Rohini Hattangadi is back as a Gujarati matriarch – just don’t confuse her for Kasturba

Rohini Hattangadi became a grand old lady of cinema at the ripe age of 27. After playing Kasturba opposite Ben Kingsley’s Mohandas in Richard Attenborough’s multiple Oscar-winning Gandhi in 1982, Hattangadi was almost immediately slotted as a silver-haired matriarch even as she was entering her prime.

In Kshadyantra (Conspiracy), Hattangadi is a completely different Gujarati matron. The recently released Gujarati web series on ShemarooMe sees Hattangadi as Vasanti, a wheelchair-bound media baron and the sister of Gujarat’s autocratic chief minister Panna (Apara Mehta). When Panna is grievously wounded in an assassination attempt, Vasanti wheels in to make her own play for the throne.

Hattangadi agreed to act in Urviksh Parikh’s potboiler because its writer, Babul Bhavsar, is an old friend. “He gave me good lines and a good character,” she told Scroll.in. “Since Gujarati is not my mother tongue, he gave me smaller sentences so that I could get it right.”

Apart from watching her enunciation, Hattangadi had to make sure that Vasanti’s expressions retained the show’s suspense factor. “She is scheming all the time, so I had to be careful to keep the suspense to myself and make sure my reactions didn’t give the secret away,” Hattangadi said.

Hattangadi is no stranger to Gujarati, of course: she has acted in plays…

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