NEW DELHI: Actress Kangana Ranaut, who was elected as the Lok Sabha MP from Mandi constituency in June 2024, minces no words when she says she finds being a parliamentarian as daunting and that she needs to up her game.
“Being a parliamentarian is just too daunting. It's just way too daunting. I fall short of for that job (sic). I think that I need to be more. I should be more. There's no end to it. There's no end to how much one can give. There are so many people and there is so much to do, ” Kangana told IANS.
“And, like, I always complain about that, I'm a parliamentarian from Mandi. But, I get calls from all states. You know, all, all kinds of problems and, At times I address, and then I'm like, is it even my job. That I'm getting from. All across the country? So, what is the extent, till you can give, and you can do?”
Talking about natural calamities, she said: “ And especially, When there are natural calamities, and you just find yourself, just being, a little speck in the cosmos. You're not even a speck, like, you're non-existent, like, you don't even exist, you're a bubble to be precise, ” she said.
“And then you're faced with that sort of existential crisis, why am I in this position of helping people, where I myself am in such a bubble, I have no control over anything.”
She shared that being a filmmaker is a “gratifying job”.
“Whereas being a filmmaker is a very gratifying job, you feel so good about yourself. You feel that I did this, You know, I made this film, I did so good and all of that.”
Kangana said that as a parliamentarian she is always questioning herself.
“But being a parliamentarian, you're always feeling, ‘what is to be done? Like, what can I do?’ And, Of course, You can help people with policies, that, you can help people build homes, build roads, you can get them pension, you can solve their problems, but, there are far and few, because, they already know the path to do that.”
“Most people just come to you, they're like, your organs have failed, you know, like, my child is missing, or My husband has left me, or like this mountain has fallen on my family and you're like, Oh my God, How am I supposed to even cope with all of this? There's so much pain in the world. I just feel that, as a parliamentarian, and even as a person in power…”
She added: “And I just keep thinking about people who are way ahead of me in the hierarchy, and I just keep thinking that, how do they run the whole nation?”
The actress-MP said that sometimes “I just collapse, running my own house. Nothing is happening. Everything has crashed, the kitchen has crashed, the cook has left, you know, the AC, And the house is just not functioning, no matter how hard you try.
“As a working woman, You just feel that, It's so hard to make a house run. How do they do it? I don't know, I just, I never found myself getting anxious thinking about something, but, thinking about my duties, as a parliamentarian, and the vastness of this job, is definitely, I need to up my game.”