Her father's daughter

She may have not really tasted ‘jeet’ with Sony’s Jeet Jayenge Hum, but that hasn’t dimmed the petite and soft spoken Sana Amin Sheikh’s enthusiasm over her newest show, Mera Naam Karegi Roshan, that takes off on Zee tonight. Sana had a field day giving sound-bytes and also introducing the rest of the cast of her show in her ‘RJ’ style (For the uninitiated, she is a RJ by Sunday and soap fledgling the rest of the days) at a recently held small get-together. Her co-stars looked at her indulgingly, especially Vikram Gokhale who plays her father in the show. He couldn’t take his eyes off his screen daughter as he was heard telling how impressed he was with her acting. On her part, she hugged her “Baba” who she told us later that was what everyone on the sets called Gokhale. Sana plays the character of Reet, a timid, young girl, the apple of her father’s eyes and the doting sister of two brothers (both of whom are hardly ideal ‘son-material). Little wonder then, all hell breaks loose, when the father wishes in his will, that it’s Reet who will perform his last rites. “He entrusts her with a simple desire and then I take it upon myself to just try and fulfill it. My brothers are obviously not very happy with the idea but Reet who has always been taught Rama’s ideals by her father since childhood, wants to fulfill her obligations as Ram did towards Dashrath. No questions asked, no explanations needed, Ram just followed his father’s wishes.” The makers of the show say the reason they chose Sana was because they wanted someone very puny, timid, shy to stand up to someone like a Yashpal Sharma who plays the crafty, arrogant, ambitious older brother. Ask Sana if she believes in equal rights for everyone and she says, “Well, personally I feel that if daughters are asked to perform the last rites or do anything that’s traditionally been done by sons, it’s nothing wrong if they do it without meaning any harm to others. But I wouldn’t do it just for proving a point.” With that, Sana hopes her show does better than what Jeet Jayenge Hum did to her. “Of course, I felt bad when it went off air because it started off as a story on child labour but I guess, you can’t really question audience’ likes and dislikes.”