Taking a stand: Telling people what they do not want to hear

Sarwat Gilani to highlight minority issues by playing Hindu girl in upcoming serial ‘Seeta Bagri’.

LAHORE: Running an interior design company, directing theatre plays, dabbling in films or acting in dramas, Sarwat Gilani always keeps herself closely linked to the arts. If her performance as the dominating Pathan wife of a submissive police officer in Jawani Phir Nahin Ani(JPNA) didn’t get your attention then Kiski Topi Kiskay Sar at the Karachi Arts Council must have. The play was a conscious attempt at highlighting the efforts put in by the participants of Special Olympics. It is this diversity of artistic choices that makes Gilani more than just another pretty face under the limelight and her next project is equally moving.

These days she is shooting for Seeta Bagri, actor Adnan Siddiqui’s debut as a serial producer in which she plays a Hindu girl from the Bagri clan. Although it remains to be seen whether she can get the diction and accent down as well as she did in JPNA, Gilani feels this particular project is extraordinary.

“The play is about the minorities that stayed back in Pakistan during partition,” Gilani tells The Express Tribune. “Unfortunately I have been hearing extremely unpleasant things on the pictures I uploaded of the sets.. I keep writing back to them to say they are Pakistanis as much as you are.”  Even the serial aims to spread awareness that the Hindu minority is a part of us, they have the same morals, issues and lives as us and they are regular Pakistanis.

“It is very unfortunate on our part that we are unable to see them as us,” adds Gilani.

The language and the accent indeed became a hurdle in the initial few scenes but Gilani was quick to get into the flow. “When you’re doing an angry scene your natural accent comes back so one has to redo, rethink each scene.” On the sets, she has help from Sunita, a theatre actor from National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa), who is taking diligent care of all the cultural, religious intricacies.

Gilani is full of praises for Iqbal Hussain, who has penned and directed the project. “Iqbal is giving so many messages through his lines. It is a beautiful play, from the mise en scene to the lighting and the message. In the 12 years of my career, I haven’t been able to be a part of something like this.”

JPNA, her big screen debut, was one of the highest grossing films movies of 2015 and the sequel has been on the cards for some time. The script is being written by Vasay Chaudhry and is set to go on the floors in December, to be shot in Pakistan and abroad like the prequel. Earlier this year Gilani had told The Express Tribune that she would be doing a film with one of the Khans in Bollywood; however that never came to be. “It didn’t materialise because there were some scenes I wasn’t comfortable with,” she reveals.   “I am interested in directing films and I have a story I wrote — it’s about five kids but I don’t think the market is ready for it just yet,” she chuckles.

She may not be crossing the border any time soon, but Gilani still has her hands full with work — “I want to change Pakistan’s aerial view,” she declares. Under her company Naqsha by Sarwat Gilani, she has overseen remodeling for various spaces including a rooftop garden in a penthouse, which she is particularly pleased with.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2016.

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