What is life without risks? Ask Shweta Kawaatra, one of television’s most sought after stars. The 29-year-old startled the public by leaving two top-notch Balaji shows on television, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii and Kkusum. Her sudden departure sent the rumour mill into overdrive and stories began doing the rounds that she was trying to cope with marriage blues. But rumours are indeed rumours, emphasises Kawaatra.

“I had played the role of Pallavi in Kahaani for four years. I reached a point where I felt the need to break away from the vampish image that the audience had of me. I wanted to explore new avenues,” she explains.

Now she’s making a comeback in a very different small-screen incarnation. She’s the forensic expert in Sony’s CID ? Special Bureau. Her look is also brand new. The saris have been put into a studio trunk and have been replaced with an extremely en vogue look, spectacles and all.

“The fact that it is a daily show was a clincher when it came to me accepting the role. Also director and producer B P Singh is very thorough with his research so I have no apprehensions,” says Kawaatra.

It’ll be quite a change from her earlier roles which the audience loved to hate. “I was close to being slapped by a woman who was convinced that I was as evil in real life,” she laughs as she refers to her character Pallavi’s antics in Kahaani.

Why leave something that has brought her to the arclights? She reasons, “Firstly, I didn’t want to play a mother to a guy who is my age. Not that I object to playing an older character but the serial was running out of ideas.” Saying no to a huge pay packet and a hugely successful role was a risk but a calculated one. For Kawaatra’s not sitting idle.

Currently, she is shooting for a show for Zee called Rang, and also anchoring a show called Current Bollywood. She is performing in a play soon with her husband and actor Manav Gohil.

“Uncle Samjha Karo is a situational comedy. Manav plays a lazy bum who wants double pocket money from his uncle. So he lies to him and says he is married. One lie leads to another and the play develops,” she says. Ask her about the buzz that Balaji has offered her a re-entry as Pallavi and she expresses ignorance.

Is she waiting for the big break in Bollywood? “You have to accept that the silver screen is big. It feels good seeing yourself on the big screen,” she says candidly. She has already made a small foray into the movies playing the role of a lawyer in My Brother Nikhil.

The first-time experience of working in tinsel town though, sent her into a tizzy. “It is so different. During a serial shoot, we do 10-12 scenes in a day. In film shoots, you relax and do everything slowly. Because it’s the big screen, a single mess-up shows,” she says.

The Delhi-based former ramp model got into acting by chance. While studying in college she entered the Femina Look of the Year contest in 1995, where she was spotted by Hemant Trivedi and Lubna Adams, the ramp show coordinators. They asked her to come down to Mumbai. Since Kawaatra was just 19 then, she chose to stay put in Delhi and complete her graduation in English literature from Jesus & Mary College.

But the initial brush had left an impression. She reached Mumbai looking for a break in the fashion world. Instead she got a break on the small screen with the serial Suhana Safar (on Zee). “I was quite sure I had found the one thing I would like to do. Modelling was getting too monotonous ? I had done it for almost four years,” she says.

Suhana Safar was followed by serials like the Anupam Kher production Yeh Kahan Aagaye Hum in which she played the role of a business-minded diplomat.

But Kawaatra believes it was the 26-episode thriller, Darr, which caught the attention of the industry’s top names. “I played the lead here for the first time with Irfan Khan and Harsh Chhaya on Star Plus,” says Kawaatra. She shifted to Mumbai from Delhi after signing up daily serials like Ghar Ek Mandir and Bandhan. There was a shower of offers. “I have done lots of unregistered ones as well, so much so I can’t remember their names. I remember that I didn’t get my money from the producers and lived hand-to-mouth for about a year,” she says.

Then came her role in Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii in 2001 that had viewers glued to the TV, episode after episode, wondering what would be her next plot to score over her arch-enemy, her sister-in-law Parvati. “The character of Pallavi is very close to my heart because I have literally brought the character out. But there’s no similarity between my reel character and my real one,” she points out.

In fact, the real life Kawaatra turns out to be a friendly, fun-loving person, without hang-ups. She says, “Being like that has its disadvantages too. People take you for granted all the time!”

Rumours floating around about her marriage with Gohil don’t bother her in the least. “I would recommend marriage,” she says. “We were good friends and a courtship of three-and-a-half years followed. Actually it’s easier to be with someone from the same field because he understands the erratic working hours.”

Kawaatra does have some slightly unusual beliefs. As a child, she believed that she could remember a previous life. “My mom tells me that when I was about a year old I remembered my previous life, where I lived in Mumbai in a bungalow somewhere in Madh Island. This phase lasted for four years,” she says.

Her grandmother who was a doctor heard her out patiently. “One day I rushed into my room and started crying. I told my grandmother that I had to go to Mumbai urgently since some people were troubling my grandmother for the property and she needed me. My grandmother handled the situation well,” she recalls.

She’s still convinced that a connection exists. “Today, dadi admits she knew that I’d go to Mumbai someday because I had a strong connection with the city,” she says.

There’s a philosophical side to her too. She likes to de-stress by reading about Buddhism. And she maintains, “The teachings say that there is nothing without a cause. Every moment of our lives we make causes, whether good or bad. In better words we call it karma.”

Photograph by Jagan Negi