Mahabharat Fame Girija Shankar On Playing Dhritrashtra: “It Begins With Him & Ends With Him, Everybody Else Comes Later”

Ever since the lockdown, Prasar Bharti decided to announce the rerun of BR Chopra’s Mahabharat and Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan. The rerun of the shows has been incredible and has received an amazing response from all around the country. Girija Shankar rose to fame with Mahabharat and did an amazing job while playing the character of Dhritrashtra.

Girija Shankar who played the role of the elder brother of Pandu became immensely popular owing to the same. He was 28 when he had signed the role and currently in his 60s, settled in Los Angeles. Talking to Hindustan Times, he revealed taking up such an important role in his young days.

Girija Shankar revealed why he signed the role and said, “I was definitely apprehensive when this role was offered to me because people knew very little about the importance of Dhritrashtra in Mahabharat. One day, everybody was sitting around a big table in the office and I told them ‘why don’t you give it to me.’ They said, ‘we only want you to play this role because this has something more than any other character’ and I trusted them. They said, ‘don’t worry, take this book’, on which the show was based. I started reading and after 4-5 days, I realized this is actually ‘the major character’ because Mahabharat begins with him and ends with him, everybody else comes later.”

On playing a blind character in the show, Shankar said, “The only thing I was a little concerned about was that I had to maintain the same look and the same posture for more than two years. I used to get very tired because I had to train my eyes to look straight and sometimes used to take a little break in between shots.”

Amid the lockdown, we have learned a lot of things including our history and culture through Mahabharat and Ramayan.

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