'It's a rewarding experience'

Portraying reality

Pooja Gandhi is all set to get behind the camera. The actor will soon shoot a documentary based on a real life experience.

 Pooja has been busy working with three NGOs on rehabilitating mentally disturbed and trafficked women. “All these women have been sidelined and outcast by society. They’ve lost all respect and have no support whatsoever. What I am trying to do is to help these women get out of their past and reclaim their right to live respectable lives,” Pooja tells Metrolife.

Pooja has enrolled these women for vocational training and got them insurance cover and the first batch has already been placed in various jobs.

“I tried to step into their shoes and feel what they feel. The trauma and hopelessness is unmatched. And now, after I’ve spent so much time with them, I find the whole process very rewarding. They’ve lived such dark lives and now it’s nice to see a few of them trying to lead normal lives,” she adds.

Pooja has decided to capture her experience working among these women on camera. Her documentary will be based on them. “I will soon get a team together once I return and we will start work on the documentary,” informs Pooja who’s away in Dubai at the moment.  

Meanwhile, on the movie front Pooja has completed shooting for Hare Rama, Hare Krishna where she plays a rich young lady who falls in love and goes through rough patches post that.

“It’s a larger-than-life character that is bold and very cultured,” she says. In another film titled, Pagal, Pooja plays a girl from the slums who
aspires to become a singer.

 “It’s a journey of a slum girl who makes it to the world stage. The make-up was awesome. I was made to look as shabby and dirty as possible,” says Pooja.

Talking about her role, she says that in an effort to get into the skin of the character she would sit around wherever there was space...on the floor, stone railing... just like people in the slums do and even walk around without slippers. “It was a brilliant character and I could really feel the role and it took me a few days to get over it,” she adds.