TV's favourite son grows up

He signed up with a professional theatre group while still a college student. And soon became a popular face on television.

Although five years have gone by since Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi wound up, Hiten Tejwani is what match-making mamas hope to snare!

Stardom, Hiten insists, did not come easy. “Getting a foothold in the industry was not an easy task. I chose television because as a newcomer getting a movie role was difficult. I had no ‘filmi’ connections. On the other hand, TV was evolving and there were a lot of openings.”

Ghar Ek Mandir was offered to him and the rest, as they say in showbiz, is history. Hiten currently plays the lead role in Pavitra Rishta.

He has been on television for over 10 years now but shows no signs of boredom. “Television welcomed me with open arms. I have grown in this medium. I consider myself lucky to have got good roles,” he says.

Hiten’s theatre background — he trained with Ankur, a well-known theatre group, even as a student of Jai Hind College — helped him adapt to the rigors of television. He insists it also gave him the courage to experiment with his image. “People know me by my name. They don’t refer to me as Karan Virani or Manav Deshmukh, from my TV shows, but as Hiten Tejwani, which is a big thing for me.”

A firm believer in the dictum, ‘It’s your work that speaks’, he prefers to remain low profile about his personal life and his marriage to Gauri Pradhan. “I am a normal human being, who happens to be an actor by profession. I don’t like talking about my personal life.” But what loves to talk about his experience of fatherhood.

“It’s a lovely feeling to be a father. With age, you forget your childhood. But when you have kids, those precious memories come rushing back,” says the proud father of twins.

Hiten is currently busy hosting a crime show called Savdhan India on Life Ok. “The idea is to educate people about how they can fight crime. To me, the show is good because I have learnt so much about the Indian Penal Code! More significantly, I feel the show will empower people to fight crime.”