So today, we want to give you 10 reasons why we think she’s totally awesome.

1. She shuts down comments about ‘immoral single women’ with her unmatched humour.

2. She’s not afraid to burst a few bubbles. She’s the kind of friend you need when you’re losing perspective.

3. She refused being stereotyped as the ‘bahu’ after her hit TV show Koshish – Ek Aashaa  even though it would have been easy money. She stuck to her guns and chose a different path.

 In her interview with OPEN Magazine, she said

Everyone was offering me only leads on television and I was turning them down because all the main leads were bahus. I would have suffocated and died… It would have been death-by-television for me. I didn’t want fame, success or money, I wanted credibility.

4. Even in difficult times, she refused shoddy films and stayed true to her art even when it wasn’t the easiest decision to make.

 In the same interview, she said,

After Page 3, I got offered a lot of commercial cinema as the ‘heroine’. I was told, ‘Emraan Hashmi ke saath picture hai, chhe gaane hain, doh kiss hain, aap heroine hain and when I would ask about my character, I would be told, ‘How does that matter as long as are you are the heroine?’ And I wouldn’t know what to do. Every time an offer like this would come, I would get stressed because I would be shit broke and yet have to say ‘no’.

She speaks about the same in an interview with Vagabomb,

I really couldn’t see myself in those roles. That phase was obviously not easy but it was all my choice. Today, I’m glad that I had the resilience to hang on, to stay and not walk away.

5. While most cringe at being called a ‘feminist’, she accepts the label whole-heartedly.

I have always been a feminist and I have always taken complete pride in that. And I really don’t know why there’s a big hullabaloo around being a feminist. I really don’t get it. If you understand what it really means, it’ll be just another term in your vocabulary. It’s that basic. I don’t get the whole, ‘Arey yeh toh feminist hai,’ thing. Matlab jaise koi gaali de rahe ho. 

6. She speaks about injustice, whether it comes from men or women.

7. Sandhya knows how to pull punches quite subtly too.

8. While most celebs dish out ‘juicy details’ about their private life, to get attention in any form, Sandhya stays far away from it. She remarks on her interview with SheThePeople:

I don’t like anybody in my private space, I love my space… I don’t like the press in my bedroom.

9. She was raised an equal and continues to live her life, standing tall on the values she was brought up with.

Sandhya grew up with two elder brothers and was raised equal to them. Even when her mother had some worries about Sandhya not acting like a girl, her father was beyond gender differences and didn’t want to raise her daughter any differently than the brothers.

For me I’ve never known that difference. I still don’t believe in that difference, except when it comes to biology.

10. She believes there are right and wrong reasons to get married and taking the ‘conventional’ path to a married life and motherhood is not for everyone.

 In her interview with SheThePeople, she said

I’ve had to pay minor prices here and there for being different, for not getting married for the sake of getting married. I was once married out of choice and it didn’t work out. But that’s not the reason I didn’t marry again. The reason is that I stopped believing in the institution.

I believe people should get married because they want to be with someone for the rest of their life, not because they “want to” get married or they “have to” get married.

 May we have more badass women like her to talk about. 

Feature image by shivajistormsen