‘Khatron Ke…’ has disciplined me: Anushka Manchanda

NEW DELHI - Injuries notwithstanding, pop star-turned-VJ-turned-playback singer Anushka Manchanda is happy to be part of adventure reality show “Khatron Ke Khiladi-Level 2″. She admits it has given her “memorable” injuries but says it has disciplined her.

“My life was very undisciplined (before the show) partly because of my career and partly by choice. But I don’t think the kind of discipline that I had to maintain over there I’ve maintained it in my entire life,” Anushka told IANS over telephone from Mumbai.

“Waking up at four in the morning, sleeping around nine and eating on time - this was for me like going to a hostel or a school where you stand in a line with the other girls and where Akshay Kumar is the principal,” added the 24-year-old.

Anushka, who is still to shoot for the show’s finale, says she will cherish the experience. “It was very stressful and very exciting, but the experience has just been awesome.”

“Khatron Ke Khiladi” is the Indian version of popular international show “Fear Factor”.

Level two of the Indian version started with 13 celebrity women, including Mandira Bedi, Shweta Salve, Rosa Catalano, Sushma Reddy, Carol Gracias, Bruna Abdullah, Rupali Ganguly, Nauheed Cyrusi, Pia Trivedi, Jesse Randhawa, Shonali Nagrani and professional wrestler Sonika apart from Anushka.

Shot in Cape Town, the show is aired on Colors and requires each of the contestants along with their male partners to compete with each other to win the prize money of Rs.5 million.

The stunts performed during the show also led to injuries for the girls.

“Nobody’s gone home without an injury…Sonika had stitches on her chin. Nauheed had a neck injury. I have a scar on my inner arm because of a rope burn, which I am very proud to show and I even got rashes on my face after a cockroach stunt,” she said.

“Jesse’s got one on her wrist. Shweta had black and blue marks all over her legs while Pia’s hands were literally cut. Girls really got hurt. They did,” added Anushka, who was Shweta’s room mate during the show.

Not many know that the participants also got Sundays off.

“The shoot was about three weeks but luckily we did get Sundays off unlike in Level 1. We managed to spend some time together and know the girls. We went out, had lunch together and shopped. We used to look forward to Sundays there.

“We made some good friends and it was really nice to have someone for support there, especially when you have women supporting women,” explained Anushka, who also claims to have cried the “maximum” there.

As far as stunts go, while she enjoyed a “chopper stunt” the most, she found the “flush tank” the most difficult of all.

“The most enjoyable stunt for me was the chopper stunt but Flush Tank was the most difficult stunt. It’s a cylinder kind of object pushed into the water and then pulled up… You have to get inside the cylinder and you unclip the flags from your waist and you clip it at the top.

“Once you are inside that thing, you have to wait for 20 seconds before they open it. There is no place to breathe. I swallowed so much water in that stunt and I started banging on the glass after putting one flag. That stunt was so scary considering I am slightly claustrophobic and I am not comfortable being under water,” she explained.

(Robin Bansal can be contacted at robin.b@ians.in)