'I was molested at the age of six': Big Boss 13 fame Rashmi Desai open up about her struggles

The entertainment industry is for sure a dream world where every day people come to achieve the stardom. But as they say they there are two sides of a coin, on this journey of fame, stars usually go through lots of ups and downs. Talking about the same, Rashmi Desai, who is without a doubt one of the top-rated actresses in the Television industry, shared her struggles. In an interview with Pinkvilla, Big Boss 13 fame Rashmi talked about the difficulties she faced before landing the first job, depression of divorce and highlighted the events where she was molested as a child.

"I was molested at the age of six or seven"

Desai's is surely one of the most beautiful Television faces the viewers have ever seen and even during her childhood, she used to make heads turn. Helming from a middle-class family, Rashmi said that she used to travel through bus while going to the school. Recalling the horrible incident, Rashmi said that when she was standing in the bus, a middle-aged man tried to touch her inappropriately. Rashmi said, "In the bus where you don't get space to sit, Baithne ki Jagah nahi milti aapko, there was one uncle who tried in a bad way to touch me when I was six or seven."

Scared from this horrific event, Rashmi told her mom, and putting beside all the financial issues, she started giving Desai the money to commute through rickshaw. "My mom knew that she's going to face a lot of financial trouble but still she started giving me my rickshaw ka money that you go from the rickshaw and come back from the same to be safe and secure" added Desai.

Rashmi opened about facing casting couch at the age of 16 and said, "When I started my career 13 years ago, I was very young and from a completely non-filmy background. I didn't know anyone from the industry. I still remember that I was told if you don't go through casting couch, you won't get work. His name is Suraj and I don't know where he's now. First time we met, he asked me about my statistics and I didn't know what it meant back then. I told him I don't know and he knew that she's completely unaware of things. He was the first person who tried taking advantage of me and tried to molest me in some or the other way."

Her mother, who has always been a support for Rashmi visited the man the next day and slapped him for harassing Desai."From there, I managed to come out after two and a half hours and I told my mother everything. Next day, we went to meet him again and this time, my mother slapped him," she added.

Desai on facing sexism and battling depression!

While sharing her experience of being a woman in the industry she revealed that she has faced sexism in the early stage of her career. Some of her male co-stars have often questioned the remuneration she was getting as an actress. "Lot of times it has happened that I'm talking about something and at the same time a senior person may be talking about the same issue, they have a lot of ego issues. If if they get to know that I am getting paid better than the other person, then they start having ego issues," Rashmi told the interviewer.

Talking about the backlash she faced from her male co-star she said, "They used to say, Tumhe toh jitna deserve nahi karti usse jyada milra hai, kuch toh kiya hi hoga isne."

Rashmi Desai got married to Nandish Sandhu, her co-star from Uttran in 2012 but later got their marriage ended. Throwing light on her divorce Rashmi said that she has undergone through the phase of depression when everything was falling apart in her marriage. She said, "I was going through depression as never wanted it (divorce) to happen. I never wanted the separation from whom I loved the most and I tried my level best. When it didn't work out I realised that it's better for both of us as individuals."

"After the divorce, people started judging me that issi me kuch problem hogi," she added.

Desai was last seen as a contestant on the reality show Big Boss 13. Her banter with show's winner Sidharth Shukla and love angle with Arhaan Khan gathered lots of headlines, even after her eviction.