On a dull day in office, she found an advertisement for Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) about a six months acting course, and Bollywood was canonized with an exceptional talent like Rasika Dugal.
Started her career with a small appearance in a 2007 romantic thriller ‘Anwar,’ got an opportunity to essay a character intimately 2008’s ‘Tahaan – A Boy with Grenade’ with Anupam Kher, Sarika, Rahul Bose, and Victor Banerjee. The premise of the story is based on a non-fictitious incident with fictitious characters in Kashmir.
Duggal’s choice of films has only got unconventional, hence desirable over time. Came into prominence in 2018’s Nandita Das directorial ‘Manto’, Rasika sketched the character of Safiya: Manto’s wife. Another thought-provoking film based on the life of a writer who went under trial for obscenity charges. Her role in the film was not centred but definitely one of the important characters in the film.
About Safiya, Duggal expressed to a leading page, “I’ve seen so many women like her around me, including my grandmother. She gave her all to make a relationship work, despite crises of different kinds. And she never realised what a difficult thing she was doing! I know so many women like her but it pains me to know that what they do is not considered feminism these days”.
Further, the much talked about 2018 web series ‘Mirzapur’ streaming on Netflix got another feather to her cap. In that, she played the character of Beena Tripathi who’s the wife of gangster Kaleen Bhaiya played by Pankaj Tripathi. Speaking about her character, she said, “Beena is an instinctively mysterious person. It was very refreshing for me to play this part as I usually get a role in which I am a good wife or a loving mother. There are absolutely no roles written for women in which there is an acknowledgement of their sexuality”.
Some of the other atypical roles played by Dugal are ‘Hamid’, ‘Qissa’, ‘Lootcase’, ‘Once Again’ and ‘Chutney’.
