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Shalin Bhanot and Nia Sharma are both TV actors, and best friends. Ahead of Friendship Day on August 4, Sharma recalls she met Bhanot after one of their mutual friends got hurt. “Shalin hosted all of us and made her (the friend who got hurt) stay in the house and ordered food for all of us. He was such a warm host and he was so welcoming. That’s what impressed me about him,” says Sharma.
“I thanked him like 100 times for letting us be there. It was like a small picnic. We kept coming and going to his house for two days to take care of our friend. So through that Shalin and I became friends. Then Naagin happened and he did the first episode where through him I was born. I happened to be his daughter in that show. That is how we got in touch again. I would crib about my weight and one day he told me to just hit the gym and started taking me on 6 am walks,” the 33-year-old, who has featured in TV shows such as Ishq Mein Marjawan and Jamai Raja, adds.
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For Bhanot, his first impression of Sharma was, “Despite her bombshell looks she is a very desi girl and a very sweet person. I thought she would be uptight, but she isn’t at all.” The 40-year-old shares, “When she met me, she realised that I am not a bad human being. So that made us become friends.”
Fitness journeys and fun moments
Sharma says she and Bhanot have the most fun when they go for morning jogging together. “It used to be very heavy on me and he was a fitness enthusiast. One day, we went jogging and I couldn’t take it anymore. And he was running along. [At one point] I could not run anymore and just sat down on the road. He gave me a hand. It was quite embarrassing for him to see me just sitting on the road,” she shares.
Bhanot says his most memorable moment with Sharma was when they went cycling early in the morning and decided to ride without their hands on the handle. They had asked an autorickshaw driver to shoot them on Sharma’s phone. “He was driving the auto and shooting us while we were both on cycles without our hands on the handle and were balancing the cycles,” Bhanot, who was last seen in the TV serial Bekaboo, shares.
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He adds: “I will never forget it because it was funny, risky and good adrenaline. I could always cycle without hands and manoeuvre the cycle without holding the handle and Nia wanted to learn that. That day she learned it and it was like an achievement for both her and me.”
Sharma says she learnt the true meaning of fitness, regime and how to lead a good lifestyle from Bhanot. “I’m so proud to say that he was the one who got me into fitness. And then when I got into it, I went so hard that now he cannot match my level when we go jogging. Now, I motivate him to get up in the morning and make plans,” she adds.
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Funny habits and quirks
One thing Bhanot has learnt from Sharma is her social media fluency. “I am still learning [from] the fluency she has with her mobile, social media and her phone camera. She is amazing when it comes to clicking herself and taking pictures,” he says.
One flaw in her best friend, according to Sharma is “he actually talks too much to a point where you can lose him in the middle of a story.” Sharma says: “He [Bhanot] cooks up a lot of stories, which is annoying at times.” She adds that she has advised Bhanot to “talk to a point where the person at the other end is understanding [what he says] and not to a point where the person is lost.”
A habit of her best friend Sharma finds really funny is that “he is always hungry”. “If he does not get food he gets cranky and will just keep cribbing about it. He just cannot stay without food,” she says.
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Spontaneous adventures
Talking about the most random thing they have done together, Bhanot says, “One random thing we did was going to a car showroom and test-driving a really expensive car. It was very random because at that point neither one of us wanted the car. We just went to the showroom and I drove a supercar.”
Best friends forever
When asked how the duo keep their friendship going despite their busy schedules, Sharma says, “It is possible because of the kind of quality time we have spent with each other (in the past). There are times when we don’t talk for months. [Like when] he was away for Khatron [Ke Khiladi] and I was busy with two shows. We barely spoke. But it’s just that one call in two months, he will call or maybe I will make that call and then we just meet up. We don’t have to be in touch all the time to be best friends.”
