Zaira Wasim rose to fame after her debut alongside Aamir Khan in the film Dangal. She even won a number of awards including the National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement by Ram Nath Kovind in 2017. The child actress reiterated that she’s a powerhouse of talent with her nuanced performance in Secret Superstar.
Today she announced she has decided to quit her career in the film industry. Sharing a lengthy post on Instagram, she said, “Though I may fit here perfectly, I do not belong here.” The Kashmir-born actor said that she was unhappy in her line of work because it interfered with her faith and religion.
She shared her story with her fans, “Five years ago, I made a decision that changed my life forever. As I stepped my foot in Bollywood, it opened doors of massive popularity for me. I started to become the prime candidate of public attention, I was projected as the gospel of the idea of success and was often identified as a role model for the youth. However, that’s never something that I set out to do or become, especially with regards to my ideas of success and failure, which I had just started to explore and understand.”
The 18-year-old actor felt like she was struggling to be someone else in this environment. “This field indeed brought a lot of love, support, and applause my way, but what it also did was to lead me to a path of ignorance, as I silently and unconsciously transitioned out of ‘imaan’ (faith). While I continued to work in an environment that consistently interfered with my ‘imaan’, my relationship with my religion was threatened. I was constantly battling with my soul to reconcile my thoughts and instincts to fix a static picture of my ‘imaan’ and I failed miserably, not just once but a hundred times. I discovered my lack of knowledge of the basic fundamentals of my religion and how my inability to reinforce a change earlier was a result of confusing my heart’s contentment and well being with strengthening and satisfying my own (shallow and worldly) desires,” she said.
She finally wrote, “The source code that governed and impacted my perceptions evolved into a different dimension. Success isn’t correlated with our biased, delusional and conventional shallow measures of life. Success is the accomplishment of the purpose of our creation. We have forgotten the purpose we were created for as we ignorantly continue to pass through our lives; deceiving our conscience.”
Wasim said the journey has been “exhausting, to battle my soul for so long” and “life is too short yet too long to be at war with oneself.”
Read the whole post here:
She is going to star in The Sky Is Pink along with Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar. It has been directed by Shonali Bose and is scheduled to release on October 11th.
Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah also tweeted about Zaira’s announcement saying that it is her life to do as she pleases and we are no one to judge an individual’s choices.
Who are any of us to question @ZairaWasimmm’s choices? It’s her life to do with as she pleases. All I will do is wish her well & hope that what ever she does makes her happy.
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) 30 June 2019
We wish Zaira all the best for her future endeavours. While we will miss her on the big screen, we’re happy she’s choosing a path that makes her happier.
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