Ritika Singh: I am a Martial Artist, still I feel unsafe on the streets at night

Ritika Singh made her debut in the role of a boxer alongside R Madhavan in the 2016 Tamil film Irudhi Suttru. The film was simultaneously shot in Hindi and was released as Saala Khadoos. Ritika is a trained Mixed Martial Artist and bagged the role after the film’s makers discovered her during a fight.

Since then, the Mumbai-based actor has shared screen space with Vijay Sethupathi and Yogi Babu in the 2016 satire Andavan Kattalai. She has also worked alongside Telugu star Venkatesh in Guru (2017) and was last seen in the Tamil romantic fantasy film Oh My Kadavule (2020).

The actor is now leading a survivalist-thriller titled InCar. In a case of being cast against the grain, Ritika plays Sakshi in the film, a meek girl who gets abducted by a bunch of men in Haryana. The film details Sakshi’s mental and physical ordeal as she awaits her fate.

“I consider myself a strong woman and very resilient. Whenever a role is given to me, I think I am ready for it. But when the shooting for InCar started, I realised it was going to be tough. We shot for 35 days non-stop. More than the physical aspect, it was the mental, emotional churning. It was so draining it felt like torture. After some time, the lines between reality and acting started to blur,” she says.

Such roles can leave their imprint. For a long time after the shoot’s wrap, Ritika shared that on some days, she didn’t feel like getting out of bed. “This film was shot a while back. When I saw the trailer recently, there was this shot where the car reached its destination. I am a very lively person in real life. Somebody whose eyes gleam if she spots a butterfly. But, in that shot, my eyes are drained of all life. Thankfully, now I have recovered and gotten out of that phase.”

InCar also feels urgent in its themes of women's safety and crimes against them. Talking about feeling unsafe as a woman in the country, she said, “I feel scared all the time. It is part of being a woman. I don’t think there is any woman who feels safe on the street at night.”

Sharing an experience, she says, “I was taking a cab recently from Kalyan to Mumbai, and the driver went away from the car to relieve himself. All this time he was away, I kept on thinking, ‘What if somebody enters the car?’ I kept on looking outside, a bit scared. I think sometimes we take our safety for granted and think nothing bad can happen here. As a woman, I don’t think you are safe anywhere.”

“I am a Martial Artist, but still, I feel unsafe. My mind wanders in different directions, and I start imagining how somebody will attack me and how I will defend myself. I, sometimes, am more scared because of all the awareness of an attacker’s psyche that I have,” she adds.

Directed by Harsh Warrdhan, the film will release in five different languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam on March 3.