For Mumbai girl Ragini Nandwani there could have no better stepping stone in Malayalam than the film Peruchazhi opposite superstar Mohanlal. The film which was shot to a large extent in the US had her playing a modern girl wearing trendy clothes. It has been two years since that film released and Ragini has now at long last signed her second Malayalam film Hadiya opposite Nishan. It was not lack of offers that kept her away from Mollywood but her insistence that she patiently wait till a role of substance come her way. Ragini will be playing ‘Saara’ who goes through a gambit of emotions in Hadiya. In her words,”It is the whole journey of Saraa from her childhood to after her marriage. She does not have a mother and she falls in love with Nishan and what happens after her marriage is depicted as a beautiful journey with a lot of emotions for me to showcase. I have a lot of scope to perform in this film because the whole film centers on me. What I like about the character is that she is a woman of today and has a lot of layers to her. The team is good and very passionate about their work and my role is something concrete which are reasons enough to sign on the dotted line.” Ragini was selected for this role after the makers saw her performance in Peruchazhi.
The Saraa of Hadiya is diametrically opposite to her role in Peruchazhi after which she was offered a couple of roles. She says,” Of course Peruchazhi was close to my heart because I got to act alongside Mohanlal but I did not have much to do.” Meanwhile she got busy in Telugu and Kannada films and still is. The language barrier is a continuing challenge. She candidly confesses,” I have acted in Telugu and Kannada but find Malayalam a teeny bit more difficult to grasp. But as an actor, it is these challenges that push me to get better day by day. The heat was another challenge- I was wearing a headscarf and was fully covered; so the heat was really getting to me.” She smiles and says that these were her major challenges but acting the role was a cakewalk.
What about the food in Kerala? She happily says,” I am not a great foodie and love South Indian food so food was never a botheration.” Ragini keeps in touch with her first co-star Mohanlal, who she terms as very humble and down to earth. Her current co-star Nishan is also from Mumbai and she says,” He has already done a couple of films in Mollywood and is very devoted to his role.”
As an actor who has worked across the industries, Ragini feels that other than the different working styles, there is no major difference. Ragini has been getting a couple of offers from Mollywood and is excited about some of them.
