Padmavati Rao

Some Lesser Known Facts About Padmavati Rao

• Padmavati Rao is an Indian film actress who has worked in the Hindi and Kannada industries. She is also known by the name of Akshatha Rao in the Kannada film industry. She is a versatile person as she is an actor, writer, theatre personality, poet, dancer, and translator. She is actively involved in her theatre activities.
• She is the sister of Arundathi Nag who is also an Indian film and theatre actress. Padmavati’s debut film, ‘Geetha,’ which was released in 1981, was a super hit. Later, she went on to appear in many popular films such as “Pardes,” which was released in 1997 featuring Shah Rukh Khan and Mahima Chaudhary, “TE3N,” (2016) in which she played the role of ‘Nancy,’ Sanjay Leela Bhansali‘s “Padmaavat” (2018) in which she played the role of ‘Kunwar Baisa,’ Tanaji (2020) in which she played the role of Rajmata Jijao and Rat Akeli Hai (2020). Besides Bollywood movies, she has also been a part of the Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, and English plays.
  

  

  

• The talented actress has also translated five of Girish Karnad’s plays as well as Mahesh Dattani’s 30 Days In September into the Hindi language.

• During the COVID-19 lockdown period in India, Padmavati mainly focused on the villages outside Bengaluru where she promoted natural farming and arts & crafts as she always longed to serve the farming community. To provide a helping hand to the farmers, Padmavati came up with the idea of constructing a non-electric and a cost-efficient refrigerator. In an interview, while talking about this, she said,
  

   For a long time, I wanted to serve the farming community. To that, I created a cost-effective refrigerator that does not run on electricity.”

• Padmavati is actively involved with the issue of farmers’ suicide in India. This led her to the idea of making a cost-effective refrigerator. As farmers, their concern is to keep the vegetables fresh if they are unable to sell them. She pondered over this thought and suddenly when her compound wall came down an idea struck her head and then she decided to use the hollow bricks from it to create a non-electric fridge.

  

• To make the refrigerator, she did not use cement or sand, rather she used gunny sack material, an old flattened cardboard carton to work as a sliding door, an old wire rack, and a river-weed mat (chaapey). And the results were marvellous. The idea was really effective. She tested the refrigerator with oranges, tomatoes, and milk. The Oranges lasted up to 28 days, tomatoes for 15 days, and milk, after boiling it once daily, lasted for a week. She also tested the refrigerator in the peak of summer. When she watered the gunny sack material thrice a day, the oranges and tomatoes showed no signs of dehydration or rotting. Cooked food kept after dinner was fine for lunch the next day, and vegetables last for about two to three days. So, it was an incredible achievement. Also, it was her dream to do farming since she was 23.

• Apart from farming she also likes to stitch, mend, upcycle, and write; moreover, during the COVID-19 lockdown, she worked on three books simultaneously – the first was on her mother’s recipes, the second was a book of poems titled “Of Love and Silence,” and the third was a play.

• Padmavati Rao did a solo performance based on Dhiruben Patel’s work “Kitchen Poems.” She earned laurels for her performance in the play.

  

• Rao has gained huge fame and popularity through her various works and her acting, and she defines them as her major career achievements.