Just two days before Diwali and three days before his birthday, as he was preparing to go to his hometown Pune for the celebrations, Sumedh Vasudev Mudgalkar, met with an unfortunate accident. On October 30, while filming for an action sequence, the actor injured his nose and it got fractured. But he credits it all to his luck. “Sometimes things just happen. Nobody is at fault. You try to give your best shot, and sometimes you just get unlucky,” he says.
Recalling the incident, Sumedh informs that while he had already done multiple takes for the sequence, the greedy actor in him wanted one more take, and in that last take, he got injured. “My nose started bleeding heavily and everyone was stressed. Since everyone was stressing out, my first reaction was to start cracking jokes because I realised that this moment required positivity. A lot of people were feeling bad that it happened, and they had to continue the shoot ahead as well. So, I was joking and laughing. Initially we thought it was just a minor injury. But when we went to the hospital and the X-ray came, we realised it’s a fracture,” he shares.
For any actor, their face is one of the most important aspect of their work. Did fear crept in him when he realised the severity of the injury and it being on his face? Sumedh responds, “I did struggle with those thoughts for a period of time. But I was lucky enough to get treatment on the spot, when I needed it. The doctor also told us that it’s not that severe and it’s repairable. I also thought to myself, these things are not in our control. So, if something has happened to my face, instead of thinking how can this happen, or this shouldn’t have happened, I was just telling myself that, ‘OK. It happened. Now what next? Think about that’.”
The actor informs that he was hospitalised for two days and had to get an operation done. He has now been advised to take six weeks off for recovery. While he initially didn’t intend to let anyone know about the accident, he is glad that he eventually did. “I didn’t know how people would react to it, but they genuinely were concerned. I was feeling a bit low, but a lot of people kept checking on me when I was in the hospital and when people care for you, you feel good,” he says.
Sumedh reached Pune after getting discharged and is loving the time he is getting to spend with his family. “I think everything happens for a good reason. I’m getting a good amount of time with my mom and dad, with my dogs and my really close people. I’m happy about it. One can always think ‘oh, I’ve missed out on certain things because of this’, but I feel that if this has happened, let’s just enjoy this break. I’m looking at it in a positive space. I’m glad it happened while working and while giving my best shot,” he ends.
