Narayani is still close to her ex-boyfriends

TV hottie Narayani Shastri who has bagged a lead role in a Bollywood flick is on a new high. The actress who’d kicked off her Hindi film career with a cameo in Madhur Bandarkar’s Chandni Bar is the only female actor in Na Ghar Ke Na Ghat Ke co-starring Om Puri and Paresh Rawal and producer Rahul Aggarwal who’s making his debut in the film.
Very recently the gossip mills had gone on an overdrive when she arrived with Rahul in Goa, to attend the premiere of Red Alert with its cast and crew at the International Film Festival of India (in late 2009), although she wasn’t part of the team.So what’s brewing? “Rahul’s my buddy,” she says and asserts that there’s “no scope for marriage” at this point of time in her career.
At 31, she’s still finding her feet in an industry that loves young leading ladies. “Age is not an issue when it comes to acting. Isn’t Amitabh Bachchan still acting at 67?” she quips.
As the feminist streak in her surfaces, we quiz her about her much publicised break-up with television actor Gaurav Chopra. “Even if a relationship is over, I don’t sever that bond. All my ex-boyfriends are still very close to me. After all we get close to them because we’ve liked something about them. That doesn’t change.”
Narayani, who’s played starring roles in prime time shows like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and KKusum seems to have cracked the bonding code and has even worked wonderfully with telly queen Ekta Kapoor. “We had a healthy work relationship and had no problems.”
Narayani also makes it clear that she does not like playing second fiddle to any one. She’s enjoyed working with Nana Patekar in the Marathi film Pak Pak Pakaak and now is working with Om Puri and Paresh Rawal in her upcoming film. She acknowledges that while they are “very good at what they do” and are “ chilled out” on the sets, working with veterans like them wasn’t a learning experience for her. “In the past 17 years, I’ve done theatre, modelling and acting on TV. How much can you learn when you’ve worked with them once,” she says.
And what about TV? “It’s been two years since I did a TV show. I find today’s TV serials boring and even the reality shows are not so real,” she opines. So has she bid adieu to the small screen? “I take life as it comes. It’s more fun that way, isn’t it?” she says.