Touted as India’s first multi-regional culture festival, ‘Arth’ seeks to celebrate our nation’s rich culture, heritage, traditions, languages and history.
Mandira Bedi is hosting the 4th season of ‘Arth – A Culture Fest,’ which will go live on &TV at 10 AM on March 19th 2022 and on ZEE TV at 8AM on March 20th 2022. Touted as India’s first multi-regional culture festival, ‘Arth’ seeks to celebrate our nation’s rich culture, heritage, traditions, languages and history.
In this interview, Mandira Bedi talks about her association with the festival, the changing trends in the live events space, rise of OTT platforms, importance of fitness and personal well being, and her upcoming projects.
Excerpts
Q. You are hosting the 4th season of ‘Arth – A Culture Fest’. Tell about the festival and your association with it.
A. ‘Arth – A Culture Fest’ is just like the very beautiful and well-rounded culture festivals that we love. There’s a little bit of everything. There’s literature, there’s music, there’s dance. Two years ago, I was a part of ‘Arth’ for other reasons, when I came to promote my book ‘Happy for No Reason’ that I had written. So, it’s very nice to be hosting the TV segment of ‘Arth’. It’s always a pleasure to work with Zee.
Q. Owing to the pandemic, a lot of live events have had to either cancelled or postponed over the last two years. Some got shifted to the online mode. How do you look at the current scene? What according to you is the way forward?
A. Well, I think this is the new way forward. A lot of people suddenly realize that events can happen. They can take place online. People save a lot of money, time, and resources. When events used to happen, physically, you had to fly so many people to different places for offsite for dealer meets. Now, the same thing can happen where people are doing it from the comfort of their homes.
Then there’s also this concept of hybrid events where some people are actually live and physically present where the event is happening while some people are watching it from home. I just think this is the way forward. It’s a nice mix. We can do events live. We can do events physically as well.
Over these last two and a half years, I have done a lot, you know, different kinds of hybrid and virtual events. And now when people ask me, “So, we want you for an event” and my immediate response to it is “Is it live or physical?” Then I say, “Okay, in what capacity do you want me there? As a host, guest or motivational speaker?” It could be many things. New doors have opened up for me in the pandemic as I have started doing virtual workouts for a lot of corporates and companies.
Q. OTT is setting new trends as far as the entertainment scene is concerned. And you yourself have always been a trendsetter. How do you look at the rise of OTT platforms?
A. I think it’s amazing. There’s a lot of creativity as far as the content is concerned. People are much braver and bolder in narrating stories and churning out characters. It’s not the safe, or the tried and tested, the conservative when it comes to OTT. And I think that’s very nice. Of course, the wave of bad language and nudity will go by. It’s just that people are allowed to do it now, so people are doing it. But I think good content, which is very creative and not necessarily safe, is being put out. And I think that’s good for creativity overall.
Q. As someone who has always given importance to fitness and personal well being, how do you look at the growing importance of health and fitness during the pandemic times? What would be your advice for maintaining a healthy day to day routine?
A. Well, now more than ever, right? Before, it was important to stay fit, but now, exercise, eating right and healthy, building your immunity, is important now than ever before. So, if people were giving importance to health earlier, it’s now much, much more important to make health a priority.
There’s no other way to go, you don’t have a choice. Before you used to say “Time nahi hai exercise karne ke liye, time nahi hai yeh karne ke liye,” but now you have to make the time because you need to make yourself healthy and strong to fight off disease and build your immunity.
Q. Tell us about your upcoming projects
A. I am doing a web series for Yash Raj films. I am doing a lot of brand work and I have got one movie in the pipeline.