It was sheer luck that got me Taarak Mehta!

A page from the personal diary of Aasma Siddiqui A friend of mine had to go for the auditions of Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah and she asked me to accompany her. Since I wasn't doing much work then I joined her. This Bengali friend of mine who is a yoga teacher is not too fluent with Hindi. So, once we reached there my friend went for the auditions and the casting director happened to notice me and asked me to give the auditions as well. I had come to Mumbai to become an actress but I had never thought of doing comedy so I told him that I wouldn't be able to pull it off. But he insisted on me giving the auditions. Four months later I got to play the role of Koyal (Taarak's sister-in-law) in Taarak Mehta. This was something that I had not even dreamed of for one goes for so many auditions and the phone calls never come. But here I had just accompanied a friend and I got a role on the small screen. I was pretty happy to have bagged the show and so was my friend though she did not get the role. But, things weren’t easy going even thereafter as I wasn’t a trained actress then. So, during the shoots of Taarak my director Dharmesh Sir used to scold me a lot and I feel it's all because of his scolding that I learnt to act. He had even named me re-take Roshan. He is my Guru and it's all because of him that I have turned into a drama queen. Bagging this show was a turning point in my career. I was very happy as five years ago I was 85 kilos and never thought I would ever make it as an actress. But I did work hard on my self. I started following a proper diet plan, started going to gym regularly, I stopped having non-veg and sweets completely, apart from these I started swimming, cycling because I no more wanted to be a baby elephant. And, yes all that hard work has paid well for I lost weight and today I am just 45 kilos.