Aaditi Pohankar has been ruling hearts all over the country with her ongoing web series Aashram on MxPlayer. In the web series, she portrays the character of Pammi - a strong headed, young lady and a wrestler who dreamt big and made sure to not compromise towards the patriarchal and unjust ways of society. Directed by Prakash Jha, the crime drama also features Bobby Deol, Tridha Choudhury, Anupriya Goenka and Adhyayan Suman in pivotal characters. In an exclusive chat with ETimes, Aaditi opens up about her journey in the series, and the kind of preparations she took for pulling off the character with perfection. She also opened up about her childhood days concerning the choices she made for becoming an actor. Here are excerpts from the chat with ETimes. Being an athlete to an actor

On an opening note, Aaditi shared about her initial days as a runner, who never imagined about being an actor. When I was a runner, I never ever thought about being an actor because I was really focused on sports. I wanted to go to the Olympics and I was working for it; I was looking forward to the Commonwealth at that point under 19. I even had my whole life planned based on that.

I was just 15. I lost my mom, amidst all my plan-making stages. My mom always wanted me to be an actor. She wanted to see me on a bus hoarding - something like 100 on 100 - Aditi Pohankar' - that kind of thing. But woh toh nahi ho payabecause I wasnt that studious. So I decided now I will be on every other billboard all around town, and I will make my mom proud. This is why I started acting.

Losing out on roles

Well, of course. I mean, I auditioned like hundreds of them. And there were parts when I really thought that I would probably do this. I realised the more you hold it tight, the more it slips out of your handso when it comes to audition, I look at it like a practice and leave it and dont let it get into my skin.

I think acting has become like a life for me. Mostly what I have realised is that acting or cinema or theatre, for that matter is nothing but life and life is nothing but drama. I read somewhere that we all are desperately under rehearsed, and nothing else in life.. I think this makes it easy for me to perform when I'm on set, it doesn't make a difference to me, because I'm pretty much doing that every single day of my life.

I was fortunate enough to get these scripts so that I could portray what I feel; this is what I have been feeling for a very long time because when we were runners also there used to be some kind of discrimination between a man and a woman always. Obviously boys are faster than girls no doubt, but what I feel is that more than just discrimination, there is acceptance of the discrimination.

You know, from the women of the world, there is an acceptance of it. As an actor, portraying Bhumika the real twist is where she realises her power through sexuality; This is what makes this script so interesting, because that's when she realises her self worth. And you just need to explore it, you need to understand it and you need to use it very tactfully in the sense of jitna kam use karo na, utna impact zyada hota hain. You just have to be silent, steady, and calm.

Dealing with mental health, setbacks and failures

Well, it might sound philosophical, but these words don't exist with me like I don't really look at anything as a failure at all because I think I've learned so much from it. If I fall I know that I'm gonna get up and start running again. After I fall, I know why I fell and I won't do it again. So I think it's such a blessing in disguise which is called failure.

So whatever I have, I make sure to give my hundred percent and then I leave it up to the directors I don't even look at the monitor. My 100% is what matters the most.

There are two scenes - one is where she comes to know that Baba is the one who's done this to up. That's one scene and second is, when she gets to know that something like this act has been performed and this has actually happened to her. Pammi was just in the best place or safety wise for that matter that she could have ever imagined because she was in the ashram. And when this happens to her she has no idea of why this has happened.

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Exclusive! 'Ashram' actor Aaditi Pohankar: Explore the power inside you, then nobody can stop you from fu - Times of India