos huge The messages I get women have walked out of bad marriages they tell me after watching the show they realise their selfworth and want to be independent It gives me hope that somehow I may be touching lives I was at Vaishno Devi recently and even though there was a film star next to me who had also arrived for darshan people were crowding up to memdashnot Rupali Anupamaardquo