“I am Sick and Tired of People Wondering About My Weight!": Bhumi Pednekar

Before our interview, I had Googled Bhumi and the search engine threw up several suggestions related to the actor’s weight. It seems ‘How much does Bhumi Pednekar weigh?’ is a popular search term. She is entirely aware of this, of course...and is also “so done” with the curiosity around her kilos. “I’m sick and tired of people wondering about my weight...I don’t even react anymore,” she says, half-laughing, half annoyed. “Obviously, after my first film released, I liked speaking about my weight gain and loss because I was proud of my achievement and I hoped it would inspire people to be fit. I’ve never liked the word ‘thin’... I’ve always believed in being fit. I don’t weigh myself; I haven’t stepped on a weighing scale in two years! I believe in inches. And I like how girls these days are working on being strong—they build muscle, they lift weights, they eat protein. That’s the kind of fitness I enjoy. But I’m still amazed at how weight-obsessed our society is. It’s all about being a certain size! I am an Indian girl, I’m curvy, this is my skin tone—I love it! The thing I have learnt post-Dum Laga Ke Haisha is that it’s so important to love yourself. I mean, you get one life; you can’t abuse your body. And I have been through a phase where my weight had become an obsession. All I could think about was knocking off some kilos. And then my period dates went awry...it was a very unhealthy phase for me. It took me a long time to rebuild a healthy relationship with my food. That’s a very important relationship, by the way. You can’t feel guilty if you have a roti...you can’t be petrified of carbs or of an indulgence here and there. People take their health for granted, and girls, especially, don’t realise how complicated their bodies are. We get periods, we are supposed to bear children, and our hormones are constantly raging, right? You are either PMSing or ovulating! So I keep telling people that proper nutrition is crucial. It has taken me some time to understand this as well, but I am finally in a good space and I just hope this ‘weight conversation’ around me kinda changes. They are like, ‘How can a girl go from a regular size to a plus size and then come back to the way she was?’. I think they’re just amazed by the transformation...”

Even as a little girl, Bhumi was confident...and “very ambitious”.  She is incredibly close to her mother and sister Samiksha (they’re often mistaken for twins!). Bhumi tells me her sister is her most trusted confidant. But it wasn’t always like that. “Growing up, we would fight a lot,” Bhumi laughs. “We were very territorial about our space. I was like, ‘Those are your friends, these are my friends! Stop following me around!’. Even today, our fights can get nasty. The only thing that has changed is that we’ve stopped scratching and slapping each other. But about seven years ago, our relationship changed. From being my younger sister and supporter, she has become my best friend...I don’t feel the need for more people in my life since that change happened.” 

In the past, Bhumi has opened up about losing her father to cancer, when she was 18, and how the family turned into “warrior mode” after the devastation. “You know, we are just three women—my mother, my sister, and I. And there is nothing that happens in my life that my mom and my sister don’t know about,” she reveals. “Our relationship with our mom is lovely because she’s like our best friend...she’s so naive and sweet, and simple and loving...she literally just lives for us!” Bhumi pauses to reflect on that, and then exclaims, “I don’t understand mothers; they are just from another planet! She just pours this selfless, unconditional love into us. There is nothing I would hide from her, nothing that I am ashamed of. There is a lot of love and respect.  But we are also very strong women, all three of us. Within 10 seconds, a fight could break out and we become like, ‘Just get away from me, I don’t want to see your face!’. Because there are hormones raging all the time, that’s something that we can’t help...the staff in our house thinks we all are mad!”

“Growing up, my family pumped us up with confidence all the time,” she continues. “In fact, I connected with my school friends two days ago, on this reunion group, and we were sharing all our old photographs and I was like, ‘Oh God, is this how I looked?!’. Because in my head, I always thought I was the prettiest girl in the room and that’s how our parents made us feel. It didn’t matter if you were plump or short or if you were made fun of...nothing mattered because when we returned home, we were given so much love and were told that we were the prettiest girls in the world. That really made us rock-solid....my sister and I, even as children, we were very confident.” It was when she was “11 or 12” that Bhumi decided she would be an actor. “I told my mum, and have been subconsciously working towards it since then.” She was already an integral part of the theatre groups at school and college, and was an active member 
of the debate and poetry societies. At 16, Bhumi got into a film school—and was soon thrown out “because I was such a brat!”.