Arjun Bijlani and Kanika Mann starrer web show Roohaniyat recently started streaming on MX Player. The romantic drama is a complex story weaved around a businessman Saveer Rathod (Arjun) who doesn’t believe in ‘forever’ love as he loses the love of his life (Yuvika Choudhary) in an accident. Prisha (Kanika), a 19-year-old falls in love with Saveer, and what twists and turns await the duo’s life and the relationship, becomes the plot of the series. TV actress Palak Purswani, who essays a pivotal role in the web show, shares how she felt after sharing screen space with Arjun aka Saveer and also mapped her journey from television to the OTT platform.
Palak was last seen in Shaheer Sheikh and Rhea Sharma starrer show Yeh Rishtey Hain Pyaar Ke, and she recently marked her presence in OTT, as a parallel lead in Roohaniyat. The actress opened up about her character and how she felt about working with Arjun. Palak said, “the character that I’m playing is Anu Malkani. She is a very strong-headed girl, who runs a publication company, and she is the partner of the company with Saveer (Arjun). We both head the company together, and her character is very strong, up to the mark, and she likes to get her work done on time on point she is basically a leader at the show. Whenever she is around Saveer (Arjun) she becomes like any other girl, who is chirpy and bubbly. So, she has both the shades.”
“Working with Arjun was amazing, as he pulls off a lot of pranks on the sets of the show. He even hosted a small party during the series shoot in Mahabaleshwar, which was the most amazing outdoor setup. I had to travel to Nagpur, so they wrapped me up two days before, and Arjun, Kanika, Harshit and Geetika, also partied till 6 am, and at 7 they had the shoot. All were in Zombie mode when I went on to say bye to them as they had barely slept. That was one of the fun incidents on the show’s set,” added Palak.
The 28-year-old actress who made her way to OTT through TV shows also opened up about the difference she finds between the two. She stated, “There’s a lot of difference from television to the web. There is definitely a rise in graphs. The quality of shooting that the web does is different from in television we do 5 scenes in a day, however, while working with web shows, we get two or three scenes in a day maximum, because of the quality of the shoot that happens.”
“In OTT everything is so perfect, everything is captured with perfection. Every character is build so well, and they deeply enhance the character in every possible way. In television, we take things a bit leniently but on the web that is not the case. We had workshops before doing the characters in Roohaniyat, and you get to polish your character, all those things are different from how we shoot on television. I think it is not as hectic as TV is. I’ve worked for 15 hours in a day, and that gets very hectic, tiring and monotonous, web is a bit chill, by seeing at a perspective from the scenes we perform.”
Asked if she thinks there is more experimentation around the subjects of web shows, in comparison to television shows, the actress shares, “For TV, we have an audience is more rural, and we have an urban audience for web shows. So, for a web show comparatively, the audience we cater to is the youth. So, the storyline is very urban and youthful, and that is different from television because television itself has become so monotonous, every other story is either mythology, or saas-bahu drama, or a love triangle story, and in every TV show, we see there is a negative and positive character.”
“But the best part about web shows is that every character has a similar weightage. There are not only two leads in the show. Everyone is so strong in the same way, in a web show. In TV shows, we see the story revolves around the leads only, but in a web show, every character is important,” adds Palak.
Palak dated Choti Bahu actor Avinash Sachdev for four years before they called the relationship off recently. The couple even had their roka ceremony in January 2021. Speaking about her former relationship, the actress shared, “There’s nothing great to be spoken about it honestly because what’s done is done already. He’s moved on in his life I have moved on in my life. I’m in a much better space right now, and I think that’s all that matters. But I always respect that relationship. I’ve always done, and the industry is so small, I think we will come across each other we bump into each other some the other days. So, there are no grudges against each other. We’ve called the relationship off and we both are happy now. I wish him good luck in his life. That’s about it.”
The actress will next be seen in season 2 of Roohaniyat. However, that has already been shot, and she is currently shooting for the third season of the show, which is a 15 episode series.
