An unusual double role

Madhusree Ghosh

Actor Rajshri Deshpande, 39, is best known for playing Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s wife in Sacred Games. But for five years, she’s been spending part of her time in Pandhari village in Marathwada, Maharashtra.

She’s been working with the villagers to restore water supply, has rebuilt the village school and secured government funds for 200 toilets. Deshpande grew up in Marathwada, the cane- and cotton-growing region of Maharashtra that is home to some of India’s wealthiest farmers and some of its poorest. Her father was a cotton farmer who struggled to support his wife and three girls.

That left a lasting impression, Deshpande says. She volunteered steadily, working with NGOS, and realised that tweets and donations weren’t a real answer. Change would only come if she stayed and worked on the ground. She decided to focus on Pandhari, a village where an old woman said to her, on her first visit, “You’re just here to talk. I thought you were here to so something for us.” “That hit me hard,” Deshpande says.

Her first project was clearing out a dried-up canal. That needed Rs 1.5 lakh, which she raised through donations from friends. For 15 days, 50 farmers worked in shifts, cleaning and dredging. They continue to do clean-ups every year.

Deshpande then spent hours in government offices, with the village sarpanch, petitioning and finally being allotted funds for toilets. Over a year, 200 toilets were built in the village of about 250 families.

The project she’s proudest of, she says, is the restoring of the zilla parishad school. She needed a lot more money for this, so in 2018 she decided to register her non-profit. “I then raised money from crowd-funding campaigns, friends, villagers. Some gave me Rs 11, some Rs 1,001.”

The restoration of the school was finished during the lockdown. “Our school was breaking down. Rajshri Ma’am came to us as an angel,” says sarpanch Deepak More. “She also got water to our village, set up 200 toilets and transformed our lives.”

Deshpande is now working with a neighbouring village, Pokhari, where she has opened a community centre where women can learn to sew. “I plan to keep Nabhangan small and do a sustainable work. I’m also an actor. I want to continue doing memorable things in both worlds,” she says.

Deshpande will next be seen in a thriller with Jimmy Shergill, a Netflix show with Madhuri Dixit-nene, and at the women’s sewing centre in Pokhari.