MUMBAI: This week on my show, Share and Grow Spotlight, we had the privilege of having the exuberant, sweet and adorable actress and my “little sister”, Tinaa Datta. We share a wonderful bond as she considers me to be her brother. Her chirpy and frank attitude makes even a bleak situation seem brighter. She has always been very talkative and I have never had a boring conversation with her.

In this episode of Share and Grow Spotlight, I traced Tinaa’s journey from when she was a child actor to where she is today. She had started to work as a child actor at the young age of four and a half. She primarily worked in the Bengali shows before shifting to Mumbai when she passed 12th grade. She has never looked back ever since.

She is very matter of fact when she states that it is a myth that actors lead a glamorous life. But Tinaa said that all actors have to struggle a lot to reach their goals. She gave an example that when she was in child actor, she used to attend school till 2 pm and travel by public transport to reach her shoots. Her shoot schedule used to be so hectic that she used to finish filming her shots by 11 in the night.

Her show, Uttaran was a behemoth when it was running on television. Its popularity was beyond compare and even now, the show is running in countries like Turkey and Indonesia where it is a mega hit too. Her fans based abroad are absolutely crazy about her which prompted me to add subtitles for her episode. 

Due to Uttaran, Tinaa became a household name in India at the age of eighteen. She divulged that she found it difficult to deal with the popularity at first. She had started to become cranky and it had started to affect her health as well. She used to be upfront and used to say her thoughts out loud instead of being tactful about her words. This used to be misconstrued as arrogance and her being a “tantrum queen”. She said that now she chooses to maintain a stoic silence instead of speaking her thoughts. She has also learnt to be really patient and control her anger.

This was a wonderful and eye-opening session as she had no inhibitions about any question I asked. Tinaa never held back and this was extremely refreshing and I really enjoyed conversing with her as I didn’t realise when the time flew by.

This episode was divided into two parts, watch them here: