I’d sit and cry in my makeup room: Rakshanda

For a working mother, leaving her child back home and head to work is one of the biggest challenges and for actor Rakshanda Khan, it’s no different. While she considers herself lucky that she never had to struggle to find good work, she admits that leaving her five-year-old daughter, Enaya Tyagi at home was not easy.

“I’ve had work which walked up to me, but my biggest struggle was to leave my child and go to work. Especially when I resumed work after Enaya was born, it was tough. There were days when I’d sit and cry in my makeup room because I had not step out of the house without her, and suddenly I was away for 12 to 14 hours. That is the only struggle I’ve seen in my career,” she says. Making sure that she doesn’t compromise on her daughter’s upbringing and her career, the actor has made a conscious decision to take up limited yet quality roles. “I don’t want to give priority to work over my family. But I also want to keep working. I owe my entire career to TV. It wasn’t something I wanted to give up. I chose to do that because I felt I still wanted to go back, and be out there and not just be someone, who, at the age of 60, will turn around and say,‘Oh man, I gave up my career for my child’. I don’t want to do it as a favour to her,” says the 45year-old.

As Rakshanda looks back, she remembers how she had no plans of becoming an actor and how she has always been one of those who thought she’d finish graduation at 20, get married by 25 and have a child by 29 or 30.

“I had compartmentalised my life as per my age, and that’s how I wanted to live it. But destiny had something else planned for me and my whole life went topsy-turvy. Instead of marriage, I pursued my career, I didn’t have an intention of having a career at that time. It just went on to a bigger and better path,” shares the actor.