Savdhaan India - Apni Khaki actor Ankit Bathla, who is seen in the character of Shiva Agnihotri, says it is emotionally very challenging for him to play intense scenes on-screen. He says that he starts to feel the victim’s pain in real life and gets emotional.
“Sometimes when there’s a character in front of me and it’s a criminal, and when I get to know the story, or they’re confessing, I won’t deny, I actually feel so angry and my blood literally boils. We just did a story where they killed an eight-month-old baby for fake family pride, and I actually got tears in my eyes. So it is emotionally very draining, but once the uniform is off, and Ankit Bathla comes back to life, I go back home, sit for meditation, and my only prayer is that we end crime, which is quite in sync with what Shiva Agnihotri wants in his life,” he said.
He also shared that playing a cop on-screen is very challenging for him because it comes with a lot of responsibility. “A lot of people are looking up to you. You can’t be saying things that are not right, you can’t be doing things that are not right, and there’s also a certain protocol that the police officers follow,” he said.
“We have gone through the training, which a part of the preparation for the character, and I think it is so extremely important to be fit because there’s so much action that we do every day, so much running that we do every day, and this is probably the first time that I have been in the sun almost throughout the day, shooting, which has not been an easy experience, but I have learned it over time, and honestly, the pride that it gets when we wear the character on beats every bit of the trouble,” he added.
Ankit also shared how this role came to him and thanked Lord Shiva for it. He said, “I met producer Arjiya in a mock shoot where they wanted me to play a particular character for another show, but it didn’t work out. During that time, I had just done Inner Engineering from Sadhguru and told her that I meditate and I’m a Shiva Sadhak, and that’s when my character was born in her head, which I never knew, but she promised that we would do something together,” he said.
“So this character is called Shiva Agnihotri, it comes from a devotion to Shiva, and the USP of the character is that he meditates in solace, and that’s when he gets all his visions and cracks the code, the case. So that’s the birth of the character, and that’s where the name Shiva comes from, and I can’t thank enough to Arjiya and Charu for having me for this character because this has really enhanced my skills as an actor and also as a human being.”
