Mumbai: Actor Mohit Raina has shown his skills in every character he played in the recent past, be it that of a lawyer, an army officer, a doctor or a cop.
He says adding dignity to character comes naturally to him, courtesy his upbringing.
Being a Kashmiri Pandit raised in Jammu, Mohit saw his father offere his service as a doctor to people all through his life.
Asked if such family background reflects in his life choices, Mohit, who became a household name for the TV series ‘Devon Ke Dev – Mahadev’, tells IANS: “I think everything that I do now somehow has a strong connection with my upbringing.
“You know, when I started as a model and eventually gained visibility as an actor for playing mythological characters, people would say my Hindi is so pure.
“I studied in a government school in Jammu where our third language was Sanskrit. As a child, I used to feel so stupid to study Sanskrit because it was not even a spoken language! But when I was playing Mahadev, I realised the advantage.
“It was same with ‘1 Sarfarosh – Saragarhi 1897’ because being a Jammu boy, we speak in Dogri and also in Punjabi. That fluency of language was an advantage for me.”
He goes on to add: “Wheather I play any character in uniform – a lawyer (in the web series ‘Kaafir’), doctor, police or army officer, I have seen how each one of them wear the uniform with a certain sense of dignity.”
“My father would always be up for some patient even late at night after a long day because he used to say that a doctor is never off duty. It is the same with a soldier or a policeman. Being a Kashmiri, we had to live in Jammu but Kashmir lives in my heart and that is why when the opportunity came to be part of a story like ‘Uri – The Surgical Strike’, I just jumped in.
“Approaching a character with a certain amount of dignity comes naturally to me. I remember after watching ‘Mumbai Diaries: 26/11’, where I used the medical terminology correctly, my family members were like ‘areh! tujhe to sab sahi se bol na aa gaya, bilkul pakka doctor wala vibe’.”
(IANS)
