Mumbai After being mired in a drugs case following actor and her then boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput’s death by suicide in 2020, Rhea Chakraborty ducked the limelight. On Tuesday, she surfaced at a canine care centre in Andheri, quite at ease in the company of a flock of strays as she donated three months of dog food.
It also gave the actress a break from fielding calls from production houses who are looking to spin her story for probable projects. “I don’t want to relive my life as an artiste nor a human being. I want to escape into a character that would do something different,” said Chakraborty.
The burden of public memory and a cunning industry has made it tough for the actress to live down the events following the death of Rajput. “Everybody was watching as they had nothing better to do,” she said. “I have been looking to do good work and entertain. There are some projects in the pipeline which should start by next year,” she added.
Chakraborty, who was in jail for a month, was granted bail by the Bombay high court in October, 2020, in a drug abuse case linked to Rajput’s death. She was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on September, 8, 2020, allegedly for her involvement in procuring marijuana for Rajput.
Hard knocks in life lead many to introspect and it is no surprise therefore, that Chakraborty wishes to “write a book on the lessons learnt in jail, when the time is right”.
For now, though its dogs over people. “They are better than humans in every way – so pure. I turn to them at my lowest times as they understand human emotions better than human beings themselves. It’s hard to lose them as they have a very short life,” said the actress, who lost a pet recently and plans to adopt another.