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Photos (Cover, above, right): H Vibhu

Nobody can deny that Ranjini Haridas has chutzpah, tons of it in fact. Her anglicised accent did not win her too many friends either. But then that was then. Now she has polished up her Malayalam and has won grudging acceptance.

Settling down for a chat at Ishka Art Gallery, Ranjini is as refreshing as ever. No airs of being a hotshot anchor who has been hobnobbing with the who’s who of the Malayalam filmdom, she is candid about most things. Like the tears that flow quite liberally on the show to her equation with the judges on the show. The participants of the show are “kids” (not that she is much older than some contestants, in fact she is younger than some), she says. If Roshan, Arun and Durga were her favourite participants, among the judges it is “Didz (Usha Uthup)”.

She is candid and blunt, which by her own admission has not won her many friends. “Idea Star Singer has been good for me, but this is it. I have been at this for this long, one year or rather five days a week for a year is a long time. I need to do something else. Then again I am not saying no to anything, let’s see what turns up.”

Ranjini musses up her stylishly unkempt hair, tell her how she has become a style icon for the regular TV watching Malayali youngster and she cracks up with laughter. “Really?! I am just being me. The dressing up right was a conscious effort. Some anchors are getting a lot of flak for what they wear on screen. I was spared some of that, at least!” She acknowledges that her fans are young kids and senior citizens. “That is the fan base I am going to cultivate.”

There were times when ISS could give a tearjerking soap a run for its money. Ranjini says, “Rejection is bad, people feel bad. The tears were of empathy.” Honestly? “Yes, most of the time,” she says with a laugh.

Her ‘manglish’ (Malayalam+English) was another bone of contention, she puts an end to that for once and for all (and she gets to do it quite often), “I am a Malayali, proud to be one. I have spent most of my life here, so how can anyone say I am less of a Malayali based on what I wear or how I speak?” In her latest avatar, Ranjini has been speaking in Malayalam and how. “For your information I host shows in Malayalam. I avoided Malayalam because there were 20 other girls who can do it better than me,” she says. She has worked on her Malayalam skills which were earlier limited to the colloquial form“It was a challenge for me, therefore I worked hard on it. Earlier I had a script to work with, now I don’t have that, I do it on my own.” For the time being, post ISS there are several plans – travel, business besides the emceeing that she does.

How has life changed post Idea Star Singer 2007? “Not really, I am very much the same. ” Stardom? “Oh! No. But of course there are the little payoffs of being me that I take advantage of. Skipping a queue for instance,” she says.

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