The heroine ‘A Suitable Boy’, Tanya Maniktala, drew a role from...

New Delhi, October 25 (IANS): Budding actress Tanya Maniktala felt a personal connection to many of the Partition plot points in A Suitable Boy, the Mira Nair web series in which she starred and which she is currently making a talking point.

Tanya grew up listening to stories from her grandfather, originally from Lahore, of how she came to India with a new sense of home and identity after the partition. The actress says working on the series, which touches on several similar subjects, is about bringing home the same feelings.

“His (her grandfather) home has always been determined by Pakistan. When I was a little kid, although I don’t remember many stories of how he talked about his home, his identity – they all shaped the pre-partition era. For me it was a feeling, the feeling of my grandfather, the stories he told and his childhood brought home. It was always about these things, “Tanya told IANS.

Recalling a story, Tanya said, “I remember an incident he told us about the time of the partition, when his older brother tried to cross the line. As a Hindu, he was surrounded by a group of people who wanted to check whether he was a Muslim or not. Such events shaped him. It was a very remarkable incident. ”

“The sense of fear he felt I think was what I felt while performing the sensitive scenes, like the turmoil scenes on the show,” she added.

Mira Nair’s “A Suitable Boy” is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Vikram Seth. Set in India in 1951, it tells the story of the spirited university student Lata (essay by Tanya) in 1951, a time when the country was establishing its identity as an independent nation and about to hold its first democratic parliamentary elections.

Aided by the emotion of love and heartbreak, the Netflix show is full of topics such as religious tension, civil unrest, and sexuality.

Tanya says Lata’s character taught her the way of life.

“I strive to be like Lata,” said Tanya, and went on to tell how she admires her protagonist on screen because she is not afraid of making mistakes.

“I’ve learned how to tend to hold back. Lata is the exact opposite. She just let go. She believes in living in the moment, even if she could fail. She could fall, she is never afraid to get up. ”Because she is so confident in her skin. I learned that from her – kind of let yourself go because the best things in life can happen the moment you hold on, “she added.

Before her worldwide break with the series, Tanya also appeared as Ishita in the digital series “Flames”.

When asked how she would like to go about it, the newcomer said, “At the moment my approach was to just focus on the content. I just want to create the content and focus on being creative and exploring myself as an actor. ”

The show was released on Netflix on October 23.